The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1]; but in any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.
Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial, when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution. They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account—to that feeling indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers—but simply love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had fallen, in the defence of freedom.
Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of suspected vrykolakes can never have been an act of hostility. It was rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the living it gave immunity from the assaults of vrykolakes, and this without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror of vrykolakes, chose
- ↑ No. 223.
