THE VAMPIRE IN ASSYRIA, ETC.
269
- 30 Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas: die materielle Cultur des Danakil, Galla, und Somâl, Berlin, 1893.
A. C. Hollis, The Masai, Oxford, 1905.
- 31 Apparently not S. Hilary of Arles, nor S. Hilary of Poictiers.
- 32 The custom of gathering various herbs, especially S. John’s Wort, hawkseed, and mugwort on S. John’s eve, 23 June, as a protection against magical spells was almost universal throughout Europe as it was believed that then warlocks and witches were especially active. An immense library of folk-lore is concerned with this day. R. Kühnau, Schlesische Sagen, Berlin, 1910–1913, iii, p. 39, n.1394, says: “On S. John’s Night (between the 23rd and 24th of June) the witches busily bestir themselves to force their way into the houses of men and the stalls of cattle.”
- 33 The deception was wrought by glamour. Algernon Blackwood has made excellent use of such a magical delusion in his occult studies, Dr. John Silence, 1908, Case iv, “Secret Worship.”
- 34 Two vols. New York, 1862. Vol. II, p. 327.
- 35 J. Noake, Worcestershire Notes and Queries, London, 12mo, 1856, p. 169.
- 36 I quote the version given by J. O. Halliwell, but there are many variants.
- 37 Act II. The soliloquy of Barabas as he is prowling outside the convent toward midnight. One may compare Shakespeare’s “The nightly owl or fatal raven,” Titus Andronicus, II, iii. 97. Also in Othello, IV, i, 21:
Oh! it comes o’er my memory
As doth the raven o’er the infected house,
Boding to all.
And Lady Macbeth’s (Macbeth, I, v, 35):
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
Tickell, Colin and Lucy, has:
Three times, all in the dead of night,
A bell was heard to ring.
And at her window, shrieking thrice,
The raven flapp’d his wing;
Full well the love-lorn maiden knew,
The solemn-boding sound….
Much of interest might be written on this subject of which it has been possible for me en passant barely to touch the fringe.
- 38 Robert Forby, Vocabulary of East Anglia, 2 vols., London, 8vo, 1830.
- 39 William Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, London, 8vo, 1866. Harrison Ainsworth’s fine romance, Rookwood, first published in April, 1834, may be noted in connexion with this tradition.
- 40 The Animal World, vi, p. 29.
- 41 V, v.
- 42 G. Willoughby-Meade, Chinese Ghouls and Goblins, pp. 234–35.
- 43 Op. cit., p. 236.
- 44 The Ocean of Story, pp. 139–140. Note II, Chapter LXXIII.
- 45 W. Skeat, Malay Magic, London, 1900, pp. 320–331.
- 46 In 1644, Elizabeth Clarke, a notorious witch, confessed to Matthew Hopkins that amongst other familiars she entertained our “Newes, like a Polcat.”
- 47 The examination and confession of certaine Wytches at Chelmsforde in the Countie of Essex before the Quenes Maiesties Judges the XXVI daye of July anno 1566.
- 48 Nothing is known of this writer who probably compiled his book in the fourth century. The De Prodigiis or Prodigiorum Libellus contains a record of the phenomena classed by the Romans under the general heading of Prodigia or Ostenta. The series extends in chronological order from the consulship of Scipio and Laelius, B.C. 190, to the consulship of Fabius and Aelius, B.C. 11. The materials are derived from an abridgement of Livy, whose very phrases are continually employed.
