In confirmation of his view Polites cites some of the evidence concerning the human origin of the Callicantzari, mentioning both the fairly common belief that men turn into Callicantzari, and the rarer traditions that a Callicantzaros resumes his human shape if a torch be thrust in his face and that the transformation of men into Callicantzari can be prevented by certain means. With this evidence I have already dealt, and I agree with Polites that in it there survives a genuine record of the human origin of the Callicantzari. But of course on the further question, whether the particular men thus elevated to the dignity of demons were the mummers of Christmastide, it has no immediate bearing.
As a second piece of corroboration, he adduces another derivation hardly more felicitous than those with which I have already dealt. The word on which he tries his hand this time is καμπουχέροι or κατσιμπουχέροι--the name of the mummers in Crete and of the Callicantzari in Achaia. Here again, with a certain perversity, he selects the worse form of the two, καμπουχέροι, which is evidently a syncopated form of the other, and proceeds to derive it from the Spanish _gambujo_, ‘a mask,’ leaving the subsequent development of κατσιμπουχέροι totally inexplicable. For my own part I consider it far more probable that the word κατσιμπουχέροι is a humorously compounded name, of which the second half is the word μπουχαρί[607] (an Arabic word which has passed, probably through Turkish, into Greek) meaning ‘chimney,’ and that the whole by-name has reference simply to the common belief that Callicantzari try to extinguish the fire on the hearth and thus to gain access to the house by the chimney. As to the meaning of κατσι-, the first half of the compound, I can only hazard the conjecture that it is connected with the verb κατσιάζω, which ordinarily means to blight, to wither, to dry up, and so forth, though its passive participle, κατσιασμένος, is said by Skarlatos[608] to be applied to clothes which are ‘difficult to wash.’ If then the compound κατσιμπουχέροι is a descriptive title of the Callicantzari, meaning those who render the chimney difficult to wash, the coarse and eminently rustic humour of the allusion to their habits needs no further explanation; and it is the mummers of Crete who owe their name to the Callicantzari, not _vice versa_.