Russian Fairy Tales — 31 - Chapter 5 - Ghost Stories - Part 3 - The Shroud - The Coffin-Lid - The Two Corpses - The Dog and the Corpse - The Soldier and the Vampire

But from these dim sketches of a life beyond, or rather within the grave, in which memories of old days and old friendships are preserved by ghosts of an almost genial and entirely harmless disposition, we will now turn to those more elaborate pictures in which the dead are represented under an altogether terrific aspect.

It is not as an incorporeal being that the visitor from the other world is represented in the Skazkas.

He comes not as a mere phantom, intangible, impalpable, incapable of physical exertion, haunting the dwelling which once was his home, or the spot to which he is drawn by the memory of some unexpiated crime.

It is as a vitalized corpse that he comes to trouble mankind, often subject to human appetites, constantly endowed with more than human strength and malignity.

His apparel is generally that of the grave, and he cannot endure to part with it, as may be seen from the following story-- THE SHROUD.

[404] In a certain village there was a girl who was lazy and slothful, hated working but would gossip and chatter away like anything.

Well, she took it into her head to invite the other girls to a spinning party.

For in the villages, as every one knows, it is the lazybones who gives the spinning-feast, and the sweet-toothed are those who go to it.

Well, on the appointed night she got her spinners together.

They span for her, and she fed them and feasted them.

Among other things they chatted about was this--which of them all was the boldest?

Says the lazybones (_lezhaka_): "I'm not afraid of anything!"

"Well then," say the spinners, "if you're not afraid, go past the graveyard to the church, take down the holy picture from the door, and bring it here."

"Good, I'll bring it; only each of you must spin me a distaff-ful."

That was just her sort of notion: to do nothing herself, but to get others to do it for her.

Well, she went, took down the picture, and brought it home with her.

Her friends all saw that sure enough it was the picture from the church.

But the picture had to be taken back again, and it was now the midnight hour.

Who was to take it?

At length the lazybones said: "You girls go on spinning.

I'll take it back myself.

I'm not afraid of anything!"

So she went and put the picture back in its place.

As she was passing the graveyard on her return, she saw a corpse in a white shroud, seated on a tomb.

It was a moonlight night;

everything was visible.

She went up to the corpse, and drew away its shroud from it.

The corpse held its peace, not uttering a word; no doubt the time for it to speak had not come yet.

Well, she took the shroud and went home.

"There!"

says she, "I've taken back the picture and put it in its place; and, what's more, here's a shroud I took away from a corpse."

Some of the girls were horrified; others didn't believe what she said, and laughed at her.

But after they had supped and lain down to sleep, all of a sudden the corpse tapped at the window and said: "Give me my shroud!

Give me my shroud!"

The girls were so frightened they didn't know whether they were alive or dead.

But the lazybones took the shroud, went to the window, opened it, and said: "There, take it."

"No," replied the corpse, "restore it to the place you took it from."

Just then the cocks suddenly began to crow.

The corpse disappeared.

Next night, when the spinners had all gone home to their own houses, at the very same hour as before, the corpse came, tapped at the window, and cried: "Give me my shroud!"

Well, the girl's father and mother opened the window and offered him his shroud.

"No," says he, "let her take it back to the place she took it from."

"Really now, how could one go to a graveyard with a corpse?

What a horrible idea!"

she replied.

Just then the cocks crew.

The corpse disappeared.

Next day the girl's father and mother sent for the priest, told him the whole story, and entreated him to help them in their trouble.

"Couldn't a service[405] be performed?"

they said.

The priest reflected awhile; then he replied: "Please to tell her to come to church to-morrow."

Next day the lazybones went to church.

The service began, numbers of people came to it.

But just as they were going to sing the cherubim song,[406] there suddenly arose, goodness knows whence, so terrible a whirlwind that all the congregation fell flat on their faces.

And it caught up that girl, and then flung her down on the ground.

The girl disappeared from sight;

nothing was left of her but her back hair.

[407] They are generally the corpses of wizards, or of other sinners who have led specially unholy lives, which leave their graves by night and wander abroad.

Into such bodies, it is held, demons enter, and the combination of fiend and corpse goes forth as the terrible Vampire thirsting for blood.

Of the proceedings of such a being the next story gives a detailed account, from which, among other things, may be learnt the fact that Slavonic corpses attach great importance to their coffin-lids as well as to their shrouds.

THE COFFIN-LID.

[408] A moujik was driving along one night with a load of pots.

