358 A TEIAD OF MEDIAEVAL MYTHS. 



putable corpse should get out of its coffin, and wander about 

 murderously intent, wreaking vengeance all night, biting, 

 bloodsucking, and going back to its grave before morning, it 

 would be a very serious, a very dangerous matter. This is 

 just what vampires do, nevertheless. 



In like manner as sceptical people the men of paralysed 

 minds so beautifully described by Mr. Howitt, the paralysis 

 having been induced by a too continuous study of what we 

 falsely call the inductive sciences find some , absurd way of 

 accounting for, or else denying altogether, the best-attested 

 facts of pneumatology, such as table-turning, table-dancing, 

 spirit-rapping, spectral writing, luminous hands, mystical ac- 

 cordion playing, and other modern spiritual manifestations ; 

 so more than one writer has attempted to explain away the 

 precise relations concerning dead-alive people of all varieties, 

 from the masticatores of Raufft to the vroucolakas of the 

 Greeks. 



Accordingly, it is argued, as already stated, that the 

 milder, the less extraordinary of these recitals, are amply ac- 

 counted for on the assumption of trance; and that the records 

 of pure vampiredom, tales about dead-alive men arising from 

 their tombs, stalking about, bloodsucking and murdering, are 

 based on a pretension of the Greek church, to the effect that 

 Mother Earth refuses to accept, and retain in her bosom, 

 corpses of persons who have come under orthodox excommu- 

 nication. It has even been accepted as a tenet of faith by the 

 Eastern church, I believe, that no unorthodox corpse can 

 possibly decay if buried in orthodox soil. There might be 

 something in this view of the case, if records of dead-alive 

 people were traceable only to authors of the pure Greek 

 faith ; but, in view of testimony from other quarters, con- 

 sidering that dead-alive people have been known to wander 

 from their tombs in England, Germany, and elsewhere, it 

 seems that the hypothesis cited falls to the ground wholly. 

 It must be conceded, however, that vampiredom has received 



