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IT was generally supposed that all suicides might after death become vampires; and this was easily extended to those who met with any violent or sudden death. Mr. Lawson tells us that there persists a tradition in Maina, where the Vendetta is still maintained, that a man whose murder has not been avenged is liable to become a vrykolakas.[1] The Mainotes who derive their name from the place Maina, near Cape Taenaron (Matapan), even yet preserve many of the customs and characteristics of their ancestors, and historically are known to be of a more pure Greek descent than the inhabitants of any other district. Indeed, the peninsula which thrusts into the sea the headland of Taenaron has both social and religious customs of its own. The population is distributed into small villages, while here and there a white fortress will denote the residence of a chief. A traveller writing in 1858, remarks: "The Maina country is wild and beautiful, singularly well cultivated, considering the difficulties to be surmounted, and producing crops that put to shade the rich plains of Argos and Arcadia; whilst the interesting mountain people exercise the highland virtues of hospitality and independance to an extent unknown in the low countries." It has been said that the last traveller who saw Maina while retaining some remains of its primitive cateran glories was Lord Carnarvon, who in 1839 explored the Morea and has left us an extraordinarily interesting account of his journey. The population of this district continued the worship of the Pagan deities for full five hundred years after the rest of the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity, and they were not finally converted until the reign of the vigorous Emperor Basil I, 867-886. Gibbon described them as "a domestic and perhaps original race, who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the much-injured Helotes."[2] And even yet {p. 141} they boast of their descent from the ancient Spartans, whilst the histories of Leonidas and Lycurgus, who figure partly as saints and partly as gallant brigands, are still retold round the winter fireside. The whole district, including Kaka Voulia (the Land of Evil Counsel), is formed by the hummocks and escarpments of Mount Taygetos, and, with the exception of a long strip of coast line, which the Venetians called Bassa Maina, it is steep and hilly and for the most part barren. The conquest of the Morea was completed by Mahomet II in 1456-1460, but Maina could never be thoroughly subdued, and its inhabitants remained as entirely independent as were the Highlanders before Culloden. As has been remarked, ancient traditions still persevere, and among these customs not the least obstinate is the Vendetta. A man who has been murdered is unable to rest in his grave until he has been avenged. Accordingly he issues forth as a vampire, thirsting for the blood of his enemy. In order to bring about his physical dissolution and to secure his repose it is necessary for the next of kin to slay the murderer, or at least some near relative of the murderer. Unless this is done the man upon whom the duty of avenging blood devolves is banned by the curse of the dead, and if so be that he is himself cut off before he can satify the desires of the deceased, the curse will yet cling to him even in death, and he too must become a vampire. It should be remarked that this view of blood-guilt is found in the Attic dramatists, and is in fact the mainspring of the whole story of Orestes. In the tragedy of this name by Euripides, Tyndareus, the father of Clytemnestra, remonstrates very reasonably, and indeed unanswerably with Orestes. But the hero replies and argues that if he has not avenged his father Had not his hate's Erinyes haunted me?[3] Again in the Choephoroe of Aeschylus Orestes pursues the same idea saying that unless he avenges his father, a stern duty which has devolved upon him, lie will be punished in turn by the avengers of his father's wrongs. It may be remarked that in Maina to-day no recourse must be had to law for such cases, nor must the injured person satisfy himself by calling upon the aid of the police. To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven. Even if it be a life's whole work a man is expected, either secretly {p. 142} or by an open attack, to slay the murderer of his relative, and he is highly applauded when he has accomplished this pious deed. It must be appreciated that he is regarded as herein directed and inspired by the dead man who returns from his grave as a vampire craving for blood. Even if no other motive or incentive prevailed, in spite of natural shrinking and may be even cowardice, a man would undoubtedly prefer to shed blood for blood, especially when this might be done in secrecy or by craft, rather than run the terrible risk of himself becoming a vampire, finding no rest in the grave, but returning to haunt and persecute even those who were most dear to him, an unclean thing accursed. of God, a foul goblin of dread most hateful to man. So great is the horror which the act of suicide, although considered admirable in the decadence of Greece and Rome, inspires in every man of sane mind that it, is not at all surprising it should be deemed that the unfortunate wretches who have destroyed themselves become vampires after death. According to the Zoroastrian creed, suicide is a most fearful crime, and is classed among the marg-arzan, the abominable offences. Aristotle in his Ethics, V, xv, terms suicide a sin against the State, and as Cicero tells us Pythagoras forbade men to depart from their guard or sentry-go in life without an order from their commanding-officer, who is God. "Uetatque Pythagoras iniussu imperatoris, id est, dei, de praesidio et statione uitae decedere." (De Senectute, XX, 73). The highest pagan argument against suicide will be found in Plato's Phaedo (61E-62E), but it is drowned in the mighty voice of the great Saint of Hippo, which peals in no unwavering tones down the centuries: "For if it be not lawful for a private man to kill any man, however guilty, unless the law have granted a special allowance for it, theft surely whosoever kills himself is guilty of homicide: and so much the more guilty doth that killing of himself make himself, by how much the more guiltless he was in that cause for which he killed himself. For if the act of Judas be worthily detested, and yet the Truth saith, that by hanging of himself, he did rather augment than expiate the guilt of his wicked treachery, because his despair of God's mercy in his damnable repentance, left no place in his soul for saving repentance; how much more ought he to {p. 143} forbear from being cause of his own death, that hath no guilt in him worthy of such a punishment as death; for Judas in hanging himself, hanged but a wicked man and died guilty, not only of Christ's death, but of his own also; adding the wickedness of being his own death, to that other wickedness of his, for which he died." (De Ciuitate Dei, I, xvii.) It may be well very briefly to present the teaching of the Church concerning positive and direct suicide. If done without God's permission this always constitutes a grave injustice towards Him. To destroy a thing is in effect to dispose of it as an absolute master and to act with regard to it as one who has full and independent dominion over it. But God has reserved to Himself dominion over life. Man cannot create life, and he does not possess this full and absolute right over his own life. Consequently suicide must be reckoned as an attempt against the dominion and right of ownership of the Author of life. To this injustice is super-added a serious offence against the charity owed by man to himself, since by self-murder he deprives himself of the greatest good in his possession. Moreover this sin may be aggravated by other circumstances, such as an offence against conjugal, paternal, or filial duty; an offence against justice or charity; if by taking his own life a man eludes existing obligations of justice or acts of charity which he could and should perform. That suicide is unlawful is the general teaching of Holy Scripture which condemns the act as a most terrible crime, and to arouse the horror of all against Holy Church denies the suicide the rites of Christian burial. Again, suicide is directly opposed to the most natural and powerful tendency of all created things, and especially of intelligent man, the preservation of life. Indeed very large numbers of physicians, moralists, and jurists lay it down as a general rule that suicide is always due to dementia, so great is the horror which this atrocious deed inspires in every man of sane mind. As a generalization this may be admitted to be true, for it is impossible to think that those who have the calm and right use of their reason should deliberately destroy themselves, and the conditions which are necessary to incur the full culpability of an act can only in exceptional instances be conceived of as being present in the case of a suicide. Sabetti inquires: "Quaenam ad peccatum mortale {p. 144} requirantur?" And his answer is given as follows: "Tria necessario requiruntur, scilicet materia grauis uel in se, uel ob circumstantias; aduertentia plena ad malitiam grauem actus; consensus plenus uoluntatis in præuaricationem. Itaque, Requiritur 1°. materia grauis, secus non posset haberi lex obligans sub graui. Requiritur 2°. plena aduertentia mentis, secus non habebitur plena deliberatio. Requiritur 3°. plenus consensus uoluntatis, quia nisi peccator cum pleno consensu plenaque deliberatione obiectum peccati Deo præferat, et sic finem suum ultimum in creatura constituat, nequit dici a Deo totaliter recedere. Insuper a bonitate diuina prorsus alienum est, hominem æternæ damnationi addicere siue propter transgressionem leuem siue propter actum non perfecte liberum et uoluntarium.--Cf. S. Alphons, nn. 5, 6 et 53."[5] The Christian Middle Ages were free from the terrible tendency of suicide, but with the loss of Faith it re-appeared, and Masaryk in his study Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation (Vienna, 1881), considered it to be the special evil of these later days. Sad to relate self-destruction has fearfully increased since the Great War, but it may perhaps be mitigatingly advanced that the reason of the world tottered almost to eternal delirium during the chaos and welter of blood, and the balance is not recovered yet. It is true that among certain nations there appears to be an indifference to human life, nay, a contempt of death itself, which often takes the most extravagant and the most outrageous forms. The Goths, the heathen Vandals, and Norse savages not only approved but sought suicide and violent death. It is, of course, only among the utterly benighted that it is possible for such abominable ideas to obtain. For example, there existed among a tribe of robbers in Southern India customs of the utmost ferocity. Such practices as the following certainly prevailed during the eighteenth century, but they have no doubt, long since been happily suppressed. If two persons had quarrelled, sometimes for the most trifling reasons, a man would kill himself merely in order to be revenged on his adversary. He believed that {p. 145} his ghost would be able to return and harry the surviver {sic}, or at least that some dire retribution must fall on the head of his enemy who drove him to such extreme measures.[6] Again, custom required that if a man committed suicide, letting it be known that it was on this account, the person with whom he had had the difference that led to this abominable act must immediately follow his example.[7] Lord Avebury's statement:[8] "It is said that in China, if a rich man is condemned to death, he can sometimes purchase a willing substitute at a very small expense," has been traversed and Professor Parker would not commit himself any further than by saying: "It is popularly stated that substitutes can be bought for Taels fifty, and most certainly this statement is more than true, so far as the price of human life is concerned; but it is quite another question whether the gaolers and judges can always be bribed."[9] Dr. W. T. A. Barber, who had been a missionary in China, relates that he had known very large numbers of persons who committed suicide out of spite against some one else, "the idea being, first, the trouble given by minions of the law to the survivor; second that the dead would gain a vantage ground by becoming a ghost, and thus able to plague his enemy in the flesh."[10] It is not surprising to learn that in ancient times, before the advent of Christianity, among such savage people as the Celts and the Thracians suicide was not only common but treated with the most appalling lightness and even flippancy. Thus Athenæus, speaking of the banquets of the Thracians, quotes from Seleueus as follows: "And Seleueus says, 'that some of the Thracians at their drinking parties play the game of hanging; and fix a round noose to some high place, exactly beneath which they place a stone which is easily turned round when any one stands upon it; and then they cast lots, and he who draws the lot, holding a sickle in his hand, stands upon the stone, and puts his neck into the halter; and then another person comes and raises the stone, and the man who is suspended, when the stone moves from under him, if he is not quick enough in cutting the rope with his sickle, is killed and the rest laugh, thinking his death good sport.'"