a glimpse of him can be caught. In this way the sheep is tricked because the ghost does not know whom to haunt and punish for its death. Moreover, sheep give health and protection to cattle, and a ram is almost invariably sent into the pastures with a herd of cows. Should a sheep die in a house nobody must dare openly to mention the fact, which may only be alluded to in the most covert and circumlocutionary phrase, for were anyone to say, “the sheep is dead,” its ghost sorely angered would assuredly afflict the unlucky speaker with some disease and possibly even kill him outright.[53] It is worth noting that among the ancient Greeks it was thought that any garment made from the fleece of a sheep which had been worried or torn by a wolf would have a bad effect upon the wearer and set up some roseola and an intense irritation of the skin.[54] It is certainly curious to note the whole mass of tradition which, as it would seem, the wide world over is connected with the sheep, and in particular when this animal has been attacked or slain by a wolf.
Even as some kind of vampirish infection was held to proceed from the wolf, the vampire himself will even more strongly convey this taint, and therefore, unless the most drastic and immediate remedies are applied, a person who is attacked by a vampire and whose blood has been sucked will become a vampire in turn imbued with a craving to pass on the horrible pollution. This is perhaps, and with good reason, the most dreaded quality of the vampire, and examples thereof occur again and again in legend and history.
It is far more curious that it should be thought that those over whose dead bodies a cat or any other animal has passed should become vampires. This belief widely exists amongst Slavonic peoples, and is to be found in some parts of Greece. It also prevails in China where a cat is never allowed to enter a room with a corpse for the body still contains the Kuei, the lower or inferior soul of Yin original, and by leaping over it the cat will impart something of its original savage or tigerish nature and the dead man may become a vampire.[55] It should be explained that it is a common belief among the Chinese that there are two “souls”; the higher soul which after death seeks the divine life, the heavenly source of its being; and the lower soul, which is gross, returning to the
