terrible length like the talons of a bird of prey whilst their hands become as crooked claws. If they meet any person on the highway they seize him and put the question: “Tow or lead?” If he answer: “Tow” he may escape unharmed, but if he be inadvertent enough to reply: “Lead,” they grip him with terrible force, mangle him with their talons and often tear him to pieces, devouring him wholemeal.[46] During the seventeenth century this belief so strongly prevailed that the most cruel precautions were taken in the case of children who might be suspected to be liable to become Callicantzari, since the soles of their feet were exposed to a fire until the nails were singed and so their claws clipped, and even to-day in parts of Greece these practices prevail in a highly modified form, for among the Ægean islanders it is said that the small Callicantzari are particularly prone to attack and devour their own brothers and sisters, which is another strong link with the tradition of the vampire who, as we have noted before, seeks the destruction of his own kin.[47]
It is difficult to convey any idea of the popular notions concerning the appearance of a Callicantzaros, as almost every local account differs from others in almost every particular. For the most part they are considered to be very gaunt[48] and of enormous strength. On the other hand there are some who are dwarfed and stunted. The larger variety generally appear as ineffably hideous monsters with black distorted faces, eyes glaring red like fire, huge ears such as those of a donkey, great gaping mouths furnished with a slobbering scarlet tongue and sharp gleaming teeth, from which streams their fetid breath in horrid gusts. Again the pigmy Callicantzaros may appear in the shape of a child, but in this case it is usually deformed in some grotesque and painful manner. On the other hand they are sometimes harmless hobgoblins, full of mischief maybe, but objects of laughter rather than fear, though they may play many a naughty and tiresome trick not unlike the kobold and the leprechaun. A hundred tales are told of their pranks, but it is the more gruesome and the fiercer monsters with whom we are mainly concerned since it is from their ranks that the vampire is recruited, for most of them become vampires after death (a fact which seems to point to their human origin), and not infrequently they are supposed to indulge their vampirish