[11] Upon the authority of the famous Stoic philosopher, Posidonius, Athenæus tells us of similar brutalities which took place among the Celts. He writes: "But Posidonius,[12] in the {p. 146} third, and also in the twentieth book of his Histories, says 'The Celtæ sometimes have single combats at their entertainments. For being collected in arms, they go through the exercise, and make feints at, and sometimes they even go so far as to wound one another. And being irritated by this, if the bystanders do not stop them, they will proceed even to kill one another. But in olden times,' he continues, 'there was a custom that a hind quarter of pork was put on the table, and the bravest man took it; and if any one else laid claim to it, then the two rose up to fight, till one of them was slain. And other men in the theatre having received some silver or gold money, and some even for a number of earthen vessels full of wine, having taken pledges that the gifts promised shall really be given, and having distributed them among their nearest connexions, have laid themselves down on doors with their faces upwards, and then allowed some bystander to cut their throats with a sword.' "And Euphorion the Chalcidian, in his Historical Memorials, writes as follows: 'But among the Romans it is common for five minæ[13] to be offered to any one who chooses to take it, to allow his head to be cut off with an axe, so that his heirs might receive the reward: and very often many have returned their names as willingly, so that there has been a regular contest between them as to who had the best right to be beaten to death.'"[14] These atrocious examples serve to show us something of the evil and the corruption of which Christianity cleansed the pagan world, although it is to be feared that the battle is not yet won, since it is a notorious and deplorable fact that at the hour of such a crisis as the Great War the respect due to human life became cheapened in men's eyes, with the consequence that murder and deeds of violence once more broke out in every direction showing that savage instincts were dominated indeed, but in many cases not wholly eradicated. It does not require a keen perception to see the direct agency of the devil here, and these atrocities which bred so callous and cruel a spirit are by no means altogether unconnected with the recrudescence of necromancy and black magic which foul arts once more grew green and were almost openly pursued on every side. The belief that a man has not complete dominion over his own life and that it is unlawful for him to take it is certainly a {p.147} feeling naturally implanted in the human breast, and it was only when nations were entirely barbarian or had became decadent and corrupt that the notion of suicide was held up as noble and even heroic. Whatever certain among the later Greeks may have practised and taught, in earlier days, as we have seen, the act of suicide was regarded as a dark and presumptuous deed. They truly felt that there was in it something of {Greek a?sébeia},[15] something of that {Greek ú!bris} which so surely stirred the wrath of heaven and inevitably called down righteous vengeance. Indeed the evil and malice of suicide did not end with death but continued beyond the grave. The umbra of a man who had slain himself was dreaded and feared. So in ancient Athens it was the custom to cut off the hand of a suicide and to cremate it or at least to bury it far from his body, the object of such mutilation being to prevent his ghost from attacking the living.[16] Similar beliefs exist among native African tribes. Thus the Wajagga of East Africa dread the spectres of suicides. When a man has hanged himself a certain complicated ceremonial becomes imperative. They take the rope from his neck and suspend a goat in the noose, after which the animal is swiftly slain. The idea seems that hereby the phantom will be in some way appeased, and he will not be so likely to tempt human beings to follow his evil example.[17] The Baganda of Central Africa have an even greater horror of the ghosts of suicides, and the most elaborate precautions are invariably taken to protect themselves against these dangerous visitors. The body of a man who has destroyed himself is removed as far from all human habitation as possible, to waste land or to a cross-road, and there is utterly consumed with fire. Next the wood of the house in which the horrid deed has been done is burned to ashes and scattered to the winds; whilst if the man has hanged himself upon a tree this is hewn to the ground and committed to the flames, trunk, roots, branches and all. Even this is hardly deemed to be sufficient. Curiously enough there is a lurking idea that the ghost of a suicide may survive after the cremation of the body, so horrible is this crime felt to be and so irradicated the taint that this terrible deed establishes. This is extremely significant since the cases in which cremation, a complete purgation and destruction by fire, cannot obliterate guilt and {p. 148} destroy the evil infection are indeed exceptional, and it might be no easy task to find a parallel instance. However, the Baganda when passing by the spot where the body of a suicide has been burned always take good care to pelt it with sticks and clods of earth to prevent the ghost from catching them. Although these places in particular are dangerous to the last degree, there are other graves that may be haunted by phantoms, which as they have no bodies are not strictly vampires, but which certainly belong to the vampire family. Such are those remote places where persons who have been accused of black magic and who failed to satisfy the ritual ordeals have been burned to death, as also those spots where persons of evil and atrocious life have been cremated or interred.[18] The Maraves, a tribe of South Africa, who also burned witches alive, whenever they had occasion to pass the place of doom, pelted it with stones, and it is said that in some instances of spots considered particularly ill-omened a regular cairn or tumulus of loose stones has arisen." In Madagascar too, certain solitary graves bear an exceedingly ill-repute, so that the chance traveller with averted face throws stones at them or large lumps of earth in order to prevent the ghost following in his tracks and seizing on him.[20] It must be remarked, and this is very important, that the sticks and stones, or heavy clods of earth with which a grave is pelted are not meant merely as a symbolical insult and expression of righteous indignation, but are actually missiles which will strike and hurt the being who haunts the spot of interment. So since the haunter can be struck and injured by these very material objects,--the heavier they are the better,--he must himself possess a certain concrete substantiality, and inasmuch as objects make an impression upon him he must exist under some kind of physical condition. Doubtless the exact idea is not very clearly defined in the minds of those who are so careful to pelt the grave, yet if stones will not merely ward off an attack from the haunter, but when in the course of time they become piled up into a small cairn they serve to keep the deceased in his place, that is to say in the grave, there must be some sort of material entity which can be so materially frustrated and obstructed. Here then we have the essential and complete vampire. It is recorded by a traveller about the middle of the last {p. 149} century that when he was journeying in company with two Mussulmans from Sidon to Tyre, as he drew near the latter city he noticed a great pile of stones by the wayside, whereupon his companions began to pick up all the loose pebbles that came to hand and discharged them violently at the heap at the same time uttering the most fearful imprecations. When they had passed and were at some little distance they explained that a notorious brigand, whose hands were stained with the hideous cruelties and innocent blood, had been slain there, and buried on the spot half a century before. The stones they threw and their curses were directed against this villain. It might be thought in this case that the missiles were a mark of loathing and contempt, but it seems far more probable that they were intended to serve a very utilitarian purpose, that is actually to keep off the wretch who would still be haunting the pit into which his body had been cast fifty years since.[21] It even appears that in many parts of Syria when brigands are killed by the highway, or vagrom murderers are dispatched in the open country side beyond the walls of a city the body is left to rot unburied where it lies, and after a while it is merely covered over with a heap of stones; moreover everyone who passes by is bound to quoit a stone or stick to add to the pile under the penalty of incurring some dreadful misfortune. It is supposed that heaven will horribly curse the person who fails to throw his flinty tribute as he goes.[22] It is not only among rude African tribes and in the East that the graves of persons who have led cruel and anti-social lives, particularly the spots where suicides have been buried, are thus places of execration and fear, but in Pomerania and in West Prussia, not to instance many other districts, the spots where persons who have wrought their own destruction happen to be interred are regarded as unlucky in the highest degree, and there is no more malevolent and harmful spectre than the suicide's ghost. A man who has destroyed himself must not defile God's acre, in no wise may he be buried in the churchyard but at the place where the desperate deed was done, and everybody who passes by will cast a stone on the spot unless he wishes the ghost of the suicide to plague him nightly and to give him no rest until he is driven to the same dreadful fate. It is said that, as in Africa piles of sticks {p. 160} and stones accumulate to a great size, so similar cairns rise upon these haunted spots in the more remote districts along the cold shores washed by the Baltic Sea. It is not surprising to find that in a country such as Russia, which through the ages has so often tottered to madness and of late years fallen into stark lunacy, during the seventeenth century an epidemic of suicide raged. It persisted, indeed, at spasmodic intervals throughout the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries, but it was somewhat earlier than this that the troubles of that luckless nation blazed out in furious frenzy. As when the year 1000 approached a fearful apocalyptic mania inflamed many parts of Europe, and men imagining that the world was about to come to an end, that almost any hour, any moment the Angel's clarion would blare, heaven and earth shrivel like some parching scroll and the Judge be set on His awful throne, in their hundreds deserted cities and homes to wander abroad preaching fevered repentance and the most extravagent {sic} forms of penance, or else in frantic despair abandoned themselves to debauchery and violence, so in Russia some mad visionary who proclaimed that the crack of doom was appointed for the year 1666[23] set the whole country aflame with terror. In many parts, men ceased to labour in the fields, relinquished their businesses and all social intercourse, barricaded themselves in their houses behind closed windows and fast-barred doors, awaiting the end with the gloomiest forebodings. As might have been expected, great numbers completely lost their senses and scores of dangerous lunatics not only infested the highroad but even invaded villages and towns preaching that the only way to escape the wrath to come was to prevent the final day by self-destruction. They were, moreover, very willing and eager to help those who shrank from so severe a test, and before long red murder was rife in every direction. Their services, however, were not required as frequently as might have been supposed for the delirium spread with such alarming rapidity that not merely households but whole communities eagerly devoted themselves to death. If in some paroxysm of wild hysteria a man had declared his intention of becoming a martyr, for so these poor wretches were deemed, the pious duty devolved upon his friends and relations of seeing that he scrupulously fulfilled his vow. Should he {p. 151} wish to change his mind or in any way seek to escape his fate he was pursued and saved in spite of himself by being put to death in the most atrocious torments. A veritable reign of terror ensued, and northern Russia seemed well-nigh depopulated. It were superfluous to enter into the horrible details, but it may suffice to say that at first starvation was the usual method by which these maniacs committed suicide. In the forest of Vetlouga, one fanatic at huge expense actually built a tower without doors and windows, into the body of which persons were lowered through a trap in the roof. But this was too long a process; it gave space for reflection and with the pangs of hunger reason resumed her sway. Those within yelled to be released, but all in vain. To shouts and clamour succeeded groans and fainter lamentations, until as the days passed all was still. Another remedy was found and presently the method which was preferred and which was officially prescribed as safer and more pleasing to God was immolation by fire. Accordingly, the missionaries of this horrible impiety proclaimed safety through the flame; as the prophet Elias had ascended to heaven in a blazing chariot, so the deluded wretches were taught they would ascend to a glorious and delightful eternity from the midst of the conflagration. Hundreds and even thousands perished in huge holocausts. Whole areas were strictly enclosed, the candidates took their places therein and the compound having been previously drenched with pitch, bitumen, and inflammable oils torches were applied at many points. If any overcome by agony escaped with scorched and blackened limbs they were caught and hurled back into the heart of the pyre. These immolations generally took place during the dark winter season and from midnight until the faint streaks of dawn the red glow of these horrid furnaces could be seen in every direction. For hundreds of verstas the land became a veritable Tophet. As the morning broke, hordes of wolves attracted by the stench of roasting flesh assembled to pull trunks and limbs from the embers; a dark cloud of suffocating smoke, greasy with human fat that fouled both ground and houses, hung low in the sky, and ere many days were past the plague was stalking abroad with fatal voracity. It was not until the most vigorous measures had been taken that these terrible practices could be checked, and it seems that the {p. 152} venom of the madness persisted long and late, for as recently as 1860, fifteen persons in the district of Olonetz committed suicide by fire, whilst during the winter of 1896-1897, twenty-four religious fanatics buried themselves alive in a pit near Tiraspol.