translation, London, 1778), Alberto Fortis says: “When a man dies suspected of becoming a Vampire or Vukodlak, as they call it, they cut his hams, and prick his whole body with pins, pretending that, after this operation, he cannot walk about. These are even instances of Morlacchi, who, imagining that they may possibly thirst for children’s blood after death, intreat their heirs, and sometimes oblige them to promise, to treat them as Vampires when they die.”
When the Vampire was tracked to his lair one of the most approved methods to render him harmless was to transfix the corpse through the region of the heart with a stake which may be of aspen or maple as in Russia, or more usually of hawthorn or whitethorn. The aspen tree is held to be particularly sacred as according to one account of this was the wood of the Cross. In her Wood-walk, Mrs. Felicia Hemans says: “The aspen-tree shivers mystically in sympathy with the horror of that mother-tree in Palestine, which was compelled to furnish materials for the Cross.”[108] With regard to hawthorn de la Charbonelais Chesnil tells us: “Cet arbre est regardé comme le privilegié des fées qui se rassemblant, dit-on, sous ses rameaux embaumées. En Normandie on croit aussi que la foudre ne le frappe jamais parcequ’on suppose, mais sans aucun fondement qu’il servit à former la couronne de Christ.”[109] And again: “Dans plusiers contrées, ce vegetal [Mepsilus pyraneatha] est l’objet d’une sorte de vénération parcequ’on croit que e’est dans un buisson de cette espèce qui Dieu apparut à Moïse et que c’est pour cette raison que ses feuilles demeurent toujours vertes, et que ses fruits ne se detachent point de l’arbre durant l’hiver.” Of whitethorn Sir John Mandeville says:[110] “Then was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there the Jewes scorned Hym and maden Him a crown of the branches of the Albiespyne, that is. Whitethorn that grew in the same gardyn, and setten yt upon His heved. And therefore hath the Whitethorn many virtues. For he that beareth a branch on hym thereof, no thundre, ne no manor of tempest may dere him, ne in the house that is ynne may non evil ghost enter.” The ancient Greeks believed that branches of whitethorn or buckthorn (rhamnus) fastened to a door or outside a window prevented the entry of witches and guarded the house against the evil spells of sorcerers.[111] Hence they suspended branches of it above their lintels when sacrifices
