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Origins of Vampiric Folklore
We will first look at the history of the area where vampire legends
were born. Although no one knows how the legend of the vampire began
(Cooper, p. 34), it is generally accepted that the folklore
originated among the Slavs (Dundes, p.4). The area we are most
interested in includes Serbia, Bosnia, Wallachia, Transylvania,
Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, as they were in the 15th
century. It is impossible to say how far back the legends go, but by
the first half of the 14th century, the Serbian Emperor Stefan Dusan
had passed a law prohibiting the exhumation and cremation of dead
bodies supposed to be vampires (Perkowski, Vampires, p.205), so we
may assume it was a well-established belief by then.
We now look at possible motivations for the belief in the undead.
Before we can get to that, we need to mention how folklore is spread,
and why. This is something Michael Bell calls the folklore process:
“As we interact with close acquaintances during the normal course
of daily life, we make observations, give opinions, discuss our
lives, share our burdens, seek—and give—advice, and convey other
expressions that we deem important enough to pass along.” (Bell, p.75)
Naturally, this process would take place rather quickly as nations
exchanged culture through trade, travel, immigration, and warfare. A
peasant in Germany, perhaps, complains to his friends that his family
has become ill and his children have been dying. A traveler from
Hungary overhears and claims to know what the problem is: his family
is plagued by a vampire. The traveler has this on the best authority
from a Serbian merchant whose mother witnessed a vampire with her own
eyes; and so it goes.
The Slavic belief in life after death is that the soul will wander
for forty days on earth, visiting those places it knew in life. After
the end of this period, it will try to reenter the body and live
again, but will be frightened by the state of its decayed corpse so
much that it flees permanently to the underworld (Perkowski,
Vampires, pp.24-25). Certainly this lends itself very easily to the
idea of the dead returning, and perhaps the relevant question to ask
is what influences do these underlying beliefs draw on? In the 9th
through 14th centuries, a religious sect greatly influenced the
Slavic people. It was called Bogomilism after its founder Bogomil who
lived in Bulgaria during the reign of Tsar Peter (927-969).
Bogomilism has been called the most powerful sectarian movement in
the history of the Balkans (Perkowski, Darkling, pp.24-26), and
taught the Iranian concept of dualism. Dualism is the belief that
there are two forces competing for control of the world: good (or
God) and evil (the devil). Further, it assumes that neither is truly
omnipotent (this is why it was considered heresy by Christians) but
both battle continually for dominance. Matter, including the body,
was evil in origin, but man’s spirit was divine. At death, the body
returns to matter, the underworld, and darkness while the spirit
ascends to heaven and light. So what happens to the spirit of an evil
person? If it could not ascend, it would remain on earth, in the
world of matter, or perhaps remain tied to the material body… It is
from there but a very short step to vampirism as it appears in
folklore. Evidence supporting this connecting in found in the
Panoplia Dogmetica, from which we learn that Anatolian bishops were
accused of being Bogomils in 1143 because they “dug up bodies in the
belief that they were possessed of demons and unfit for burial
(Perkowski, Darkling, p.26).” The dualistic belief was taught in
Iran by Zoroaster (686 – 551 BC), so it had almost a thousand years
to develop and absorb ideas before reaching the Balkans. By this
time, the Zoroastrian deities had become the God and Devil of
Christianity.
We can now address the question of why the vampire has the
characteristics it does. The notion of blood-sucking demons is
probably older than recorded history. Blood is the life. It has
always been a custom of man to anthropomorphize and objectify the
danger that continually surrounds him. These become demons that can
easily steal away the life of the unwary. It is not such a great step
to give this an even more concrete basis: that which steals your life
can do so by stealing your blood. But in the vampire we have a
different twist: the demon that preys on the living by stealing blood
was at one time human itself. It has a human body, albeit a corpse,
it still presumably remembers its human life, and it takes blood not
only to kill, but to sustain itself in the state it occupies, between
life and death. And perhaps one of the most important aspects of a
vampire: it always attacks its own family first, and only when all of
them are dead does it move on. Thus the vampire of folklore obeys
blood ties as well as blood thirst.
Actually, it is worth noting that not all vampires suck blood, at
least not originally. In some areas, the vampire appeared as a
specter that would silently sit down to dinner with its family from
life. Without a word, it would nod to one of the family, who would
die a few days later. Other times, the vampire would go to the church
at midnight and ring the church bell. All those who heard it were
sure to die (Perkowski, Vampires, pp.87 & 138). The means in which
the vampire kills is not the most important thing.