His horse grew tired, and all of a sudden it came to a standstill alongside of a graveyard.

The moujik unharnessed his horse and set it free to graze; meanwhile he laid himself down on one of the graves.

But somehow he didn't go to sleep.

He remained lying there some time.

Suddenly the grave began to open beneath him: he felt the movement and sprang to his feet.

The grave opened, and out of it came a corpse--wrapped in a white shroud, and holding a coffin lid--came out and ran to the church, laid the coffin-lid at the door, and then set off for the village.

The moujik was a daring fellow.

He picked up the coffin-lid and remained standing beside his cart, waiting to see what would happen.

After a short delay the dead man came back, and was going to snatch up his coffin-lid--but it was not to be seen.

Then the corpse began to track it out, traced it up to the moujik, and said: "Give me my lid: if you don't, I'll tear you to bits!"

"And my hatchet, how about that?"

answers the moujik.

"Why, it's I who'll be chopping you into small pieces!"

"Do give it back to me, good man!"

begs the corpse.

"I'll give it when you tell me where you've been and what you've done."

"Well, I've been in the village, and there I've killed a couple of youngsters."

"Well then, now tell me how they can be brought back to life."

The corpse reluctantly made answer: "Cut off the left skirt of my shroud, and take it with you.

When you come into the house where the youngsters were killed, pour some live coals into a pot and put the piece of the shroud in with them, and then lock the door.

The lads will be revived by the smoke immediately."

The moujik cut off the left skirt of the shroud, and gave up the coffin-lid.

The corpse went to its grave--the grave opened.

But just as the dead man was descending into it, all of a sudden the cocks began to crow, and he hadn't time to get properly covered over.

One end of the coffin-lid remained sticking out of the ground.

The moujik saw all this and made a note of it.

The day began to dawn; he harnessed his horse and drove into the village.

In one of the houses he heard cries and wailing.

In he went--there lay two dead lads.

"Don't cry," says he, "I can bring them to life!"

"Do bring them to life, kinsman," say their relatives.

"We'll give you half of all we possess."

The moujik did everything as the corpse had instructed him, and the lads came back to life.

Their relatives were delighted, but they immediately seized the moujik and bound him with cords, saying: "No, no, trickster!

We'll hand you over to the authorities.

Since you knew how to bring them back to life, maybe it was you who killed them!"

"What are you thinking about, true believers!

Have the fear of God before your eyes!"

cried the moujik.

Then he told them everything that had happened to him during the night.

Well, they spread the news through the village; the whole population assembled and swarmed into the graveyard.

They found out the grave from which the dead man had come out, they tore it open, and they drove an aspen stake right into the heart of the corpse, so that it might no more rise up and slay.

But they rewarded the moujik richly, and sent him away home with great honor.

It is not only during sleep that the Vampire is to be dreaded.

At cross-roads, or in the neighborhood of cemeteries, an animated corpse of this description often lurks, watching for some unwary wayfarer whom it may be able to slay and eat.

Past such dangerous spots as these the belated villager will speed with timorous steps, remembering, perhaps, some such uncanny tale as that which comes next.

THE TWO CORPSES.

[409] A soldier had obtained leave to go home on furlough--to pray to the holy images, and to bow down before his parents.

And as he was going his way, at a time when the sun had long set, and all was dark around, it chanced that he had to pass by a graveyard.

Just then he heard that some one was running after him, and crying: "Stop!

you can't escape!"

He looked back and there was a corpse running and gnashing its teeth.

The Soldier sprang on one side with all his might to get away from it, caught sight of a little chapel,[410] and bolted straight into it.

There wasn't a soul in the chapel, but stretched out on a table there lay another corpse, with tapers burning in front of it.

The Soldier hid himself in a corner, and remained there, hardly knowing whether he was alive or dead, but waiting to see what would happen.

Presently up ran the first corpse--the one that had chased the Soldier--and dashed into the chapel.

Thereupon the one that was lying on the table jumped up, and cried to it: "What hast thou come here for?"

"I've chased a soldier in here, so I'm going to eat him."

"Come now, brother!

he's run into my house.

I shall eat him myself."

"No, I shall!"

"No, I shall!"

And they set to work fighting; the dust flew like anything.

They'd have gone on fighting ever so much longer, only the cocks began to crow.

Then both the corpses fell lifeless to the ground, and the Soldier went on his way homeward in peace, saying: "Glory be to Thee, O Lord!

I am saved from the wizards!"

