MISCELLANEA
Voltaire was surprised that in the enlightened eighteenth century there
should still be people found who believed in the reality of vampires,
and that the doctors of the Sorbonne should give their _imprimatur_ to
a dissertation on these unpleasant creatures. Yet from 1730 to 1735 the
subject of vampirism formed a principal topic of conversation, and may be
said to have been a mania all over the world, with Europe as a particular
centre. Pamphlets on the subject streamed from the press, the newspapers
vied with one another in recording fresh achievements of the spectres,
and though the philosophers scoffed at and ridiculed the belief, yet
sovereigns sent officers and commissioners to report upon their misdeeds.
The favourite scenes of their exploits were Hungary, Poland, Silesia,
Bohemia, and Moravia, and in those countries a vampire haunted and
tormented almost every village.
In some parts of Scandinavia a singular method was adopted for getting
rid of vampires, viz. by instituting judicial proceedings against them.
Inhabitants were regularly summoned to attend the inquest; a tribunal was
constituted; charges were preferred with the usual legal formalities,
accusing them of molesting the houses and introducing death among the
inhabitants; and at the end of the proceedings judgment was proclaimed.
The priest then entered with holy water, Mass was celebrated, and it was
held that complete conquest had been gained over the goblins.
Sir Walter Scott, in his translation of _Eyrbyggia Saga_, relates a
traditional story of several vampires who committed dreadful ravages in
Iceland in the year 1000, so that in a household of thirty servants no
less than eighteen died.
Saxo Grammaticus, the earliest chronicler and writer upon Danish history
and folk-lore, in his _Danish History_ (book i.), dealing with the
origin of the Danes, relates the following story:—
One Mith-othin, who was famous for his juggling tricks, was quickened,
as though by an inspiration from on High, to seize the opportunity
of feigning to be a god; and, wrapping the minds of the barbarians
in fresh darkness, he led them by the renown of his jugglings to pay
holy observance to his name. He said that the wrath of the gods could
never be appeased nor the outrage to their deity expiated by mixed and
indiscriminate sacrifices, and, therefore, forbade that prayers for
this end should be put up without distinction, appointing to each of
those above his especial drink-offering. But when Odin was returning, he
cast away all help of jugglings, went to Finland to hide himself, and
was there attacked and slain by the inhabitants. Even in his death his
abominations were made manifest, for those who came nigh his barrow were
cut off by a kind of sudden death; and, after his end, he spread such
pestilence that he seemed almost to leave a filthier record in his death
than in his life; it was as though he would extort from the guilty a
punishment for his slaughter. The inhabitants being in this trouble, took
the body out of the mound, beheaded it, and impaled it through the breast
with a sharp stake, and herein that people found relief.
In book ii. we have the story of Aswid and Asmund. Aswid died and was
buried with horse and dog. Asmund died and was buried with his friend,
food being put in for him to eat. Later on the grave opened, when Asmund
appeared and said: “By some strange enterprise of the power of hell the
spirit of Aswid was sent up from the nether world, and with cruel tooth
eats the fleet-footed (horse) and has given his dog to his abominable
jaws. Not sated with devouring the horse or hound, he soon turned his
swift nails upon me, tearing my cheek and taking off my ear. Hence the
hideous sight of my slashed countenance, the blood spurts in the ugly
wound. Yet the bringer of horrors did it not unscathed; for soon I cut
off his head with my steel, and impaled his guilty carcase with a stake.”
In Malaysia the vampires are mostly females, and are credited with a
great fondness for fish. They are known as Langsuirs, and Skeat, in
_Malay Magic_, gives the following charm for “laying” a Langsuir:—
O ye mosquito-fry at the river’s mouth,
When yet a great way off ye are sharp of eye;
When near, ye are hard of heart.
When the rock in the ground opens of itself,
Then (and then only) be emboldened the hearts of my foes and opponents!
When the corpse in the ground opens of itself,
Then (and then only) be emboldened the hearts of my foes and opponents!
May your heart be softened when you behold me,
By grace of this prayer that I use, called Silam Bayn.
Abercromby, in his work on the Finns, says that the Ceremis imagine
that the spirits that cause illness, especially fever and ague, are
continually recruited on the death of old maids, murderers, and those
that die a violent death. Whenever anyone becomes dangerously ill, the
Lapps feel sure that one of his deceased relatives wants his company in
the region of the dead, either from affection or to punish him for some
trespass. The Truks of Altai have a similar belief. The soul after death
willingly lingers for some time in the house and leaves it unwillingly,
and often takes with it some other members of the family or some of the
cattle.
Codrington, in his descriptive work on the Melanesians, says that there
is a belief in Banks Islands in the existence of a power like that of
vampires. A man or a woman would obtain this power out of a morbid desire
for communion with some ghost, and in order to gain it would steal and
eat a morsel of a corpse. The ghost of the dead man would then join in a
close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by
afflicting anyone against whom his ghostly power might be directed. The
man so afflicted would feel that something was influencing his life, and
would come to dread some particular person among his neighbours, who was,
therefore, suspected of being a _talamur_. This name was also given to
one whose soul was supposed to go out and eat the soul or lingering life
of a freshly dead corpse. There was a woman, some years ago, of whom the
story is told that she made no secret of doing this, and that once on the
death of a neighbour she gave notice that she should go in the night and
eat the corpse. The friends of the deceased therefore kept watch in the
house where the corpse lay, and at dead of night heard a scratching at
the door, followed by a rustling noise close by the corpse. One of them
threw a stone and seemed to hit the unknown thing; and in the morning the
_talamur_ was found with a bruise on her arm, which she confessed was
caused by a stone thrown at her while she was eating the corpse.
