36 Proceedings 
understand what the latter say to them, but they can only reply 
by barking and gesticulating like the deaf and dumb with their 
hands and fingers. They live on raw flesh. The Indians call them 
Kalystriot, that is the dog-headed.’ This account is said to be 
supported by an ancient Sanskrit tradition, which also names 
the tribe dog-headed. 
I will just mention in passing the Hebrew Se’irim, or ‘hairy 
ones,’ who are spoken of in Isaiah xiii, 21, as dancing amid the 
desolate ruins of Babylon, and seem to have been objects of wor- 
ship (Lev.xvii,7,11 Chron.xi.15). A Hebrew scholar tells me that 
he thinks ‘they may preserve a hint of early traditions concerning 
some tribe or tribes of ‘hairy beings’ who were supposed to dwell 
(and play pranks) in the desert, were regarded as formidable, and 
looked upon as devils.’ 
Turning to Europe, we find traditions which, though very 
far from conclusive, are more circumstantial. Just as the beings 
figured in the Quaternary caves are connected with the Pyrenees, 
and the Kalystrioi with the Hindu Kush or Himalaya, so these 
are mainly to be traced to the great mountain masses of Europe, 
the systems of the S.E. peninsula (Pindus, Rhodope, etc.), the 
Alps, and the Norwegian mountains. 
Various semi-human, hairy, savage creatures appear in early 
Greek art and tradition, such as Seileni, Satyrs, Cyclopes and 
Centaurs. You may be surprised that I adduce the last, but 
they afford a good illustration of the way in which these Greek 
conceptions changed. The four-footed Centaur does not appear 
till the fifth century s.c. All the above-mentioned beings at 
the earliest period to which we can trace them were very simi- 
lar to one another, but as time went on they were differentiated, 
partly, it would seem, through the influence of mythological 
accretions, and they took more and more the character of mon- 
strous and generally composite beings. Thus the Satyrs became 
half-goats and the Centaurs half-horses. The original differences 
were less generic than due to the diversity of the localities 
where the stories arose.t 
+ Mr. J. C. Lawson, in his Modern Greek Folk Lore and Ancient 
Greek Religion, tg10, describes the Aallikantzari of contemporary 
belief as shaggy black monsters of human form with beasts’ legs, who 
—— 
