t or violence." Many like or far worse pranks do they
play, until at the crowing of the third cock they get them away to their
dens. The signal for their final departure does not come until the
Epiphany, when, as we saw in Chapter IV., the "Blessing of the Waters"
takes place. Some of the hallowed water is put into vessels, and with
these and with incense the priests sometimes make a round of the village,
sprinkling the people and their houses. The fear of the |245|
_Kallikantzaroi_ at this purification is expressed in the following
lines:--

"Quick, begone! we must begone,
Here comes the pot-bellied priest,
With his censer in his hand
And his sprinkling-vessel too;
He has purified the streams
And he has polluted us."

Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian
precautions against the _Kallikantzaroi_--_e.g._, to mark the house-door
with a black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense and the
invocation of the Trinity--and a number of other means of aversion: the
lighting of the Yule log, the burning of something that smells strong,
and--perhaps as a peace-offering--the hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats,
or sausages in the chimney.

Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires temporarily during
their lifetime, so, according to one stream of tradition, do living men
become _Kallikantzaroi_. In Greece children born at Christmas are thought
likely to have this objectionable characteristic as a punishment for
their mothers' sin in bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God.
In Macedonia{70} people who have a "light" guardian angel undergo the
hideous transformation.

Many attempts have been made to account for the _Kallikantzaroi_. Perhaps
the most plausible explanation of the outward form, at least, of the
uncanny creatures, is the theory connecting them with the masquerades
that formed part of the winter festival of Dionysus and are still to be
found in Greece at Christmastide. The hideous bestial shapes, the noise
and riot, may well have seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly
"elevated," perhaps, by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the
maskers was not altogether forgotten.{71} Another theory of an even more
prosaic character has been propounded--"that the Kallikantzaroi are
nothing more than established nightmares, limited like indigestion to the
twelve days of feasting. This view is |246| taken by Allatius, who says
that a