I caved

I wrote, 'Despite the exorbitant price, I'll probably bite the bullet and buy 'em anyway.' And I did. On October 12th. Shipping cost €7,50. The issues arrived in the post, today.

Academia.edu

I'm looking forward to reading Eugenio M. Olivares Merino's two-parter, 'The (Medi)evil dead: revenants and vampires in twelfth century English literature', in particular. 

He has a thing for this era, as he also wrote 'The Old English poem "A vampyre of the Fens": a bibliographical ghost' (pdf) for Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 32 (2005).

'A vampyre of the Fens' is a poem supposedly written 'a the beginning of the eleventh century', which not only makes it the world's oldest vampire poem, but features the first reference to 'vampyres', anywhere. However, as Olivares Merino's essay attests, someone done goofed along the way.

Olivares Merino is a Professor of English at the Universidad de Jaén.

Kiang shi mystery

I previously said, 'If there's anything that throws a spanner into my belief that vampires were not universal entities, it's those bloody stryges and kiang shi.' Let's focus on the latter.

The kiang shi are better known as Chinese vampires, on account of their supposed bloodsucking proclivities. Bloodsucking is a key trait of the folkloric vampire, as demonstrated by the Plogojowitz and Paole cases. In various vampire 'field guides', this trait is sometimes omitted, but broadened to include beings that steal 'life force' or some derivative. Even flesh eaters. The broad application of the term is a bugbear I see popping up time and time again.

But the vampire as we know it, has its origins in the Serbian cases mentioned, which give us a vampire 'paradigm': bloodsucking corpses. At the time, this wasn't a term of convenience, but the local word used to describe such beings, ergo, other 'vampires' must conform to this paradigm, from a folkloric perspective. So when you get things like the kiang shi popping up, seemingly 'developed' independently, a spanner's thrown into the works. To my knowledge, there was no real cultural interaction between the Chinese and Slavs at the time, so, how did the vampire 'get there'?

That's where we ask ourselves: was the kiang shi actually a vampire? I'm starting to have my doubts. I came across an article that gives brief coverage to the kiang shi, written by one J. L. Nevius¹:

Google books

Is it possible the kiang shi has actually been 'vampirised' through Western influence? No mention of bloodsucking there, but a very interesting reference to death-by-sunlight. However, I should point out that the vampire's destruction by sunlight is not a folkloric motif, but a comparatively modern one.

I'm gonna go over the evidence for the kiang shi's 'vampire' tag at a later time, but I'll say that 'if they eat any material food' bit reminds me of a certain other folkloric creature...

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^{1. JL Nevius, 'Religions and superstitions of China', The Missionary Magazine, August 1858, p. 304.↩}

La guzla

Internet archive

Prosper Mérimée was the author of La Guzla, ou Choix de poesies illyriques, recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, La Croatie et l'Hertzegowine (1827), which sometimes pops up in relation to vampire literature.

According to Wikipedia, 'It was presented as a collection of translations of folk ballads narrated by a guzlar (gusle player) Hyacinthe Maglanović'. Or, so it seemed.

The ballads were actually made up—by Mérimée, himself. Dragutin Subotić noted, 'A detailed account of Prosper Mèrimèe's literary fraud is to be found in the excellent work of V. M. Jovanović'¹, namely, Voyslav M. Yovanovitch's « La guzla » de Prosper Mérimée, étude d'histoire romantique (1911). Thanks to the wondrous Internet archive, you can read it, yourself. If you read French, of course.

Oh, and you can get Mérimée's 1827 work through the Internet archive, too, via Google books. Gotta love the 'net!

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^{1. D Subotić, 'Serbian popular poetry in English literature', The Slavonic Review, vol. 6, no. 16, 1927, p. 153.↩}

Random post

On your right, you'll see the new 'Random posts' widget. I'm sure you can guess what it does. I got it from here. My old blog, Diary of an amateur vampirologist, used a random posts function called LinkWithin, which shared 'related posts'. 