Even the possession of arms and the presence of a dog will not always, it seems, render a man secure from this terrible species of cut-throat.

THE DOG AND THE CORPSE.

[411] A moujik went out in pursuit of game one day, and took a favorite dog with him.

He walked and walked through woods and bogs, but got nothing for his pains.

At last the darkness of night surprised him.

At an uncanny hour he passed by a graveyard, and there, at a place where two roads met, he saw standing a corpse in a white shroud.

The moujik was horrified, and knew not which way to go--whether to keep on or to turn back.

"Well, whatever happens, I'll go on," he thought; and on he went, his dog running at his heels.

When the corpse perceived him, it came to meet him; not touching the earth with its feet, but keeping about a foot above it--the shroud fluttering after it.

When it had come up with the sportsman, it made a rush at him;

but the dog seized hold of it by its bare calves, and began a tussle with it.

When the moujik saw his dog and the corpse grappling with each other, he was delighted that things had turned out so well for himself, and he set off running home with all his might.

The dog kept up the struggle until cock-crow, when the corpse fell motionless to the ground.

Then the dog ran off in pursuit of its master, caught him up just as he reached home, and rushed at him, furiously trying to bite and to rend him.

So savage was it, and so persistent, that it was as much as the people of the house could do to beat it off.

"Whatever has come over the dog?"

asked the moujik's old mother.

"Why should it hate its master so?"

The moujik told her all that had happened.

"A bad piece of work, my son!"

said the old woman.

"The dog was disgusted at your not helping it.

There it was fighting with the corpse--and you deserted it, and thought only of saving yourself!

Now it will owe you a grudge for ever so long."

Next morning, while the family were going about the farmyard, the dog was perfectly quiet.

But the moment its master made his appearance, it began to growl like anything.

They fastened it to a chain; for a whole year they kept it chained up.

But in spite of that, it never forgot how its master had offended it.

One day it got loose, flew straight at him, and began trying to throttle him.

So they had to kill it.

In the next story a most detailed account is given of the manner in which a Vampire sets to work, and also of the best means of ridding the world of it.

THE SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE.

[412] A certain soldier was allowed to go home on furlough.

Well, he walked and walked, and after a time he began to draw near to his native village.

Not far off from that village lived a miller in his mill.

In old times the Soldier had been very intimate with him: why shouldn't he go and see his friend?

He went.

The Miller received him cordially, and at once brought out liquor; and the two began drinking, and chattering about their ways and doings.

All this took place towards nightfall, and the Soldier stopped so long at the Miller's that it grew quite dark.

When he proposed to start for his village, his host exclaimed: "Spend the night here, trooper!

It's very late now, and perhaps you might run into mischief."

"How so?"

"God is punishing us!

A terrible warlock has died among us, and by night he rises from his grave, wanders through the village, and does such things as bring fear upon the very boldest!

How could even you help being afraid of him?"

"Not a bit of it!

A soldier is a man who belongs to the crown, and 'crown property cannot be drowned in water nor burnt in fire.'

I'll be off: I'm tremendously anxious to see my people as soon as possible."

Off he set.

His road lay in front of a graveyard.

On one of the graves he saw a great fire blazing.

"What's that?"

thinks he.

"Let's have a look."

When he drew near, he saw that the Warlock was sitting by the fire, sewing boots.

"Hail, brother!"

calls out the Soldier.

The Warlock looked up and said: "What have you come here for?"

"Why, I wanted to see what you're doing."

The Warlock threw his work aside and invited the Soldier to a wedding.

"Come along, brother," says he, "let's enjoy ourselves.

There's a wedding going on in the village."

"Come along!"

says the Soldier.

They came to where the wedding was; there they were given drink, and treated with the utmost hospitality.

The Warlock drank and drank, revelled and revelled, and then grew angry.

He chased all the guests and relatives out of the house, threw the wedded pair into a slumber, took out two phials and an awl, pierced the hands of the bride and bridegroom with the awl, and began drawing off their blood.

Having done this, he said to the Soldier: "Now let's be off."

Well, they went off.

On the way the Soldier said: "Tell me; why did you draw off their blood in those phials?"

"Why, in order that the bride and bridegroom might die.

To-morrow morning no one will be able to wake them.

I alone know how to bring them back to life."

"How's that managed?"

"The bride and bridegroom must have cuts made in their heels, and some of their own blood must then be poured back into those wounds.

I've got the bridegroom's blood stowed away in my right-hand pocket, and the bride's in my left."

