and this is deemed a work of true charity by which they acquire great merit, it brings a blessing upon their own souls (φυχικό), if, in spite of all their care some cat does jump across the body, the dead man must be pierced through with two long “sack-needles” (σακκορράφαις), in order to secure his rest and to guard against his return. It is well to scatter mustard seed on the roof and on the threshold, and the wise man will barricade his door with brambles and thorns. Should the vampire return he cannot fail to occupy himself with counting the seeds, and it will be dawn, when he must return to his grave, long before he completes the tale. Should he endeavour to pass through the bushes he will inevitably be caught and held fast by the briars. Ralston tells us that the Serbs and the Bulgarians keep this vigil even more carefully than the Greeks. “In some places the jumping of a boy over the corpse is considered as fatal as that of a cat. The flight of a bird above the body may also be attended by the same terrible results; and so may—in the Ukraine—the mere breath of the wind from the Steppe.”[58] What is extremely curious is that this tradition still lingers in the north of England, and if a cat or dog pass over a corpse the animal must be killed at once. The reason for this has been entirely forgotten, but the survival is very remarkable as showing that once there existed a dread of vampires in England which to-day is entirely forgotten. Thomas Pennant says that in Scotland: “No dog or cat must be allowed to leap over the corpse or enter the room. It is reckoned so ominous, their doing so that the poor animal is killed without mercy.”[59] It is even still the custom that all animals shall be shut up till the funeral procession has left. It is believed that a cat will not remain in the house with an unburied corpse; and rooks (we know) will abandon the place till after the funeral, if the rookery be near the mansion. The explanation given by John Jamieson[60] that if a cat has leapt over a corpse the first person on to whose lap he may afterwards jump, or who may take him up in his arms, is stricken with blindness would seem to be a later invention, a reason made up to explain the ill-omen, when the vampire tradition had disappeared, and so the real reason had been entirely forgotten.
Having investigated the various reasons why any person
