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Traditions The time of Vampires is when the night is longest
Traditions The time of Vampires is when the night is longest
| The time of Vampires is when the night is longest |
Page 1 of 8  From the Night of the Undead, through the ripped veil, the undead are roaming the lands until the 6th of January, when all the waters are blessed and they are chased back before the veil closes again.A few notes from a researcher's point of view. "The folklore of vampires is of special interest from the light it throws on primitive ideas about body and soul, and about the relation of the body and soul after death. In Russia, Roumania, and the Balkan states there is an idea—sometimes vague, sometimes fairly definite—that the soul does not finally leave the body and enter into Paradise until forty days after death. It is supposed that it may even linger for years, and when this is the case decomposition is delayed. In Roumania, bodies are disinterred at an interval of three years after death in the case of a child, of four or five years in the case of young folk, and of seven years in the case of elderly people. If decomposition is not then complete, it is supposed that the corpse is a vampire; if it is complete, and the bones are white and clean, it is a sign that the soul has entered into eternal rest. The bones are washed in water and wine and put in clean linen, a religious service is held, and they are reinterred. In Bukovina and the surrounding districts there was an orgy of burials and reburials in the years 1919 and 1920, for not only were people dying of epidemics and hardships, but also the people who had died in the early years of the war had to be disinterred. It is now considered to be exceptional that a spirit should reanimate its body and walk as a vampire, but, in a vampire story quoted below, it is said that they were once as common as blades of grass. It would seem that the most primitive phase of the vampire belief was that all departed spirits wished evil to those left, and that special means had to be taken in all cases to prevent their return. The most typical vampire is therefore the reanimated corpse. We may call this the dead-vampire type. People destined to become vampires after death may be able in life to send out their souls, and even their bodies, to wander at crossroads with reanimated corpses. This type may be called the live-vampire type. It merges into the ordinary witch or wizard, who can meet other witches or wizards either in the body or as a spirit. A third type of vampire is the vârcolac, which eats the sun and moon during eclipses. A typical vampire of the reanimated-corpse type may have the attributes of a lover, as in Scott's William and Helen. The zmeu may also be such a lover. The strigele (sing. striga) are not really vampires, but are sometimes confused with them. They are spirits either of living witches, which these send out as a little light, or of dead witches who can find no resting place. These strigele come together in uneven numbers, seven or nine. They meet on rocky mountains, and dance and say: Nup, Cuisnup, In cas a cu ustoroi nu ma duc. [Nup, Cuisnup, I won't enter any house where there is garlic.] They are seen as little points of light floating in the air. Their dances are exquisitely beautiful. Seven or nine lights start in a line, and then form into various figures, ending up in a circle. After they break off their dance, they may do mischief to human beings. As regards the names used for vampires, dead and alive, strigoi (fem. strigoica) is the most common Roumanian term, and moroi is perhaps the next most usual. Moroii is less often used alone than strigoi. Usually we have strigoi and moroi consorting together, but the moroi are subject to the strigoi. We find also strigoi, moroi, and vârcolaci, and strigoi and pricolici used as if all were birds of the same feather. A Transilvanian term is ?i?coi. Vârcolaci (svârcolaci) and pricolici are sometimes dead vampires, and sometimes animals which eat the moon. Oper is the Ruthenian word for dead vampire. In Bukovina, vidme is used for a witch; it covers much the same ground as strigoi (used for a live vampire), but it is never used for a dead vampire. Diavoloace, beings with two horns and spurs on their sides and feet, are much the same as vidme. As Dr. Gaster reminds me, in many disenchantments we find phrases such as: De strigoaica, de strigoi, ?i de case cu moroi. [From vampires (male and female), and from a home with vampires.] De deochetori ?i de deochetoare, De moroi, cu moroaiça, De strigoi cu strigoaica. [From those who cast the evil eye (male or female), from vampires (male and female).] Ci, íi dracul cu drácoaica, striga cu strigoiul, Deochiu cu deochitorul, pociturá cu pocitorul, Potca cu potcoiul. [The devil with the female devil, the spirit of the dead witch with the vampire (male), the evil eye with the caster of the evil eye, the bewitchment with the bewitcher, the quarrel with the mischief-maker.] Ciuma, the plague, is occasionally one of the party. The strigoi and moroi are almost inseparable, hunting, however, with witches, wizards, and devils. The nature spirits (ielele and dansele) usually have disenchantments of their own, for they work apart from vampires and wizards, who are beings of human origin. While the peasant groups nature spirits apart from the more human workers of evil, he groups the living and the dead together, for the caster of the evil eye and the bewitcher are living men, though prospective vampires. The vampire, in fact, forms a convenient transition between human workers of evil and the devil, who resembles the dead vampire in not being alive in the flesh.
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