[24] The monk, Falaley, constantly preached that death was man's only means of salvation and that he must have done with this life of sin. One night under his influence, eighty-four persons congregated near the river Perevozinka and began to pray. Many of them were already half-crazed through excessive fasting, and they almost covered themselves with brambles and brushwood to which fire was to be set at a given signal. A woman, taking alarm at the thought of so horrible a death, escaped and informed the authorities. When the police arrived the fanatics shrieked that Antichrist was approaching, and setting fire to the pile most perished in the flames. A few who were rescued received sentences of imprisonment and deportation, but a fanatic called Souchkoff, managed to escape and continued to preach the gospel of death. Maddened by his doctrine in one locality alone, sixty families resolved to commit suicide at a certain moment, and a peasant, named Petroff, entering a neighbour's house cut down his wife and children with a hatchet. In a barn hard by, a dozen men with their wives had assembled and amid hymns of triumph they laid their heads upon an improvised block to be hacked off by Petroff. In another hut a woman and three children were dispatched at their own earnest request. At length when he was weary, Petroff himself kneeled down and was slain by Souchkoff. Between 1860 and 1870, a maniac named Chadkin, proclaimed that Antichrist was here, and all most follow him to the forests and there die of hunger. A large number assembled and his most devoted followers saw to it that nobody could escape. After a few days the sufferings of the crowds were fearful and the place rang with their screams and groans. Nevertheless Chadkin and his apostles did not waver. When some poor creature, frantic with agony, managed to break away and informed the police, the devotees at once began to kill all who had gathered together, and by the time the authorities had arrived in the utmost haste there were found but three survivors. Buddhist monks in China are often recorded to have {p. 158} sought their Nirvana through an act of self -immolation by fire, and it is said that every year among the lamaresais of Tien-tai, in the province of Tai-chow, some half-a-dozen bonzes thus devote themselves to death. These unfortunate persons believe that their voluntary destruction crowns the monastery with honours and blessing, they are aware that they will be worshipped after their suicide, and they suppose that they will become the divinities of the district and possess the power to protect the whole neighbourhood, to grant fair weather and lucky seasons, a bounteous harvest and all prosperity. Such public incinerations are conducted with great ceremony, and take place upon a major festival which is bound to attract crowds of pilgrims and reverent suppliants to the spot.[25] It is said that among the Eskimo of Bering Strait a sorcerer has been known to burn himself alive, fully believing that thus he will return to life as a shaman with much greater powers and a far fuller knowledge of magic than he had hitherto enjoyed.[26] It may be remembered that even such low motives as vanity and a craving for mere notoriety have proved an incentive sufficiently powerful to induce men to seek a dramatic, if painful death by fire. Thus the charlatan Peregrinus after a career of the most braggart ostentation courted undying fame by self-immolation upon a pyre at the Olympic festival, which extraordinary performance attracted throngs not only of sensible persons who despised and mocked him but of encomiasts and apologists who regarded him as at the least a hero, if not something nearly approaching to deity.[27] It can hardly be argued that higher motives inspired Empedocles if the account preserved by Diogenes Laertius[28] to which Horace[29] makes reference be true, namely that hoping by a sudden disappearance he might be accounted a god, the philosopher flung himself into the crater of Mount Aetna, but that the suicide was revealed owing to the fact that the volcano almost immediately after threw up one of his sandals, and thus betrayed the manner of his death. Josephus states that the Jews used not to bury the bodies of those who had destroyed themselves until after sunset. In Scotland it is still thought that the body of a suicide will not fall to dust until the time when he should have died in the order of nature,[30] and it is very generally held that a such {p. 154} a one must be buried with the grave facing north and south. This belief also existed in England and there are graves facing north and south to be seen at Cowden (Kent) and Bergholt (Suffolk), which are locally said to be those of persons who have destroyed themselves, for it is almost universally declared that Christian burial should be with the head in west, looking eastward[31]. As is well-known, in England until the time of George IV, it was the general practice to bury suicides at the cross-roads, where a stake was driven through the body. In the year 1823, it was enacted that the body of a suicide should be buried privately between the hours of nine o'clock and twelve at night with no religious ceremony. In 1882, this law was altered, and the body may now be committed to the earth at any time and with such rites or prayers those in charge of the funeral think fit or may be able to procure. In certain country places it is still supposed that the spirit of the last person buried in a graveyard has to keep watch lest any suicide should be interred there. One explanation of the reason why persons who had taken their own lives should be buried at the cross-roads was that the ghosts of murdered persons were supposed to walk until the bodies had been recovered and committed to the churchyard with Christian rites, and since this was impossible in the case of suicides, a stake was driven through them when deposited at the cross-roads in order to keep the ghost from wandering abroad.[32] It is certain that the idea here is the same as that of driving a stake through the vampire, for sometimes this precaution was taken in the case of persons who might perchance become vampires, an operation performed not as an indignity but as a preventitive. Burchard of Worms tells us: "Cum aliquis, femina parere debit, et non potest, in ipso dolore si mortem obierit, in ipso sepulchro matrem cum infante palo in terram transfigunt." And again: "Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres instinctu diaboli facere solent, cum aliquis infans sine baptismo mortuus fuerit, tollunt cadauer paruuli, et ponunt in aliquo secreto loco, et palo corpusculum transfigunt, dicentes, si sic non fecissent, quod infantulus surgeret et multos laedere posset." The reason for the selected spot of the suicide's grave being a cross-road is further explained by the belief that when the ghost or the body issues from the grave and finds that there {p. 155} are four paths stretching in as many directions he will be puzzled to know which way to take and will stand debating until dawn compels him to return to the earth, but woe betide the unhappy being who happens to pass by when he is lingering there perplexed and confused. Accordingly after sunset, every sensible person will avoid all crossroads since there are no localities more certainly and more fearfully haunted and disturbed. It will readily be remembered that the Romans were far more precise than we used to be in their definition of cross-roads and employed no less than three terms, biuium when the road branched into two, triuium when the road forked into three, and quadriuium when the intersection of the ways gave four arms. The prophet Ezechiel tells us that Esarhaddon took his stand in biuio when he wished to divine: "Stetit enim rex Babylonis in biuio, in capite duarum uiarum, diuinationem quaerens, commiscens sagittas: interrogauit idola, exta consuluit." (xxi, 21.) "For the king of Babylon stood in the highway, at the head of two ways, seeking divination, shuffling arrows: he enquired of the idols, and consulted entrails." Triuia is the common name given to Diana, when as Hecate she was invoked at the crossways. Chariclides Comicus in Meineke's Comicorum Fragmenta, IV, p. 556, has {Greek triodîtas}, and invokes: {Greek E!káth triodîti, trímorfe, tripróswpe}. Varro, De Lingua Latina, VII, 16, writes "Titanis Triuia, Diana est, ab eo dicta Triuia, quod in triuio ponitur fere in oppodis Graecis, uel quod luna dicitur esse, quae in caelo tribus uiis mouetur in altitudinem et latitudinem et longitudinem." Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, ix, notes: "Dianae uero ut Triuiae uiarum omnium iidem tribuunt potestatem." In Wales it was said that witches slept by day under any boulder that might be at a cross-road, and when dusk had fallen they crept forth to steal little children and feast upon their flesh. The gallows was often erected at the cross-roads, and here the criminal hung in chains, and nourished by his rotting flesh the mandrake grew. Many are the superstitions which cluster around the mandrake or mandragora--"the semi-human" as Columella (De re rustica, x, 19) calls it. It was the plant of fertility, the plant of magical virtue and occult power. In Germany it bears the name of the Little Gallows Man, and it was believed that when a murderer or {p. 156} thief was hanged and his semen or urine fell to the ground there grew up the mandrake. In England the same superstition prevailed, and in his pasquil A Character of an Ugly Woman or a Hue and Cry after Beauty, 1678, the Duke of Buckingham wrote: "Imprimis, as to her Descent, some Heralds derive her Pedigree from that of the Scotch Barnacles, and say, that she dropt from some teeming Gallows, or sprung up like Mandrakes from the S--- of some gibbitid Raggamuffian." No one must dare uproot the mandrake for it moans and shrieks so fearfully that the digger will die with the yells ringing in his ears. A dog is taken and round his tail is tied a string, one end of which is attached to the plant. A man whose ears are fast stopped with wax and wool, tempts the dog away with some dainty. As the animal tugs at the cord the mandrake will be pulled from the ground, but the poor beast will fall dead at the horrid scream it gives. But there has been secured a talisman, nay, more a familiar. Even in the mythology of Ceylon the cross-roads play an ominous part. Thus in the Yakkun Nattanawa, which is defined by its translator, John Callaway, as "a Cingalese poem descriptive of the Ceylon system of demonology," it is said of the Black She-Devil: "Thou female Devil, who acceptest the offerings at the place where three ways meet, thou causest the people to be sick by looking upon them at the place where four ways join together." The devil Maha-Sohon watches "to drink the blood of the elephant in the place where the two and three roads meet together." Maha-Sohon is the devil of the tombs, "therefore go not in the roads by night: if you do so you must not expect to escape with your life." Another devil, Oddy, stands where three ways meet, watching, and hot for mischief. Again the Devil of the Victim "watches and looks upon the people, and causes them to be sick at the place where three roads meet, and where four ways meet." Ralstan[33] says that it is a common Russian belief that at cross-roads, or in the neighbourhood of cemeteries, an animated corpse often lurks watching for some unwary traveller whom it may be able to strangle and devour, eagerly quaffing the warm blood from his veins. In Cornwall to-day cross-roads are most carefully avoided after night-fall,[34] but this may be because it is commonly accepted that at the cross-roads {p. 157} witches from all the world over assemble for their sabbat. It seems more likely that these particular spots are avoided because of the vampires, for Henry Boguet tells us: "Les Sorciers tienne~t leurs sabbats indiffereme~t en tons lieux."[35] Bernhard Ragner says that if you go to a cross-road between eleven o'clock and midnight on Christmas eve and listen, you will hear what most concerns you for the coming year.[38] It may be pointed out that this is the one night throughout the year when strange wonders happen. It is then that the thorn that sprang at Glastonbury from the Sacred Crown which the holy old man, S. Joseph of Arimathea, brought with him from Palestine, when Avalon was still an island, bourgeons into fragrant blossoms. The Cornish miners seem to hear the sound of singing choirs that arise from submerged churches by the shore, and others said that bells, beneath the ground where villages had been, upon that eve yearly ring a glad peal. At midnight the oxen, the cattle, and all the beasts kneel and adore, as they adored in the stable-cave at Bethlehem. No evil thing hath power, and as the Officer in Hamlet[37] tells us: Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes In certain districts of East Prussia on Christmas Eve candles are kept burning all night in the houses and no window is shuttered. It is supposed that the spirits of the dead will return in friendly-wise and the opportunity is given to them to warm themselves, so that on future occasions when they haunt the villages with more malicious intent they may remember those who are kind to them Christmas after Christmas and spare those houses from molestation and injury.