Note 109 — THE GIAOUR.

The Vampire superstition 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.

Βουρκόλακας or Βρυκόλακας (= the Bohemian and Slovak Vrholak) is modern Greek for a ghost or vampire. George Bentotes, in his Λεξικον Τρίγλωσσον, published in Vienna in 1790 (see Childe Harold, Canto II. Notes, Papers, etc., No. III., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 197), renders Βρουκόλακας "lutin," and Βρουκολιασμένος, "devenu un spectre."

Arsenius, Archbishop of Monembasia (circ. 1530), was famous for his scholarship. He prefaced his Scholia in Septem Euripidis Tragædias (Basileæ, 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-Græcia, lib. ii. (Basileæ, 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. (Lacédémone, Ancienne et Nouvelle, par Le Sieur de la Guilletiére, 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 literary as opposed to klephtic Greek.]