carriage window he sees at a cross-road the two horrible creatures. He finds a lodging, but within the next forty-eight hours his pursuers fall upon him. He is discovered dead, and in the district it is still remembered how “the jury that viewed the body fainted, seven of ’em did, and none of ’em wouldn’t speak to what they see, and the verdict was visitation of God; and how the people as kep’ the ’ouse moved out that same week and went away from that part.”
This story may, I think, certainly be considered as Vampire lore, and although it must, of course, be perfectly familiar to all who delight in tales of the supernatural I have related it at some little length here, partly because it is told so excellently well, and partly because it so admirably fulfils and exemplifies the qualities that this kind of literature should possess. It is brief and succinct, although there are many details, but every touch tells. No ghost story should be of any length. The horror and the awe evaporate with prolixity. The ghost is malevolent and odious. In fiction a helpful apparition is a notable weakness, and the whole narrative becomes flabby to a degree. The authentic note of horror is struck in the eerie suggestion which, as we have noticed, is of intent left ill-defined. Nothing could be more crude than an explanation, and it is this banality that often ruins a story which otherwise might be of the very first order.
To review the traces of vampire legends which appear in sagas, and which are in truth but few and unimportant, seems to be outside our province here, and even more foreign to our purpose would be the present examination of the vampire legend in folk-lore since this has already been dealt with in the course of the preceding chapters, and to regard such traditions merely as literature would be not only to look at them from a wrong perspective but to misrepresent their quality and essentially to pervert their purpose.
Since some point must be chosen at which to consider vampirism in literature we may most fairly recall to mind the many academic and philosophical treatises upon the Vampire which were rehearsed and discussed in German Universities during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and these startling themes soon began to attract the attention of poets