Baron von Haxthausen, in his work on Transcaucasia, tells us that there
once dwelt in a cavern in Armenia a vampire called Dakhanavar, who could
not endure anyone to penetrate into the mountains of Ulmish Altotem or
count their valleys. Everyone who attempted this had in the night his
blood sucked by the monster from the soles of his feet until he died.
The vampire was, however, at last outwitted by two cunning fellows.
They began to count the valleys, and when night came on they lay down
to sleep—taking care to place themselves with the feet of the one under
the head of the other. In the night the monster came, felt as usual, and
found a head; then he felt at the other end and found a head there also.
“Well,” cried he, “I have gone through the whole 366 valleys of these
mountains, and have sucked the blood of people without end, but never yet
did I come across anyone with two heads and no feet!” So saying, he ran
away and was never more seen in that country, but ever after the people
knew that the mountain has 366 valleys.
Even America is not free from the belief in the vampire. In one of
the issues of the _Norwich_ (U.S.A.) _Courier_ for 1854, there is the
account of an incident that occurred at Jewett, a city in that vicinity.
About eight years previously, Horace Ray of Griswold had died of
consumption. Afterwards, two of his children—grown-up sons—died of the
same disease, the last one dying about 1852. Not long before the date of
the newspaper the same fatal disease had seized another son, whereupon
it was determined to exhume the bodies of the two brothers and burn
them, because the dead were supposed to feed upon the living; and so
long as the dead body in the grave remained undecomposed, either wholly
or in part, the surviving members of the family must continue to furnish
substance on which the dead body could feed. Acting under the influence
of this strange superstition, the family and friends of the deceased
proceeded to the burial-ground on June 8th, 1854, dug up the bodies of
the deceased brothers, and burned them on the spot.
Dr Dyer, an eminent physician of Chicago, also reported in 1875 a case
occurring within his own personal knowledge, where the body of a woman
who had died of consumption was taken from her grave and her lungs
burned, under the belief that she was drawing after her into the grave
some of her surviving relatives. In 1874, according to the _Providence
Journal_, in the village of Placedale, Rhode Island, Mr William Rose dug
up the body of his own daughter and burned her heart, under the belief
that she was wasting away the lives of other members of the family.
The vampire is not an unknown spectre in China, where the measures
adopted for the riddance of the pest are generally the burning of the
mortal remains of the corpse, or removing to a distance the lid of the
coffin after the vampire has started on his nocturnal rounds. It is
held that the air thus entering freely into the coffin will cause the
contents to decay. Another Chinese cure for vampires is to watch any
suspected coffin until the corpse has quitted it, and then strew rice,
red peas, and bits of iron around it. The corpse, on returning, will find
it impossible to pass over these things, and will thus fall an easy prey
to his captors.
The following story of a Chinese vampire is related by Dr J. J. M. de
Groot in his _Religious System of China_ (vol. v. p. 747):—
“Liu N. N., a literary graduate of the lowest degree in Wukiang (in
Kiangsu), was in charge of some pupils belonging to the Tsaing family
in the Yuen-hwo district. In the season of Pure Brightness he returned
home, some holidays being granted him to sweep his ancestral tombs. This
duty performed, he returned to his post, and said to his wife: ‘To-morrow
I must go; cook some food for me at an early hour.’ The woman said she
would do so, and rose for the purpose at cockcrow. Their village lay on
the hill behind their dwelling, facing a brook. The wife washed some rice
at that brook, picked some vegetables in the garden, and had everything
ready, but when it was light her husband did not rise. She went into his
room to wake him up, but however often she called he gave no answer. So
she opened the curtains and found him lying across the bed, headless, and
not a trace of blood to be seen.
“Terror-stricken, she called the neighbours. All of them suspected her of
adultery with a lover, and murder, and they warned the magistrate. This
grandee came and held a preliminary inquest; he ordered the corpse to be
coffined, had the woman put in fetters, and examined her; so he put her
in gaol, and many months passed away without sentence being pronounced.
Then a neighbour, coming uphill for some fuel, saw a neglected grave with
a coffin lid bare; it was quite a sound coffin, strong and solid, and
yet the lid was raised a little; so he naturally suspected that it had
been opened by thieves. He summoned the people; they lifted the lid off
and saw a corpse with features like a living person and a body covered
with white hair. Between its arms it held the head of a man, which they
recognised as that of Liu, the graduate. They reported the case to the
magistrate; the coroners ordered the head to be taken away, but it was so
firmly grasped in the arms of the corpse that the combined efforts of a
number of men proved insufficient to draw it out. So the magistrate told
them to chop off the arms of the _kiangshi_ (corpse-spectre). Fresh blood
gushed out of the wounds, but in Liu’s head there was not a drop left, it
having been sucked dry by the monster. By magisterial order the corpse
was burned, and the case ended with the release of the woman from gaol.”