on is still general in the Levant. Honest
Tournefort [_Relation d'un Voyage du Levant_, par Joseph Pitton de
Tournefort, 1717, i. 131] tells a long story, which Mr. Southey, in the
notes on _Thalaba_ [book viii., notes, ed. 1838, iv. 297-300], quotes
about these "Vroucolochas" ["Vroucolocasses"], as he calls them. The
Romaic term is "Vardoulacha." I recollect a whole family being terrified
by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find
that "Broucolokas" is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation--at least
is so applied to Arsenius, who, according to the Greeks, was after his
death animated by the Devil. The moderns, however, use the word I
mention.

[[Greek: Bourko/lakas] or [Greek: Bryko/lakas] (= the Bohemian and
Slovak _Vrholak_) is modern Greek for a ghost or vampire. George
Bentotes, in his [Greek: Lexikon Tri/glosson,] published in Vienna in
1790 (see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. Notes, Papers, etc., No. III.,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 197), renders [Greek: Brouko/lakas] "lutin,"
and [Greek: Broukoliasme/nos,] "devenu un spectre."

Arsenius, Archbishop of Monembasia (circ. 1530), was famous for his
scholarship. He prefaced his _Scholia in Septem Euripidis Tragaedias_
(Basileae, 1544) by a dedicatory epistle in Greek to his friend Pope Paul
III. "He submitted to the Church of Rome, which made him so odious to
the Greek schismatics that the Patriarch of Constantinople
excommunicated him; and the Greeks reported that Arsenius, after his
death, was _Broukolakas_, that is, that the Devil hovered about his
corps and re-animated him" (Bayle, _Dictionary_, 1724, i. 508, art.
"Arsenius"). Martinus Crusius, in his _Turco-Graecia_, lib. ii. (Basileae,
1584, p. 151) records the death of Arsenius while under sentence of
excommunication, and adds that "his miserable corpse turned black, and
swelled to the size of a drum, so that all who beheld it were
horror-stricken, and trembled exceedingly." Hence, no doubt, the legend
which Bayle takes _verbatim_ from Guillet, "Les Grecs disent qu'
Arsenius, apres la mort fust _Broukolakas_," etc. (_Lacedemone, Ancienne
et Nouvelle_, par Le Sieur de la Guilletiere, 1676, ii. 586. See, too,
for "Arsenius," Fabricii _Script. Gr. Var._, 1808, xi. 581, and Gesneri
_Bibliotheca Univ_., ed. 1545, fol. 96.) Byron, no doubt, got his
information from Bayle. By "old legitimate Hellenic" he must mean
literar