[38] Not only are those who die excommunicate, that is to say solemnly and officially cursed by the Church, liable to become vampires, but more, those who die under any kind of such ban, especially if it be the malison of a parent, or if it be a man who has perjured himself in a grave matter and called down upon his own head damnation and all manner of evil should {p. 158} what he asseverate be untrue. The belief in the fearful power of a curse, especially the curse of a father or a mother, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully adjured, works out its vengeance through the whole stock of kith and kin, involving in misfortunes and destruction, innocent and guilty alike, finds supreme illustration in the masterpieces of Greek tragedy. It is the mighty theme of the trilogy of the Oresteia, for from the very outset of the Agamemnon there is a brooding and oppressive sense of multitudinous crimes, of sins done long years ago which have swelled and accumulated their guilt like some black cloud of transgressions about to burst over the doomed race in a welter of tragedy and blood. The evil wrought by Thyestes, the crimes of his grandsire Tantalus, the atrocious banquet of Atreus, have yet to be expiated in misery, in anguish and affliction. When the weird Trojan woman approaches the threshold she scents the carnage of the shambles and horrors manifold, and as the pang of inspiration thrills her she shrieks aloud: "The Furies are in this house; blood-surfeited, but not assuaged, they hold perpetual revel here. It is the crime of Atreus and of Thyestes which they hunt, and woe will follow woe." {Greek th`n gàr stéghn th'nd? oú?pot? e?kleípei xoros Sophocles also no less fearfully shows us the tale of Oedipus and his children, the legend of the house of Laius, whose family was as equally famous among the Greeks as the stock of Atreus for its overwhelming disasters, the bitter fruit of an undying curse which destroyed the whole race. Laius, the son of Labdacus, had wrought a mighty evil. Lusting after the beauty of Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, with violence he raped the lad who belonged to another, and thus had sinned the sin of {Greek ú!bris} since he both betrayed another's love and used brute force in doing so.[39] For this crime his whole progeny was involved in destruction. He married Jocasta, the sister of Creon of Thebes, and the oracle warned him that his son should kill him. When a boy was born to the royal pair they cruelly exposed their child, a helpless infant, to the {p. 159} wild beasts on Mount Cithaeron, but the will of heaven is not frustrated by the impotence of man. Many years after as King Laius is riding privately in his chariot attended by only five servants they meet a young man upon the road. The king bids him make way, commanding him in rough and insolent terms. A quarrel arises. The stranger, a stalwart warrior, strikes down the master and certain of the servants, but one escapes and fled away for his life. Presently Oedipus solves the riddle of the monstrous Sphinx, when the Thebans, in gratitude, since their old monarch has been slain by robbers on the highway elect him to rule over them, giving him the lady Jocasta to wife. He governs the state in great prosperity, and four children are born to him, two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles; two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. It is the calm before the storm; a fearful plague afflicts the city, and when the divine Phoebus Apollo is consulted he answers that the murderer of Laius must be driven from the land. The old prophet, Teiresias, the mystic whose converse is in heaven, but who yet in his stern pride still retains much of humanity, is asked to rede the enigma. He answers with deep sighs and groans, seeking to be led home again, until goaded by the impatience and hot temper of the king he flashes forth the truth. But it is not immediately recognized, and Oedipus begins formally to inquire into the circumstances of the death of his predecessor. Detail is heaped upon detail and at last the horrible revelation forces itself upon his soul. Mad with terror, Jocasta hangs herself within her bed-chamber, and Oedipus tearing from her dress the buckles and clasps of gold strikes out his eyes that are unworthy to look upon the golden light of day. One moment a king, the next a beggar, red with parricide, polluted with the fires of incest, accursed of God and man, in the bitterness of utter dereliction he must go forth desolate and alone. He dare not even bid farewell to his sons and daughters for they are the children of doom, seed of that admixture too fearful to be named. In the next play, the Oedipus Coloneus, we find him many years afterwards, a mysterious figure set apart by heaven in awful loneliness. He is waiting in a place of peculiar sanctity, the reverent groves of the Semnai Theai, the holy goddesses of divine retribution, waiting for his silent passage to the shadowy world. And even here the evil ambitions of his sons would {p. 160} fain disturb him at the end. But he is far removed from the strife and passion of this world, and when young Polyneices, fair, false and fickle, endeavours to enlist his father's sympathies the lad receives the awful answer: "Dry were your eyes, hard as stone your heart, dumb your lips, when I went forth from Thebes friendless and alone. Here then is your reward: before the Walls of Thebes you shall perish, pierced by your brother's hand, and there your brother shall die slain by you." This terrible imprecation is only too terribly fulfilled, and defying the laws of King Creon, who would have the curse-polluted ghosts of the brothers seek for rest in vain even in Hades, Antigone meets her doom. Nor does Creon, the respectable Creon, weak and spiteful, impotent, yet a tyrant, escape scathless. His malice is sharply punished, owing to his own folly and cruelty he loses both wife and son, for he has forgotten that great truth which S. Thomas enunciated, that "reason is the first principle of all human works,"[40] and "the secular power is subject to the spiritual even as the body is subject to the soul." So owing to his impiety he is left without child to carry on his name, bereaved of all, broken and collapsed, piteously confessing himself--{Greek mátaion á?ndra}--feckless and foolish old man. It has seemed worth while thus very briefly and inadequately to review these two great themes of Greek tragedy, since in both instances they set forth in detail the terrible and relentless working of a curse, which it may be said has something of that divine vengeance that visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation." And so something of this old Greek doctrine was very true, for who can foresee the end of the working of a curse? Even to-day there are places and there are properties in England which owing to deeds of blood and violence in their acquisition entail some dire misfortune upon all who seek to enjoy and possess them. Such a place is the ruined Abbey of Glastonbury, and of many another house--Tintern, Newstead, Cowdray, Waverley, Barlings, Croxton, Dureford--the tale is true. De male quaesita non gaudet tertius haeres, says the old adage, and it is well known that lands wrested from the Church will not descend in due course owing to a failure of heirs. Such a case has come under my own observation, and Aubrey in his Miscellanies cites Hinton Charterhouse {p. 161} on Mendip and Butleigh, near Glastonbury as never having passed to the third generation. So did Cromwell's generals and adherents transmit a troubled inheritance to their descendants. Fairfax House, Putney, had its haunted chamber which was never used. It must be remembered that a solemn curse is not merely an expletive or an imprecatory exclamation, perhaps quite meaningless, but it is far more than this; it is significant and operative. The malediction is conceived as having a certain efficacious power, and it may be noted that this force if rightly launched does not seem to exhaust itself. No more terrible fate could be imagined than for a man to become a vampire, and this was the inevitable consequence if he were not cleared of a merited malison. The old proverb says: Curses are like young chicken This adage is terribly exemplified in the vampire who is supposed when he returns from his grave first to attack those who on earth have been his nearest and dearest. Of all curses the parental malediction is most dreaded, and curiously enough in Macedonia, Mr. Abbott tells us that a godfather is regarded with even greater respect than the actual parents and his "malediction is dreaded even more than that of a Bishop."[42] At the present day in Greece many of the usual imprecations definitely refer to the fact that the person so cursed will become a vampire after death. Such imprecations as the following are in common use. "May the earth not receive him," ({Greek Nà mh'n ton dexthj? h! gh^s}) "May the ground not consume him" ({Greek Nà mh'n ton fálhj tò xw^ma}) "May the earth not digest thee" ({Greek H! gh^ nà mh' de xunépshj}): "May the black earth spew thee up" ({Greek H! maúrh gh^ ná s? a?nakseráshj}) "Mayest thou remain incorrupt," ({Greek Na meínhjs á?lwmtos}); "May the earth not loose thee" which is to say may the body not decompose ({Greek Nà mh' se luw'shj h! gh?}); "May the ground reject thee" ({Greek Ná se blálhj tò xw^ma}); "Mayest thou a become in the grave like rigid wood" ({Greek Koutoûki nà blhj?s}); "May the ground reject him wholly" ({Greek Tò xw^ma ?kserás? tóne}), which last phrase is the most terrible of all since it is nothing other than an unspeakably impious parody of the prayer which is uttered by the mourners at every Greek funeral {Greek O!ðeòs ?xwrés? tóne}, "May God forgive him." {p. 162} Since even the curse uttered by a man in moments of anger and impatience may have such terrible effects, in Greece it is necessary that there should be some expedient which may dissipate and dispel the forces to which these words have given an impetus capable of producing the most serious and horrible results. Accordingly at a Greek death-bed there is carried out a certain ritual to attain this end. A vessel of water is brought to the bedside and he throws into it a handful of salt, and when this is dissolved the sick man sprinkles with the lymph all those who are present saying: "As this salt dissolves so may my curses dissolve"; {Greek w!s luw'nei t?a?láti, nà luw!soun h!j katárais mou}. This ceremony absolves all persons whom he may have cursed in his lifetime from the evil of a ban which after death he would no longer be able to revoke. The relations and friends then solemnly forgive the dying man for ought that he may have done against them and all present declare that they bear no grudge nor anger in their hearts. It is said that if the passage be a difficult one it is supposed that somebody whom the sick man has injured has not forgiven him. If it can be guessed who this may be, he is if possible, brought to the bed-side to declare his forgiveness of any injury he may have suffered. If, however, he be dead a portion of the cerements must be sought and burned to ashes in the bed-chamber of the dying person, who is fumigated with the smoke. These elaborate precautions and the extraordinary care which is taken, for it must often be a matter of very great difficulty either to secure the attendance of the living individual or to get hold of a portion of the necessary shroud, serve to show what immense importance the modern Greek attaches to the absolution from a curse, and what horror the thought of a vampire inspires. It is obvious that those who die unbaptized or apostate will be liable to become vampires after death, and throughout the south of Europe there still persist large numbers of ceremonies and superstitions connected with a christening whose object it is to secure the child a long, happy and healthy life. In England as in many other countries it is thought lucky to be born on one of the great church festivals, especially if it be a Sunday. In certain districts of Yorkshire even to-day it is commonly said that "Sunday children are secure from {p. 163} the malice of evil spirits."[43] Again a child born on a Saturday, although he may have "to work hard for his living" is considered to enjoy occult powers, to have the faculty of second sight, to be able to see ghosts and phantoms, and indeed to be so attuned to the supernatural that he can never be harmed even by the vampire. It is very probable that as Saturday is the seventh day of the week those born upon this day are considered as akin to a seventh son, who was so popularly believed to possess extraordinary powers of healing and the like. The old English rhyme is well known, and perhaps the following is one of the most usual forms: Monday's child is fair of face, Although, as we have said, in England it is considered am omen of a happy life to be born upon some festival the exact opposite is the case in Slav countries.[44] In Greece, particularly, nothing could be more disastrous, and of all seasons Christmas Day is the most unlucky. In many districts it is accounted a terrible thing for any child to be born at any time between Christmas and the Epiphany; such babies are called {Greek e!ortopiásmata} or "feast-blasted," and after death they will assuredly become vampires. Even during life such a child is a Callicantzaros. The Callicantzaros is one of the most extraordinary and most horrible of all the creatures of popular superstition. Leone Allacci says that they only appear and have power during the week from Christmas to New Year's Day,[45] but other authorities extend this time until Twelfth Night. During the rest of the year it is vaguely supposed that they sojourn in some mysterious Hades or under-world. Local traditions differ as to whether they are actually demons or whether they are human. Allacci, who certainly inclines to the latter view, says that children born in the octave of Christmas are liable to be seized with a terrible mania, that they rush to and fro with the most amazing speed, that their nails grow to a {p. 164} 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 {p. 165} fancies during life. It will be noticed that in the various accounts of the Callicantzari there exist many contradictions, and we must bear in mind that such diversities are often due to the original conception of these creatures, whether they are regarded as demons or monsters who are suffered to plague the countryside for a certain number of days during the Christmas season, or whether they are regarded as human beings afflicted with a terrible curse, the victims of a most horrible possession, doomed never to rest not even in the grave. Near akin to the latter conception is the werewolf, who may be regarded as a man or woman, who either of his or her own will through black magic is able to change into the form of a wolf, or who in classical times was believed to be so changed owing to the vengeance of the gods; and in later days was believed to be so changed owing to the enchantment of a witch or some manner of diabolic possession. Moreover, a werewolf may be a person who without any actual metamorphosis is obsessed with all the savage passions and ferocity of a wolf, so that he will attack human beings in the same way as the actual wild animal. It may be asked, is it possible that a person should be so transformed? Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, the learned authors of the supremely authoritative Malleus Maleficarum, in discussing the question distinctly answer "No, it is not possible." They allow that by horrid charms and spells a certain subjective delusion or glamour may be caused, so that by the evil art of a sorcerer a man may appear to himself and to all others who gaze upon him to be a wolf, or indeed another kind of animal, but there cannot be any actual physical change of a man into an animal. This glamour or ocular illusion is sometimes known as "sight-shifting," a convenient correlative to the accepted term "shape-shifting" which is conceived of as an objective fact. Moreover, in his De Ciuitate Dei, XVIII, 18, S. Augustine says: "Nor can the devils create anything (whatever shows of theirs produce these doubts) but only cast a changed shape over that which God has made, altering only in show. Nor do I think the devil can form any soul or body into bestial or brutal members, and essences; but they have an unspeakable way of transporting man's phantasy in a bodily shape, unto other senses (this though it be not corporal, yet seems to carry itself in corporal {p. 166} forms through all these things) while the bodies of the men thus affected lie in another place, being alive, but yet in an ecstasy far more deep than any sleep. Now this phantasy may appear unto other senses in a bodily shape, and a man may seem to himself to be such an one as he often thinks himself to be in his dream, and to bear burdens, which if they be true burdens indeed, the devils bear them, to delude men's eyes with the appearance of true burdens, and false shapes." We must bear in mind that these explanations come from the highest authority, one of the greatest Doctors of the Church, and will, I think, very fairly cover most of the cases of the werewolf. In early days it was recognized that a werewolf might be a person who was afflicted with a horrible mania, and Marcellus Sidetes, who lived in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, circa A.D. 117-161, wrote {Greek Perì lukanðrw'pou}, a long medical poem in Greek hexameter verse, consisting of forty-two books, of which only a couple of fragments remain. He says that Lycanthropy is a disease, a kind of insanity or mania when the patient was afflicted with hideous appetites, the ferocity, and other qualities of a wolf. He further tells us that men are attacked with this madness chiefly in the beginning of the year, and become most furious in February; retiring for the night to lone cemeteries and living precisely in the manner of ravening wolves. Under Lycanthropia, Burton[49] notes as follows: "Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls Cucubuth, others Lupinam Insaniam, or Wolf-Madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius (Lib. 6, cap. 11) and Paulus (Lib. 3, cap. 16) call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. Donat ab Altomari (Cap. 9, Art med.) saith, that he saw two of them in his time: Wierus (De praestig. Daemonum, 1, 3, cap. 21) tells a story of such a one at Padua, 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; Forrestus (Obseruat. lib. 10, de morbis cerebri, cap. 15) confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eye-witness, at Alcmaer, in Holland, a poor {p. 167} husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look . . . this malady, saith Avicenna, troubleth men most in February, and is now-a-days frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to Heurnius (Cap. de Man.). Schernitzius will have it common in Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale (Ulcerata crura, sitis ipsis adest immodica, pallidi, lingua sicca) saith Altomarus (Cap. 9, Art. Hydrophobia); he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure of them." It is remarkable that most of these features are found in the vampire, especially the unquenchable thirst, "sitis immodica" which is emphasized by the famous physician Antonio Donato Altomari, who was one of the most learned authorities of his day. It is also remarkable that the malady is reported as being very prevalent in Bohemia, Hungary, and Livonia, countries in which the vampire is most frequently found. There is in fact a very close connexion between the werewolf and the vampire, and the lycanthropist is liable to become a vampire when he dies. In parts of Greece, particularly in Elis,[50] it is said that even those who eat the flesh of a sheep that has been killed by a wolf are apt to become vampires after their death, and this serves to show how powerful the pollution of the werewolf was supposed to be. In Norse saga, Ingiald, the son of King Aunund, was timid whilst a boy, but after eating the heart of a wolf he gained strength and courage and became the boldest of heroes.[51] It might be thought that so far from inspiring a person with a thirst for blood the flesh of a sheep would homopathically infuse qualities of gentleness, and indeed the Abipones of Paraguay were most careful to avoid mutton lest it should make them slack and fearful in the fight.[52] But in this instance it will be seen that the characteristics of a sheep have been absorbed, so to speak, and infected by the ferocity of the wolf. Curiously enough in Uganda the Baganda greatly fear the ghosts of sheep, which they believe would return and kill a man if they saw him give them the fatal blow. Hence when a sheep is to be killed one man occupies its attention in some way and another, whose presence the animal must not suspect, swiftly slaughters it before {p. 168} a glimpse of him can be caught. In this way the sheep is tricked because the ghost does not know whom to haunt and punish for its death. Moreover, sheep give health and protection to cattle, and a ram is almost invariably sent into the pastures with a herd of cows. Should a sheep die in a house nobody must dare openly to mention the fact, which may only be alluded to in the most covert and circumlocutionary phrase, for were anyone to say, "the sheep is dead," its ghost sorely angered would assuredly afflict the unlucky speaker with some disease and possibly even kill him outright.[53] It is worth noting that among the ancient Greeks it was thought that any garment made from the fleece of a sheep which had been worried or torn by a wolf would have a bad effect upon the wearer and set up some roseola and an intense irritation of the skin.[54] It is certainly curious to note the whole mass of tradition which, as it would seem, the wide world over is connected with the sheep, and in particular when this animal has been attacked or slain by a wolf. Even as some kind of vampirish infection was held to proceed from the wolf, the vampire himself will even more strongly convey this taint, and therefore, unless the most drastic and immediate remedies are applied, a person who is attacked by a vampire and whose blood has been sucked will become a vampire in turn imbued with a craving to pass on the horrible pollution. This is perhaps, and with good reason, the most dreaded quality of the vampire, and examples thereof occur again and again in legend and history. It is far more curious that it should be thought that those over whose dead bodies a cat or any other animal has passed should become vampires. This belief widely exists amongst Slavonic peoples, and is to be found in some parts of Greece. It also prevails in China where a cat is never allowed to enter a room with a corpse for the body still contains the Kuei, the lower or inferior soul of Yin original, and by leaping over it the cat will impart something of its original savage or tigerish nature and the dead man may become a vampire.[55] It should be explained that it is a common belief among the Chinese that there are two "souls"; the higher soul which after death seeks the divine life, the heavenly source of its being; and the lower soul, which is gross, returning to the {p. 169} earth and dwelling in the grave until the complete dissolution of the corpse. It is believed among Slavonic nations, as it was firmly believed throughout England and in many districts of France, that witches turn themselves into cats, and among the Oraons (or Uraons) a primitive hill tribe of Bengal, we have a vampire cat who is a Chordewa, a witch who is able to change her soul into a black cat and who then visits and frequents the houses where there are sick and dying people. Such a cat has a peculiar way of mewing quite differently from the noise of other cats, and is easily recognized. It steals quietly into a house almost like a shadow leaps lightly on the bed, eats of the food that has been prepared for the sick man and gently licks his lips. When it is able to accomplish this latter the invalid has no chance of recovering, in which connexion we must remember, as has been remarked before, that the soul is supposed to take its departure from the mouth of a dying person. Even if this cat be seen it is extraordinarily difficult to catch it, since it has a supernatural activity and will fight and scratch with the malice of a demon. However, they say that persons have sometimes succeeded, and then the woman out of whom the cat (her soul) has come remains insensible, in a state of coma as deep as death, until the cat re-enters her body. Any wound inflicted upon the cat is produced upon her. For example if they cut it, or break a leg, or destroy its sight, the woman will simultaneously suffer the same mutilation. So great a horror had the Oraons of these witches that formerly they used to burn any person that was suspected to be a Chordewa.[56] It is a circumstance of very frequent occurrence in the witch trials of all countries that a witch who has appeared in the likeness of a cat, a hare, or any other animal and has met with an accident or been mutilated under that form is found to be marked with the same wound or to be suffering from the same harm in her human shape when this is resumed.[57] It is not difficult then to see why, if some animal of ill-omen,--and the cat seems to be particularly unfortunate,--leaps over a corpse, the dead person should be considered in danger of becoming a vampire. In Greece, particularly in Macedonia, the most pious care is taken to prevent any such calamity. The body is watched all night long by relatives and friends, {p. 170} and this is deemed a work of true charity by which they acquire great merit, it brings a blessing upon their own souls ({Greek psukikó}), if, in spite of all their care some cat does jump across the body, the dead man must be pierced through with two long "sack-needles" ({Greek sakkorráfais}), in order to secure his rest and to guard against his return. It is well to scatter mustard seed on the roof and on the threshold, and the wise man will barricade his door with brambles and thorns. Should the vampire return he cannot fail to occupy himself with counting the seeds, and it will be dawn, when he must return to his grave, long before he completes the tale. Should he endeavour to pass through the bushes he will inevitably be caught and held fast by the briars. Ralston tells us that the Serbs and the Bulgarians keep this vigil even more carefully than the Greeks. "In some places the jumping of a boy over the corpse is considered as fatal as that of a cat. The flight of a bird above the body may also be attended by the same terrible results; and so may--in the Ukraine--the mere breath of the wind from the Steppe."[58] What is extremely curious is that this tradition still lingers in the north of England, and if a cat or dog pass over a corpse the animal must be killed at once. The reason for this has been entirely forgotten, but the survival is very remarkable as showing that once there existed a dread of vampires in England which to-day is entirely forgotten. Thomas Pennant says that in Scotland: "No dog or cat must be allowed to leap over the corpse or enter the room. It is reckoned so ominous, their doing so that the poor animal is killed without mercy."