allusion to the gaping mouth of the vampire, os hians, dentes candidi, says Leone Allacci.
St. Clair and Brophy in their Twelve Years’ Study of the Eastern Question in Bulgaria, 1877, have a note (p. 29, n. 1): “The pure Bulgarians call this being [the Vampire] by the genuine Slavonic name of Upior, the Gagaous (or Bulgarians of mixed race) by that of Obour, which is Turkish; in Dalmatia it is known as Wrikodlaki, which appears to be merely a corruption of the Romaic βρυκόλαξ.”
The word vampir, vampyr, is apparently unknown in Greece proper and the general modem term is βρυκόλακας, which may be transliterated as vrykolakas (plural vrykolakes). Tozer gives the Turkish name as vurkolak, and Hahn records that amongst some of the Albanians βουρβολάκ-ου is used of the restless dead. It is true that in parts of Macedonia where the Greek population is in constant touch with Slavonic neighbours, especially in Melenik in the North-East, a form βάμπυρας or βόυπυρας has been adopted,[39] and is there used as a synonym of vrykolakas in its ordinary Greek sense, but strangely enough with this one exception throughout the whole of Greece and the Greek islands the form “Vampire” does not appear. Coraes denies the Slavonic origin of the word vrykolakas, and he seeks to connect a local variant βορβόλακας with a hypothetical ancient word μορμόλυξ alleged to be the equivalent of μορμολύκη[40] which is used by the geographer Strabo, and μορμολυκεία used by Arrianus of Nicomedia in his Διατριβαὶ Ἐπικτήτου[41] and the more usual μορμολυκεῖον[42] found in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazuasae (417):
εἶτα δια τοῦτον ταῖς γυναικωνίτισιν
σφραγῖδας ἐπιβάλλουσιν ἤδη καὶ μοχλούς,
τηροῦντες ἡμᾶς, καὶ προσέτι Μολοττικοὺς
τρέφουσι, μορμολυκεῖα τοῖς μοιχοῖς, κύνας.
The word occurs again in Plato, Phaedo[43]: “τοῦτον οὖν πειρώμεθα πείθειν μὴ δεδίεναι τὸν θἀνατον ὥσπερ τὰ μορμολύκεια.” It is, of course, a derivation and diminutive of Mormo (Μορμώ), a hobgoblin, or worse, a ghoul of hideous appearance. The theory is patriotic and ingenious, but Bernard Schmidt and all other authorities agree that it is entirely erroneous and the modern Greek word vrykolakas must undoubtedly be identified with a word which is common