The Soldier listened to this without letting a single word escape him.

Then the Warlock began boasting again.

"Whatever I wish," says he, "that I can do!"

"I suppose it's quite impossible to get the better of you?"

says the Soldier.

"Why impossible?

If any one were to make a pyre of aspen boughs, a hundred loads of them, and were to burn me on that pyre, then he'd be able to get the better of me.

Only he'd have to look out sharp in burning me; for snakes and worms and different kinds of reptiles would creep out of my inside, and crows and magpies and jackdaws would come flying up.

All these must be caught and flung on the pyre.

If so much as a single maggot were to escape, then there'd be no help for it; in that maggot I should slip away!"

The Soldier listened to all this and did not forget it.

He and the Warlock talked and talked, and at last they arrived at the grave.

"Well, brother," said the Warlock, "now I'll tear you to pieces.

Otherwise you'd be telling all this."

"What are you talking about?

Don't you deceive yourself;

I serve God and the Emperor."

The Warlock gnashed his teeth, howled aloud, and sprang at the Soldier--who drew his sword and began laying about him with sweeping blows.

They struggled and struggled; the Soldier was all but at the end of his strength.

"Ah!"

thinks he, "I'm a lost man--and all for nothing!"

Suddenly the cocks began to crow.

The Warlock fell lifeless to the ground.

The Soldier took the phials of blood out of the Warlock's pockets, and went on to the house of his own people.

When he had got there, and had exchanged greetings with his relatives, they said: "Did you see any disturbance, Soldier?"

"No, I saw none."

"There now!

Why we've a terrible piece of work going on in the village.

A Warlock has taken to haunting it!"

After talking awhile, they lay down to sleep.

Next morning the Soldier awoke, and began asking: "I'm told you've got a wedding going on somewhere here?"

"There was a wedding in the house of a rich moujik," replied his relatives, "but the bride and bridegroom have died this very night--what from, nobody knows."

"Where does this moujik live?"

They showed him the house.

Thither he went without speaking a word.

When he got there, he found the whole family in tears.

"What are you mourning about?"

says he.

"Such and such is the state of things, Soldier," say they.

"I can bring your young people to life again.

What will you give me if I do?"

"Take what you like, even were it half of what we've got!"

The Soldier did as the Warlock had instructed him, and brought the young people back to life.

Instead of weeping there began to be happiness and rejoicing; the Soldier was hospitably treated and well rewarded.

Then--left about, face!

off he marched to the Starosta, and told him to call the peasants together and to get ready a hundred loads of aspen wood.

Well, they took the wood into the graveyard, dragged the Warlock out of his grave, placed him on the pyre, and set it alight--the people all standing round in a circle with brooms, shovels, and fire-irons.

The pyre became wrapped in flames, the Warlock began to burn.

His corpse burst, and out of it crept snakes, worms, and all sorts of reptiles, and up came flying crows, magpies, and jackdaws.

The peasants knocked them down and flung them into the fire, not allowing so much as a single maggot to creep away!

And so the Warlock was thoroughly consumed, and the Soldier collected his ashes and strewed them to the winds.

From that time forth there was peace in the village.

The Soldier received the thanks of the whole community.

He stayed at home some time, enjoying himself thoroughly.

Then he went back to the Tsar's service with money in his pocket.

When he had served his time, he retired from the army, and began to live at his ease.

The stories of this class are very numerous, all of them based on the same belief--that in certain cases the dead, in a material shape, leave their graves in order to destroy and prey upon the living.

This belief is not peculiar to the Slavonians but it is one of the characteristic features of their spiritual creed.

Among races which burn their dead, remarks Hertz in his exhaustive treatise on the Werwolf (p. 126), little is known of regular "corpse-spectres."

Only vague apparitions, dream-like phantoms, are supposed, as a general rule, to issue from graves in which nothing more substantial than ashes has been laid.

[413] But where it is customary to lay the dead body in the ground, "a peculiar half-life" becomes attributed to it by popular fancy, and by some races it is supposed to be actuated at intervals by murderous impulses.

In the East these are generally attributed to the fact of its being possessed by an evil spirit, but in some parts of Europe no such explanation of its conduct is given, though it may often be implied.

"The belief in vampires is the specific Slavonian form of the universal belief in spectres (_Gespenster_)," says Hertz, and certainly vampirism has always made those lands peculiarly its own which are or have been tenanted or greatly influenced by Slavonians.

But animated corpses often play an important part in the traditions of other countries.