[59] It is even still the custom that all animals shall be shut up till the funeral procession has left. It is believed that a cat will not remain in the house with an unburied corpse; and rooks (we know) will abandon the place till after the funeral, if the rookery be near the mansion. The explanation given by John Jamieson[60] that if a cat has leapt over a corpse the first person on to whose lap he may afterwards jump, or who may take him up in his arms, is stricken with blindness would seem to be a later invention, a reason made up to explain the ill-omen, when the vampire tradition had disappeared, and so the real reason had been entirely forgotten. Having investigated the various reasons why any person {p. 171} should become a vampire, and discussed the fatal accident which may bring about this terrible doom various points present themselves which invite some inquiry. Although the belief varies in different parts of the world, and it is generally understood that vampires only operate by night, as King David says:[61] "Non timebis a timore nocturno" (Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night), yet it is also supposed that under certain conditions vampires may wander abroad during the day, and that the vampire truly is daemonium meridianum (the noonday devil)." Therefore we may ask by what signs, if any, is a vampire to be recognized. Again, how does a vampire leave his grave? For we must remember that the vampire is tangible, and can make his presence felt in a very unmistakable and terrible manner. This difficulty has been very clearly stated by Dom Calmet who writes as follows: "How can a corpse which is covered with four or five feet of earth, which has no room even to move or to stretch a limb, which is wrapped in linen cerements, enclosed in a coffin of wood, how can it, I say, seek the upper air and return to the world walking upon the earth so as to cause those extraordinary effects which are attributed to it? And after all that how can it go back again into the grave, when it will be found fresh, incorrupt, full of blood exactly like a living body? Can it be maintained that these corpses pass through the earth without disturbing it, just as water and the damps which penetrate the soil or which exhale therefrom without perceptibly dividing or cleaving the ground? It were indeed to be wished that in the histories of the Return of Vampires which have been related, a certain amount of attention had been given to this point, and that the difficulty had been something elucidated. "Let us suppose that these corpses do not actually stir from their tombs, that only the ghosts or spirits appear to the living, wherefor do these Phantoms present themselves and what is it that energizes them? Is it actually the soul of the dead man which has not yet departed to its final destination, or is it a demon who causes them to be seen in an assumed and phantastical body? And if there bodies are spectral, how do they suck the blood of the living? We are enmeshed in a sad dilemma when we ask if these apparitions are natural or miraculous. {p. 172} "A priest, who is recognized as possessing intellectual qualities far beyond the ordinary, told me that some little time since when he was travelling in Moravia, Mgr. Jeanin, a Canon of the, Cathedral of Olmutz, asked for his company to a village named Liebava, which the good canon was officially about to visit as Commissary of the Episcopal Court to investigate the well-authenticated reports concerning a Vampire who had recently caused much trouble and disorder in the village Liebava. "They journeyed thither; witnesses were cited and heard; the ordinary canonical procedure was observed in every detail. The witnesses gave evidence that a certain well-known citizen who had formerly resided at Liebava after his death had sorely tormented the whole district, inasmuch as for a space of three or four years he had issued forth from the cemetery and had entered several houses. It was true these visitations were now ceased, because a certain Hungarian who passed through the village at the time when the terror was at its height avowed that he could cope with the evil and lay the Vampire to rest. In order to fulfil his promise he mounted the clock-tower of the church, and watched for the moment when the vampire came out of his grave, leaving behind him in the tomb his shroud and cerements, before he made his way to the village to plague and terrify the inhabitants. "When the Hungarian from his coin of vantage had seen the Vampire depart on his prowl, he promptly descended from the tower possessed himself of the shroud and linen carrying them off with him back to the belfry. The Vampire in due course returned and not finding his sere-clothes cried out mightily against the thief, who from the top of the belfry was making signs to him that he should climb and recover his winding-sheet if be wished to get it back again. The Vampire, accordingly, began to clamber up the steep stair which led to the summit of the tower, but the Hungarian suddenly gave him such a blow that he fell from top to bottom. Thereupon they were able to strike off his head with the sharp edge of a sexton's spade, and that made an end of the whole business. "The priest who related this history to me, himself saw nothing of these happenings, neither was anything witnessed {p. 173} by the Right Reverend Canon who was acting as Episcopal Commissioner. They only received the reports of the peasants of that district, a folk who were very ignorant, very credulous, very superstitious, and brimful of all kinds of wonderful stories concerning the aforesaid Vampire. "For my part I think the whole history vain and utterly without foundation, and the more absurd and contradictory are the various tales which were told, the more strongly am I confirmed in the opinion which I have formed. "Supposing, indeed, there were any truth in the accounts of these appearances of Vampires, are they to be attributed to the power of God, to the Angels, to the souls of those who return in this way, or to the Devil? If we adopt the last hypothesis it follows that the Devil can endue these corpses with subtilty and bestow upon them the power of passing through the earth without any disturbances of the ground, of gliding through the cracks and joints of a door, of slipping through a keyhole, of increasing, of diminishing, of becoming rarified as air or water to penetrate the earth; in fine of enjoying the same properties as we believe will be possessed by the Blessed after the Resurrection, and which distinguished the human Body of our Lord after the first Easter Day, inasmuch as He appeared to those to whom He would show Himself for 'Jesus cometh, the doors bein shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you,' Jesus uenit ianuis clausis, S. John, xx, 26. "Yet even if it be allowed that the Devil can re-energize dead bodies and give them movement for a certain time can he also bestow these powers of increasing, diminishing, becoming rarified, and so subtle that they can penetrate the earth, doors, windows? We are not told that God allows him the exercise of any such power, and it is hard to believe that a material body, gross and substantial can be endowed with this subtility and spirituality without some destruction or alteration of the general structure and without damage to the configuration of the body. But this would not be in accord with the intention of the Devil, for such a change would prevent this body from appearing, from manifesting itself, from motion and speech, ay, indeed from being eventually cut to pieces and burned as so often happens in the case of Vampires in Moravia, Poland, and Silesia."[63] {p. 174} These difficulties which Dom Calmet with little perception has raised can be very briefly answered, and they are not only superficial, but also smack of heterodoxy. In the first place, the story that he tells is far from satisfactory, and even if it were--what it may be--much exaggerated one can hardly brush aside the vast vampire tradition because one instance proves to be overdrawn. In any case the business of the watcher from the belfry and the demand that the Vampire should regain his shroud by climbing the stairs to the top of the tower do not bear the mark of truth, but what is certainly significant is that the Vampire was decapitated and that then the hauntings ceased. I conceive that the story of the cerements is mere elaboration, but that the grave of the Vampire was traced, opened, and that his head was severed from his body. This eliminates some highly charged details whilst it does not touch the facts of the case. So we see that the story when divested of these trappings offers nothing impossible, that is to say nothing extraordinary or unusual in such histories. Dom Calmet asks are the appearances of Vampires to be attributed to God, or to the souls of those who return or to the Devil? I answer that for the hauntings of a Vampire, three things are necessary: the Vampire, the Devil, and the Permission of Almighty God. Just as we know, for we learn this from the Malleus Maleficarum, that there are three necessary concomitants of witchcraft, and these are the Devil, a Witch, and the Permission of Almighty God (Part 1). So are these three necessary concomitants of Vampirism. Whether it be the Demon who is energizing the corpse[64] or whether it be the dead man himself who by some dispensation of Divine Providence has returned is a particular which must be decided severally for each case. So much then for Dom Calmet's question, to whom are the appearances of Vampires to be attributed. Can the Devil endow a body with these qualities of subtilty, rarification, increase, and diminishing, so that it may pass through doors and windows? I answer that there is no doubt the Demon can do this, and to deny the proposition is hardly orthodox. For S. Thomas says of the devil that "just as he can from the air compose a body of any form and shape, and assume it so as to appear in it visibly, so, in the same way, {p. 175} he can clothe any corporeal thing with any corporeal form, so as to appear therein." Moreover almost any séance will be sufficient reply to Dom Calmet's question. In his Modern Spiritism (1904), Mr. T. Godfrey Raupert says: "Photographs, or small drawing-room ornaments have thus been seen to change their places, and articles kept in a room other than that occupied by the sensitive, have been brought through closed doors and deposited at a spot previously indicated--in some instances placed into the hands of the person requesting the apport of the article. Many such remarkable instances of apport and of matter passing through matter have been observed under the strictest possible test conditions, and will be found recorded in the late Leipzig Professor Zoellner's deeply interesting work Transcendental Physics. The writer has himself observed one instance of this kind in a private house, and in circumstances entirely precluding the possibility of deception. There is, perhaps, no phenomenon which so distinctly exhibits the action of extraneous and independent intelligence as this one." (pp. 35-36.) Matter, then, can pass through matter, and the séance answers Dom Calmet. We may, if we will, adopt the ectoplasmic theory to explain the mode whereby the Vampire issues from his grave, but although this is very probably true (in some instances at all events) it is not necessarily the only solution of the problem. According to Catholic theologians evil spirits, if permitted to materialize their invisible presence, to build up a tangible and active body, do not absolutely require the ectoplasm of some medium. Not very dissimilar to the dilemma of Dom Calmet are the views hold by an eminent authority, Dr. Herbert Mayo, who was sometime Senior Surgeon of Middlesex Hospital, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in King's College, Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons, London. In his well-known work, On the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, he devotes his second Letter, or rather Chapter, to "Vampyrism," concerning which he says "The proper place of this subject falls in the midst of a philosophical disquisition," but he adds for the benefit of the inquirer that it is "a point on which, in my time, school-boys much your juniors entertained decided opinions." He continues to inform us that during the middle of the eighteenth {p. 176} century: "Vampyrism spread like a pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing numerous deaths, and disturbing all the land with fear of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt himself secure. "Here is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matter of history: the people died like rotten sheep; and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would still be worth examining. But there is more in it than that." He then gives an account in very full detail of a Vampire at Belgrade in the year 1732, he describes the circumstances in which the body was disinterred, It leaned to one side, the skin was fresh and ruddy, the nails grown long and evilly crooked, the mouth slobbered with blood from its last night's repast. Accordingly a stake was driven through the chest of the Vampire who uttered a terrible screech whilst blood poured in quantities from the wound. Then it was burned to ashes. Moreover, a number of other persons throughout the district had been infected with vampirism. Of the facts there can be no question whatsoever. The documents are above suspicion, and in particular the most important of these which was signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally counter-signed by a lieutenant-colonel and sub-lieutenant. Even Dr. Mayo is obliged to allow: "No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, or of its general fidelity; the less that it does not stand alone, but is supported by a mass of evidence to the same effect. It appears to establish beyond question, that where the fear of Vampyrism prevails, and there occur several deaths, in the popular belief connected with it, the bodies, when disinterred weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses from which life has only recently departed." It is very instructive to note how the writer proceeds with the greatest subtility and no little cleverness to extract himself from logical consequences it might have seemed impossible to avoid, and how he explains an exceptional circumstance by circumstances which are far more {p. 177} amazing and difficult to believe. With the utmost suavity and breadth of mind he continues: "What inference shall we draw from this fact?--that Vampyrism is true in the popular sense?--and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious source of preternatural nourishment? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves with a notion not so monstrous, but still startling enough: that the bodies, which were found in the so-called Vampyr state, instead of being in a new or mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way or had been so for some time subsequently to their interment that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive, and whose life, where it yet lingered, was finally extinguished through the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. . . . We have thus succeeded in interpreting one of the unknown terms in the Vampyr-theorem. The suspicious character, who had some dark way of nourishing himself in the grave, turns out to be an unfortunate gentleman (or lady) whom his friends had buried under a mistake while he was still alive, and who, if they afterwards mercifully let him alone, died sooner or later either naturally or of the premature interment--in either case, it is to be hoped, with no interval of restored consciousness." I submit that Dr. Mayo has not succeeded in solving any difficulty at all connected with vampirism. No doubt, as we have already considered in some detail, cases of premature burial, which were far more common than was generally supposed, would have helped to swell the tradition, but that they can have originated it is impossible, and it is absurd to put forward the terrible accident of premature burial as an explanation to cover all the facts. It is quite impossible that a person who had been interred when in a coma or trance should have survived in the grave. Before we deal with the signs by which it is reputed a vampire may be recognized; the method in which a vampire presumably leaves his grave; and the way by which a vampire may be released or destroyed, we will briefly inquire into Dr. Mayo's explanation of the actual visit of the vampire to a victim and the subsequent consequences, the terrible anæmia and hæmoplegia which may result in death followed by the vampire infection. And here we find that Dr. Mayo {p. 178} quite honestly and frankly confesses that he is completely at a loss to give any solution of the difficulty. It is most instructive to read those inconclusive pleas which he is driven to put forward but which his own good sense cannot accept. He writes: "The second element which we have yet to explain is the Vampyr visit and its consequences,--the lapse of the party visited into death-trance. There are two ways of dealing with this knot; one is to cut it, the other to untie it. "It may be cut, by denying the supposed connexion between the Vampyr visit and the supervention of death-trance in the second party. Nor is the explanation thus obtained devoid of plausibility. There is no reason why death-trance should not, in certain persons and places, be epidemic. Then the persons most liable to it would be those of weak and irritable nervous systems. Again, a first effect of the epidemic might be further to shake the nerves of weaker subjects. These are exactly the persons who are likely to be infected with imaginary terrors, and to dream, or even to fancy, they have seen Mr. or Mrs. such a one, the last victim of the epidemic. The dream or impression upon the senses might again recur, and the sickening patient have already talked of it to his neighbours, before he himself was seized with death-trance. On this supposition the Vampyr visit would sink into the subordinate rank of a mere premonitory symptom. "To myself, I must confess, this explanation, the best I am yet in a position to offer, appears barren and jejune; and not at all to do justice to the force and frequency, or, as tradition represents the matter, the universality of the Vampyr visit as a precursor of the victim's fate. Imagine how strong must have been the conviction of the reality of the apparition, how common a feature it must have been, to have led to the laying down of the unnatural and repulsive process customarily followed at the Vampyr's grave, as the regular and proper preventive of ulterior consequences." Dr. Mayo proposes therefore "to try and untie this knot" a result which he singularly fails to achieve. He quite erroneously states "in popular language, it was the ghost of the Vampyr that haunted its future victim." This is exactly what the Vampire is not. As we have seen there is some divergence of view whether the Vampire is the actual person. energized with some horrible mystical life in death {p. 179} who visits his victims, and there can be no doubt at all that this is the true and proper Vampire, or whether it is a demon who animates and informs the body. But in no circumstances whatsoever is the Vampire a phantom or ghost, save by a quite inadmissible extension of the term, which then may practically be regarded (as indeed it is often most mistakenly and reprehensively {sic} regarded) as covering almost any malignant supernatural phenomenon. So an explanation which confuses a Vampire with a ghost is entirely impertinent. We will now proceed to inquire into those physical traits by which a Vampire may be discerned. A Vampire is generally described as being exceedingly gaunt and lean with a hideous countenance and eyes wherein are glinting the red fire of perdition. When, however, he has satiated his lust for warm human blood his body becomes horribly puffed and bloated, as though he were some great leech gorged and replete to bursting. Cold as ice, or it may be fevered and burning as a hot coal, the skin is deathly pale, but the lips are very full and rich, blub and red; the teeth white and gleaming, and the canine teeth wherewith he bites deep into the neck of his prey to suck thence the vital streams which re-animate his body and invigorate all his forces appear notably sharp and pointed. Often his mouth curls back in a vulpine snarl which bares these fangs, "a gaping mouth and gleaming teeth," says Leone Allacci, and so in many districts the hare-lipped are avoided as being certainly vampires. In Bulgaria, it is thought that the Vampire who returns from the tomb has only one nostril; and in certain districts of Poland he is supposed to have a sharp point at the end of his tongue, like the sting of a bee. It is said that the palms of a Vampire's hands are downy with hair,[65] and the nails are always curved and crooked, often well-nigh the length of a great bird's claw, the quicks dirty and foul with clots and gouts of black blood. His breath is unbearably fetid and rank with corruption, the stench of the charnel. Dr. Henry More in his An Antidote against Atheism, III, ix, tells us that when Johannes Cuntius, an alderman of Pentsch in Silesia and a witch returned as a Vampire he much tormented the Parson of the Parish. One evening, "when this Theologer was sitting with his wife and Children about him, exercising himself in Musick, according {p. 180} to his usual manner, a most grievous stink arose suddenly, which by degrees spread itself to every corner of the room. Here upon he commends himself and his family to God by Prayer. The smell nevertheless encreased, and became above all measure pestilently noisom, insomuch that he was forced to go up to his chamber. He and his Wife had not been in bed a quarter of an hour, but they find the same stink in the bedchamber; of which, while they are complaining one to another out steps the Spectre from the Wall, and creeping to his bedside, breathes upon him an exceeding cold breath, of so intolerable stinking and malignant a scent, as is beyond all imagination and expression. Here upon the Theologer, good soul, grew very ill, and was fain to keep his bed, his face, belly, and guts swelling as if he had been poysoned; whence he was also troubled with a difficulty of breathing, and with a putrid inflamation of his eyes, so that he could not well use them of a long time after."[66] In the Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. 1., Ch. 11, the following is related: "In the territory of the Black Forest, a witch was being lifted by a gaoler on to the pile of wood prepared for her burning and said: 'I will pay you,' and blew into his face. And he was at once afflicted with a horrible leprosy all over his body and did not survive many days." Boguet, Discours des Sorciers, gives as his rubric to Chapter XXV, Si les Sorciers tuent de leur souffle & haleine. He tells us: "Les Sorciers tuent & endommagent de lour souffle & haleine: en quoy Clauda Gaillard dicte la Fribolette nous seruita de tesmoignage; car ayant soufflé contre Clauda Perrier, qu'elle r'encontra en l'Eglise d'Ebouchoux, tout aussi test ceste femme tomba malade, & fut rendue impotente, & en fin mourut apres auoir trainé par l'espace d'vn an en toute pauurieté, & langueur: de mesme aussi comme Marie Perrier luy eut vne fois refusé l'aumosne, elle luy souffla fort rudement contre, de façon quo Marie tomba par terre, & s'estant releuée ause peine elle demeura malade par quelques iours, & iusques à tant que Pierre Perrier son neueu out menacé la Sorciere." Sinistrari in his Demoniality (24) says that if we ask how it is possible that the Demon, who has no body, yet can perform actual coitus with man or woman, most authorities answer that the demon assumes or animates the corpse of another human being, male or female, as the case may be, and Delrio {p. 181} (Disquisitiones Magicae, Liber II, Q. xxviii, sec. 1). comments: "Denique multae falsae resurrectiones gentilium huc sunt referendae; & constat cum sagis ut plurimum induto cadauere diabolum sine incubum, sine succubum, rem habere; unde & in hoc genere hominum, cadauerosus quidam faetor graueolentiae, cernitur." Some remoter country districts, indeed, are apt to regard any poor wretch who is sadly deformed as a Vampire, especially if the distortion be altogether unsightly, prominent, or grotesque. It has even been known that a peasant whose face was deeply marked with wine-coloured pigment, owing it was thought to some accident which befell his mother during her late pregnancy,[67] was shunned and suspected of being a malignant vrykolakas. Chorea, they say, is a certain sign of vampirism, and it may be remarked that in Shoa this disorder is regarded as the result of demoniacal possession, or due to the magic spell of an enemy's shadow having fallen upon the sufferer.[68] An epileptic there is also often considered as being in the power of some devil, and unless proper precautions are taken he will assuredly not rest in his grave. The Vampire is endowed with strength and agility more than human, and he can run with excessive speed, outstripping the wind. It is curious to find that in many countries persons with blue eyes are considered extremely liable to become vampires.[69] This is the case in some parts of Greece, but there does not seem to be preserved any oral tradition to explain the particular belief. It may, of course, have arisen owing to the fact that persons with eyes of this colour would seldom, if over, have been met with, and a stranger with blue eyes would be regarded with wonder and awe. (Thus in Ireland persons with bluish-grey eyes, especially if there be a streak of black on the pupil, which is common, are accounted to have the power of seeing ghosts.) We cannot, I think, connect the Greek idea with the Homeric epithet for the goddess Athene, {Greek glaukw^pis}, which has been rendered "bright-eyed,"[70] "grey-eyed" or "blue-eyed," an old interpretation that proves utterly erroneous, since there can be no doubt that {Greek glaukw^pis} means "owl-faced" ({Greek glaúks;}) and originally Athene was a deity who was literally imagined and represented as having the face of an owl, even if she did not, as is most probable, {p. 182} actually appear in the shape of an owl. Among the Australian aborigines the owl is regarded as a sex totem of women and is most jealously protected by them.[71] We find too, that the owl is a sacred bird among the Indians of North-West America, and in their ritual dances a solemnity revealed to them, as they suppose, by their guardian spirits, wherein they mime ancient story, the masqueraders often personate by dress, voice, and gesture the owl." The dukwally (i.e., lokoala) and other tamanawas[72] performances are exhibitions intended to represent incidents connected with their mythological legends. . . An Indian, for instance, who has been consulting with his guardian spirit, which is done by going through the washing and fasting process before described, will imagine or think he is called upon to represent the owl. He arranges in his mind the style of dress, the number of performers, the songs and dances or other movements, and, having the plan perfected, announces at a tamanawas meeting that he has had a revelation which he will impart to a select few. These are then taught and drilled in strict secrecy, and when they have perfected themselves, will suddenly make their appearance and perform before the astonished tribe."[73] The owl gives mystic qualities; for in Northern India it is believed that a man who eats the eyes of an owl will be able to see, even as that bird, in the dark.[74] In Nigeria, the owl is regarded with great awe, and the natives tremble even to pronounce its name on account of the ill omen, preferring to speak of "the bird that makes one afraid."[75] It may be remembered that Vampires are credited with being able to see in the dark, and that in many countries peasants dread to utter the word, employing some elaborate and often not very intelligible, periphrasis. Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair {p. 188} was red.[76] Francesco Redi says: "Fra gli Egizii era tradizione che Tifone, il genio della distruzione, simile al Arimane Persiano al Satano Ebriaco fosse di pelo rosso, forse per memoria di invasioni di barbari di pelo rosso e presso noi dura tutta via la tradizione, 'Guardati dal pelo rosso nè valse a toglierla la barba rossa del Redentore.'"[77] Red was the colour of the hair of Judas Iscariot,[78] and of Cain, and an old Latin rhyme of the thirteenth century has: Monet nos haec fabula rufos euitare The Italians say: Capelli rossi John Wodroephe in The Spared Hours of a Soldier in hie Travels, Dort, 1623, quotes: "Garde toi bien des hommes rousseaux, des femmes barbues, et des ceux qui sont marqués an visage."