The folkloric vampire played (and in some places still plays) a very
important role in Slavic society. Not only does it anthropomorphize
the danger of life, such as disease, it also gives the people of the
community a way to fight back. By digging up and impaling, beheading,
or burning the corpse of a supposed vampire, the peasantry of Eastern
Europe were able to strike a literal blow against evil, pestilence,
and the harsh reality of their existence. In this way the vampire was
perhaps similar to the witch and sorcerer, living scapegoats found in
many cultures throughout the world. In fact, the word upir, for
“vampire” can also mean “witch” (Perkowski, Vampires, p.184). There
are other cases of the distinctions between the two being blurred
linguistically as well. This is hardly surprising, since those who
were witches or sorcerers in life were thought to become vampires in
death.
Among the Gypsies of Kosovo, it was also believed that pumpkins,
watermelons, and even farm tools could become vampires of sorts.
These were weak vampires, and thought only to wander around breaking
dishes and causing minor mischief. The ritual for killing a vegetable
vampire was simple, and involved boiling the thing (Perkowski,
Vampires, p.213). In this way, every housewife was equipped with a
physical means to counter even life’s minor inconveniences.
The myth of the vampire had many other, more subtle, roles to play as
well. The example of the witch illustrates one: it served as a
deterrent to subversive and non-conformist behavior. People whose
spirits were thought to be vampires included not only witches, but
also suicides, those who committed murder or other serious crimes,
and in some cases even those who were especially mean-spirited. Paul
Barber says, “…list of potential revenants tend to contain people who
are different from the people who make the lists (Barber, p.30).”
This generalization is only half true, however. There were numerous
ways to become a vampire, both before and after death. These varied
somewhat from region to region. Being the victim of a vampire attack,
or having an animal, especially a cat, leap over your dead body
usually meant you would become a vampire yourself. In some cases,
even a shadow passing over the body was enough. Not only did this
ensure there could never be a shortage of vampires (thereby ensuring
the people would never feel totally helpless against ill fortune and
death), but it may also have served to make sure no one was alone
when they died. The corpse had to be carefully watched from the
moment of death onward, and guarded so that nothing would pass over
it until it was in the ground.
There were also ways to be destined from birth to become a vampire. A
child born with a crimson caul on his head, or with teeth, was said
to have that fate in store. In the case of the caul, a remedy was
possible. The caul must be removed, and dried or burnt to ashes. The
ashes must be kept, and fed to the child when he or she was seven. In
this way all danger could be avoided. In the case of those born with
teeth, special precautions must be taken at death (Perkowski,
Vampires, p.190).
The final function of the vampire folklore in Slavic society existed
among the Gypsies of Kosovo and Novopazarski (an area in Serbia,
perhaps related to modern-day Novi Pazar), who believed that a
vampires first concern upon returning from the dead was to seek out
his former wife, or, if he was a bachelor, some young woman of the
town, for sexual satisfaction. This, of course, provides a very
convenient safety net for those women who seek sexual comfort after
the death of a husband, or who for any other reason may give birth to
an illegitimate child. It can easily be said to be the child of a
vampire. These Dhampirs, as they were called, also had a future
waiting for them. It was believed that the child of a vampire could
see and destroy the monsters. In return for killing a vampire, the
Dhampir was given either a fixed sum of money, or cattle. In the
latter case he was given as many as he asked for. In addition, his
traveling expenses while hunting the vampire were paid by the
village, and he was given a meal in celebration when the hunt was
over. It was also thought that the Dhampir could pass the knowledge
of vampire hunting on to his or her children (Perkowski, Vampires, pp.
217-222). So the vampire myth provided a niche in society for these
children who otherwise would have been abandoned or shunned.
Works Cited
Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1988.
Bell, Michael E. Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s
Vampires. New York: Carrol and Graf, 2001.
Cooper, Basil. The Vampire in Legend and Fact. Secaucus, NJ: The
Citadel Press, 1974.
Dundes, Alan, ed. The Vampire: A Casebook. Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1998.
Perkowski, Jan L. The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism.
Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, Inc. 1989.
Perkowski, Jan L. Vampires of the Slavs. Cambridge, MA: Slavica
Publishers, Inc, 1976.
Cole Wellman
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