Among the Scandinavians and especially in Iceland, were they the cause of many fears, though they were not supposed to be impelled by a thirst for blood so much as by other carnal appetites,[414] or by a kind of local malignity.

[415] In Germany tales of horror similar to the Icelandic are by no means unknown, but the majority of them are to be found in districts which were once wholly Lettic or Slavonic, though they are now reckoned as Teutonic, such as East Prussia, or Pomerania, or Lusatia.

But it is among the races which are Slavonic by tongue as well as by descent, that the genuine vampire tales flourish most luxuriantly: in Russia, in Poland, and in Servia--among the Czekhs of Bohemia, and the Slovaks of Hungary, and the numerous other subdivisions of the Slavonic family which are included within the heterogeneous empire of Austria.

Among the Albanians and Modern Greeks they have taken firm root, but on those peoples a strong Slavonic influence has been brought to bear.

Even Prof. Bernhard Schmidt, although an uncompromising opponent of Fallmerayer's doctrines with regard to the Slavonic origin of the present inhabitants of Greece, allows that the Greeks, as they borrowed from the Slavonians a name for the Vampire, may have received from them also certain views and customs with respect to it.

[416] Beyond this he will not go, and he quotes a number of passages from Hellenic writers to prove that in ancient Greece spectres were frequently represented as delighting in blood, and sometimes as exercising a power to destroy.

Nor will he admit that any very great stress ought to be laid upon the fact that the Vampire is generally called in Greece by a name of Slavonic extraction; for in the islands, which were, he says, little if at all affected by Slavonic influences, the Vampire bears a thoroughly Hellenic designation.

[417] But the thirst for blood attributed by Homer to his shadowy ghosts seems to have been of a different nature from that evinced by the material Vampire of modern days, nor does that ghastly _revenant_ seem by any means fully to correspond to such ghostly destroyers as the spirit of Gello, or the spectres of Medea's slaughtered children.

It is not only in the Vampire, however, that we find a point of close contact between the popular beliefs of the New-Greeks and the Slavonians.

Prof. Bernhard Schmidt's excellent work is full of examples which prove how intimately they are connected.

The districts of the Russian Empire in which a belief in vampires mostly prevails are White Russia and the Ukraine.

But the ghastly blood-sucker, the _Upir_,[418] whose name has become naturalized in so many alien lands under forms resembling our "Vampire," disturbs the peasant-mind in many other parts of Russia, though not perhaps with the same intense fear which it spreads among the inhabitants of the above-named districts, or of some other Slavonic lands.

The numerous traditions which have gathered around the original idea vary to some extent according to their locality, but they are never radically inconsistent.

Some of the details are curious.

The Little-Russians hold that if a vampire's hands have grown numb from remaining long crossed in the grave, he makes use of his teeth, which are like steel.

When he has gnawed his way with these through all obstacles, he first destroys the babes he finds in a house, and then the older inmates.

If fine salt be scattered on the floor of a room, the vampire's footsteps may be traced to his grave, in which he will be found resting with rosy cheek and gory mouth.

The Kashoubes say that when a _Vieszcy_, as they call the Vampire, wakes from his sleep within the grave, he begins to gnaw his hands and feet; and as he gnaws, one after another, first his relations, then his other neighbors, sicken and die.

When he has finished his own store of flesh, he rises at midnight and destroys cattle, or climbs a belfry and sounds the bell.

All who hear the ill-omened tones will soon die.

But generally he sucks the blood of sleepers.

Those on whom he has operated will be found next morning dead, with a very small wound on the left side of the breast, exactly over the heart.

The Lusatian Wends hold that when a corpse chews its shroud or sucks its own breast, all its kin will soon follow it to the grave.

The Wallachians say that a _murony_--a sort of cross between a werwolf and a vampire, connected by name with our nightmare--can take the form of a dog, a cat, or a toad, and also of any blood-sucking insect.

When he is exhumed, he is found to have long nails of recent growth on his hands and feet, and blood is streaming from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

The Russian stories give a very clear account of the operation performed by the vampire on his victims.

Thus, one night, a peasant is conducted by a stranger into a house where lie two sleepers, an old man and a youth.

"The stranger takes a pail, places it near the youth, and strikes him on the back; immediately the back opens, and forth flows rosy blood.

The stranger fills the pail full, and drinks it dry.

Then he fills another pail with blood from the old man, slakes his brutal thirst, and says to the peasant, 'It begins to grow light!

let us go back to my dwelling.'