[70] I have not met with the following tradition save orally, but it is believed in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Rumania, that there are certain red-polled vampires who are called "Children of Judas," and that these, the foulest of the foul, kill their victim with one bite or kiss which drains the blood as it were at a single draught. The poisoned flesh of the victim is wounded with the Devil's stigmata, three hideous scars shaped thus, XXX, signifying the thirty pieces of silver, the price of blood. It is curious to note that the ancient ideas of the physiognomy of amorous persons are not at all unlike the distinctive marks of the vampire. The old belief has thus been summed up by G. Tourdes, "Aphrodisie," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales: "The erotic temperament has been described as marked by a lean figure, white and well-ranged teeth, a developed hairy system, a characteristic voice, air, and expression, and even a special odour." Since the vampire bites his prey with sharp teeth and greedily sucks forth the blood it is not surprising to find that those who are born with teeth in their heads are considered to be already marked down as vampires. Even in countries where the vampire belief was lost this circumstance was considered of the unluckiest,[80] and in Chapman and Shirley's[81] {p. 184} Chabot, Admiral of France, V, 2, Master Advocate exposing the villainies of the Chancellor declares: "He was born with teeth in his head, by an affidavit of his midwife, to note his devouring, and hath one toe on his left foot crooked, and in the form of an eagle's talon, to foretel his rapacity. What shall I say? branded, marked, and designed in his birth for shame and obloquy, which appeareth further, by a mole under his right ear, with only three witch's hairs in it; strange and ominious predictions of nature!" According to Allacci those children who were thought likely to become Callicantzari were taken to a fire which had been lighted in the market-square, and here the soles of their feet were held to the flames until the nails were singed and the danger of their attacks averted. The allusion in Chabot to the "toe on his left foot crooked, and in the form of an eagle's talon" is particularly interesting in this connexion. It is evident that the old physical characteristics which mark a creature of demoniacal propensities had been remembered as of ill-omen and horror when exactly what they portended and betrayed had been lost in the mists of ancient lore. Moreover it should be noted that persons and animals attack with the hands or the claws, not generally with the feet to scratch and rend. Accordingly the custom in the days even of Allacci was practised but not understood, and it points to some belief reaching back to old Greek mythology, it is probably some. link between the Callicantzaros and the Centaurs as Lawson suggests in well-founded detail. The vampire is, as we have said, generally believed to embrace his victim who has been thrown into a trance-like sleep, and after greedily kissing the throat suddenly to bite deep into the jugular vein and absorb the warm crimson blood. It has long since been recognized by medico-psychologists that there exists a definite connexion between the fascination of blood and sexual excitation. Owing to custom, to inhibitions and education this emotion generally remains latent, although a certain mental sadism is by no means a mark of degeneracy. Dr. Havelock Ellis says: "It is probable that the motive of sexual murders is nearly always to shed blood, and not to cause death,"[82] an extremely significant fact. Since the vampire is generally held to seize the throat it is very striking that Leppmann[83] points out {p. 185} that such murders are almost always produced by wounds in the neck or mutilation of the abdomen, never by wounds of the head. Paul d'Enjoy defines the kiss as "a bite and a suction,"[84] and a high authority says: "The impulse to bite is also a part of the tactile element which lies at the origin of kissing."[85] The tactile kiss which doubtless is very primitive has developed into the olfactory and gustatory, extending thence into many elaborations and variants. Under the stress of strong sexual emotion when love is closely knit with pain there is often an overwhelming tendency to bite the partner of the act, and the love-bite is often referred to in Latin literature. Thus Plautus, Pseudolus, I, 1, ll. 62-66, speaks of amorous dalliance: Nunc nostri amores, mores, consuetudines, And Catullus, VIII, 17, 18, writes after a quarrel: Quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris? In a well-known Ode, Horace Carmin I, xiii, 11, 12: siue puer furens which Francis Englishes: I burn, when in excess of wine Tibullus, 1, vi, 14, 15, writes: Tune succos herbasque dedi, queis liuor abiret, And again, I, viii, 35-38: At Uenus inueniet puero succumbere furtim, Ovid, Amores, III, xiv, 34, asks his mistress: Cur plus, quam somno, turbatos esse capillos; which is rendered by the translator in Dryden's Ovid, "by many hands": Why do your looks and rumpled head-clothes show Many further passages from the older Latin poets might be quoted, and amongst the moderns, Joannes Secundus[86] and Jean Bonnefons[87] have not neglected to celebrate the love-bite in their verses. From the latter it will suffice to cite the elegant Basium IV, Execratur dentes, quibus inter osculandum papillas Dominae laeserat, which commences: O dens improbe, dire, ter sceleste, Of Joannes Secundus the Basium VII in the Basium Liber is very celebrated: Quis te furor, Neaera, {p. 187} This has been charmingly tuned by Nott: Ah! what ungovern'd rage, declare, Dorat, Baiser XI, has daintily paraphrased, Secundus: Tes dents, ces perles que j'adore, The Supplementum Lexicorum Eroticorum Linguae Latinae, Paris, 1911, has: "Morsiunculae.--Gallice: Suçons.". Much Oriental erotic literature gives attention to this subject. The Indian Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana devotes no less than one chapter to the love-bite, and there are many references to be found in such manual as the Arabic Perfumed Garden of the Sheik Nefzaoui. When it is borne in mind how markedly Slavonic a tradition is the bite of the vampire it becomes extremely significant to know that biting in amorous embraces is very common among the Southern Slavs. The peasant women of Sicily, especially says Alonzi,[88] in the districts where crimes of blood are prevalent often in their affection for their children kiss them violently, even biting them and sucking their blood until the infant wails in pain. If a child has done wrong they will not only strike it, but also bite it fiercely on the face, ears, or arms, till blood flows. Both men and women often use the threat: "I will drink {p. 188} your blood." There is ocular evidence that a man who had knifed another in a quarrel licked the hot blood from the victim's hand. A very curious case was reported in the London police news of 1894. A man aged thirty, was charged with ill-treating his wife's illegitimate daughter, aged three. The acts had lasted over a period of many months; her lips, eyes, and hands were bitten and covered with bruises from sucking, and often her little pinafore was stained with blood. "Defendant admitted he had bitten the child because he loved it." Here we have true vampirish qualities and inclinations. The Daily Express, 17th April, 1925, gave the following: "VAMPIRE BRAIN. PLAN TO PRESERVE IT FOR SCIENCE." Berlin. Thursday, April 16th. The body of Fritz Haarmann, executed yesterday at Hanover for twenty-seven murders, will not be buried until it has been examined at Göttingen University. "Owing to the exceptional character of the crimes-most of Haarmann's victims were bitten to death--the case aroused tremendous interest among German scientists. It is probable that Haarmann's brain will be removed and preserved by the University authorities.--Central News." The case of Fritz Haarmann, who was dubbed the "Hanover Vampire" was reported in some detail in The News Of the World, 21st December, 1924, under the heading: "VAMPIRE'S VICTIMS." Haarmann was born in Hanover, 26th October, 1879. The father, "Olle Harmann," a locomotive-stoker, was well-known as a rough, cross-grained, choleric man, whom Fritz, his youngest son, both hated and feared. As a youth, Fritz Haarmann was educated at a Church School, and then at a preparatory school for non-commissioned officers at New Breisach. It is significant that he was always dull and stupid, unable to learn; but it appears a good soldier. When released from military service owing to ill-health he returned home, only to be accused in a short while of offences against children. Being considered irresponsible for his actions the Court sent him to an asylum at Hildesheim, whence however he managed to escape and took refuge in Switzerland. Later he returned to Hanover, but the house became unbearable owing to the violent quarrels which were of daily occurrence between him and his father. Accordingly he enlisted and was {p. 189} sent to the crack 10th Jäger Battalion, at Colmar in Alsace. Here he won golden opinions, and when released owing to illness, with a pension his papers were marked "Recht gut." When he reached home there were fresh scenes of rancour whilst blows were not infrequently exchanged, and in 1903 he was examined by a medical expert, Dr. Andrae, who considered him morally lacking but yet there were no grounds for sending him to an asylum. Before long he sank to the status of a tramp; a street hawker, at times; a pilferer and a thief. Again and again he was sent to jail, now charged with larceny, now with burglary, now with indecency, now with fraud. In 1918, he was released after a long stretch to find another Germany. He returned to Hanover, and was able to open a small cook shop in the old quarter of the town, where he also hawked meat which was eagerly sought at a time of general hunger and scarcity. He drove yet another trade, that of "copper's nark," an old lag who had turned spy and informer, who gave secret tips to the police as to the whereabouts of men they wanted. "Detective Haarmann" he was nicknamed by the women who thronged his shop because he always had plenty of fresh meat in store, and he invariably contrived to undersell the other butchers and victuallers of the quarter. The centre of Hanover was the Great Railway Station, and Hanover was thronged especially at its centre with a vast ever-moving population, fugitive, wanderers and homeless from all parts of dislocated Germany. Runaway lads from towns in every direction made their way here, looking for work, looking for food, idly tramping without any definite object, without any definite goal, because they had nothing else to do. It can well be imagined that the police, a hopelessly inadequate force, kept as sharp a watch as possible on the Station and its purlieus, and Haarmann used to help them in their surveyance. At midnight, or in the early morning he would walk up and down among the rows of huddled sleeping forms in the third-class waiting halls and suddenly waking up some frightened youngster demand to see his ticket, ask to know whence he had come and where he was going. Some sad story would be sobbed out, and the kindly Haarmann was wont to offer a mattress and a meal in his own place down town. {p. 190} So far as could be traced the first boy he so charitably took to his rooms was a lad of seventeen named Friedel Rothe, who had run away from home. On 29th September, 1918, his mother received a postcard, and it so happened the very same day his father returned from the war. The parents were not going to let their son disappear without a search, and they soon began to hunt for him in real earnest. One of Friedel's pals told them that the missing boy had met a detective who offered him shelter. Other clues were traced and with extraordinary trouble, for the authorities had more pressing matters in hand than tracking truant schoolboys, the family obliged the police to search Cellarstrasse 27, where Haarmann lived. When a sudden entry was made Haarmann was found with another boy in such an unequivocal situation that his friends, the police, were obliged to arrest him there and then, and he received nine months imprisonment for gross indecency under Section 175 of the German Code. Four years later when Haarmann was awaiting trial for twenty-four murders he remarked: "At the time when the policeman arrested me the head of the boy Friedel Rothe was hidden under a newspaper behind the oven. Later on, I threw it into the canal." In September, 1919, Haarmann first met Hans Grans, the handsome lad, who was to stand beside him in the dock. Grans, the type of abnormal and dangerous decadent which is only too common to-day, was one of the foulest parasites of society, pilferer and thief, bully, informer, spy, agent provocateur, murderer, renter, prostitute, and what is lower and fouler than all, blackmailer. The influence of this Ganymede over Haarmann was complete. It was he who instigated many of the murders--Adolf Harmappel a lad of seventeen was killed in November, 1923, because Grans wanted his pair of new trousers; Ernst Spiecker, likewise aged seventeen was killed on 5th January, 1924, because Grans coveted his "toff shirt"--it was he who arranged the details, who very often trapped the prey. It may be said that in 1918, Hanover, a town of 450,000 inhabitants was well-known as being markedly homosexual. These were inscribed on the police lists no less than 500 "Männliche Prostituierten," of whom the comeliest and best-dressed, the mannered and well-behaved elegants frequented {p. 191} the Café Kröpeke in the Georgstrasse, one of the first boulevards of New Hanover; whilst others met their friends at the andrygonous balls in the Kalenberger Vorstadt, or in the old Assembly Rooms; and lowest of all there was a tiny dancing-place, "Zur schwülen Guste," "Hot-Stuff Gussie's" where poor boys found their clientele. It was here, for example, that Grans picked up young Ernst Spiecker whose tawdry shirt cost him his life. With regard to his demeanour at the trial the contemporary newspapers[89] write: "Throughout the long ordeal Haarmann was utterly impassive and complacent. . . The details of the atrocious crimes for which Haarmann will shortly pay with his life were extremely revolting. All his victims were between 12 and 18 years of age,[90] and it was proved that accused actually sold the flesh for human consumption. He once made sausages in his kitchen, and, together with the purchaser, cooked and ate them. . . Some alienists hold that even then the twenty-four murders cannot possibly exhaust the full toll of Haarmann's atrocious crimes, and estimate the total as high as fifty. With the exception of a few counts, the prisoner made minutely detailed confessions and for days the court listened to his grim narrative of how he cut up the bodies of his victims and disposed of the fragments in va |