LinkWithin

I would've used it here, too, but as my posts are generally shorter, they'd be a bit of an eyesore on the page. However, if they had a 'list' function rather than 'thumbnail' display, I woulda used that instead.

The parasite

Not content with ripping off my old blog's name, the blogger behind Diary of a vampirologist aka Journal of a vampirologist—variously calling himself Vampirologist, Demonologist, Gothic, The Overseer and Dennis Crawford—has renamed his blog to something very, very familiar: 

The vampirologist

As you can see, he's even copied the font I use in my blog title—UnifrakturMagunita. Sigh. I'm not the only one who's had the misfortune of dealing with this fella, either. Niels exposed him as a plagiarist back in 2009; as did I (here and here). He's still at it, too: his latest post is regurgitated from elsewhere, sans attribution.¹

This guy's been on my back like a leech for years. Not only did he copy my design, and ape the title of Diary of an amateur vampirologist, but he's also ripped off my other blog's title, too. You see, I write a blog (two, actually) on the Highgate vampire case. They're called Did a wampyr walk in Highgate? Guess what his is called? You got it. Both rip-off jobs are clearly intended to leech hits off my blogs. Or something more sinister—

'What's the big deal?' some of you might be asking. 'So he copies a few of your blog titles? So what?' The problem is, this character hasn't just stopped at hijacking my blog titles, but my online identity, too. Y'know, like stealing my user name and claiming they'd started their blogs or forums before I did. Trying to 'erase' me, as it were and paint me as a liar, etc.

Did I also mention that the organisation he's affiliated with the Vampire Research Society—who publicly revealed my real name because I'm critical of their 'cause'? A similar organisation—who he's also affiliated with—posted 'my' home address online. There's a lotta fruitcakes out there, people. That's why I wrote this PSA. Be careful with your personal details and keep an eye out for these hacks.

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^{1. Should these pages mysterious 'disappear' or be 'revised', etc., I've saved the originals as proof.↩}

Nosferatu!

Man, I love the Internet archive. Yesterday, I found The Nineteenth Century's 18th volume, which contains the July 1885 issue. What's the big deal about that? It features Emily de Laszowska Gerard's  'Transylvanian superstitions' (pp. 130–50); a known source for Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).¹

Internet archive

'More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire, or nosferatu, in whom every Roumenian [Romanian] peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell.'² Until recently, it was generally assumed Gerard 'invented' nosferatu, as attempts to antedate the word went nowhere. However, I uncovered a source preceding her usage—by twenty years. Thanks to Google books.

Gerard's nosferatu appears several times in Stoker's novel. 'Friend Arthur,' says Van Helsing, 'if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die, or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern europe, and would for all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror.'

His blunt comments on what he intends to do once the vampirised Lucy Westenra is located—"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body"—clearly echo Gerard's prescription for 'very obstinate cases' of nosferatu visitations.

John Seward and Van Helsing even follow through with the gruesome deed: 'The Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away.'

Later, he speaks of the vampire's pestilential nature—as does Gerard—and the great fight ahead: 'The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil.'

The word has resonated with us ever since. It is commonly recognised as a synonym for vampire. When F. W. Murnau wanted to distance his 1922 film from its obvious source—futilely, as it turned out—he used the word as its title.

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^{1. B Stoker, Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula: a facsimile edition, annotated & transcribed by R Eighteen-Bisang & E Miller, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jeffereson, N.C., 2008, p. 304. Appendix IV. The article's pagination is listed as '128–144'. A different edition of the magazine may've been used, or a standalone issue. Internet archive hosts a bound volume.↩}

^{2. E de Laszowska Gerard,  'Transylvanian superstitions', The Nineteenth Century, July 1885, p. 142.↩}

Brother, can you spare a mint?

Night of the running dead

After you've dined on garlic infused spag, how about a mint? An anti-vampire garlic mint. The site warns that 'consistent use . . . may have a negative impact on your social life.'  Still, at $1.99 for a tin of 'about one hundred', that's a helluva bargain.