348 A TKIAD OF MEDLEVAL MYTHS. 



After making this confession of faith, it will not seem 

 wonderful in the least degree that I have been studying the 

 manners and customs of spirits, hobgoblins, creatures of the 

 elements, such as undines, sylphs, salamanders, gnomes, fairies, 

 and the like ; witches, wizards, sorcerers, augurs, necromancers 

 of various countries and of various epochs; creatures, in short, 

 that some people denominate incorrectly, as I believe, and 

 have sought to prove ' supernatural.' 



Yes, I have been studying them all in many a recording 

 page; from the mouldy and worm-eaten tomes coeval with 

 the discovery of printing, to the railway volumes with many- 

 coloured binding, reminding one of the particoloured coat of 

 Joseph. Yes; things falsely called c supernatural,' I have 

 been studying them all ; and not least carefully those beings 

 so horrible, so dreadfully curious, so dangerous withal con- 

 cerning which some few explanatory words shall presently be 

 written the wandering bloodthirsty vampires Vroucolakas 

 or Broucolakas of the Greeks. 



Perhaps there never was yet an extraordinary revelation 

 vouchsafed to the faithful, concerning which sceptics and 

 scoffers people of science, as they call themselves; those men 

 of dwarfed and paralysed minds, so beautifully portrayed by 

 Mr. William Howitt have not suggested some mean and 

 grovelling imputation, the acceptance of which would reduce 

 the facts narrated to the category of mere superstitions, fos- 

 tered mostly by churches and by priests. Accordingly, in 

 respect of vampires, I have seen the statement made, that the 

 assumption of these creatures as realities is referable to a 

 certain pretension that an individual dying under sacerdotal 

 ban, and being interred, could not decay after the manner of 

 honest corpses committed to earth. 



A pretension indeed! as if the learned Michael Raufft, who 

 wrote a learned book De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis, 

 is not worthy of all credence. As if the learned book of simi- 

 lar title, published by Philip Eehrius, could leave the matter 



