Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/206

192 departed souls (tii) which quitted the graves and grave-idols to creep by night into the houses, and devour the heart and entrails of the sleepers, and these died. The Karens tell of the 'kephu,' which is a wizard's stomach going forth in the shape of a head and entrails, to devour the souls of men, and they die. The Mintira of the Malay Peninsula have their 'hantu penyadin;' he is a water-demon, with a dog's head and an alligator's mouth, who sucks blood from men's thumbs and great toes, and they die. It is in Slavonia and Hungary that the demon blood-suckers have their principal abode, and to this district belongs their special name of vampire, Polish upior, Russian upir. There is a whole literature of hideous vampire-stories, which the student will find elaborately discussed in Calmet. The shortest way of treating the belief is to refer it directly to the principles of savage animism. We shall see that most of its details fall into their places at once, and that vampires are not mere creations of groundless fancy, but causes conceived in spiritual form to account for specific facts of wasting disease. As to their nature and physical action, there are two principal theories, but both keep close to the original animistic idea of spiritual beings, and consider these demons to be human souls. The first theory is that the soul of a living man, often a sorcerer, leaves its proper body asleep and goes forth, perhaps in the visible form of a straw or fluff of down, slips through keyholes and attacks its sleeping victim. If the sleeper should wake in time to clutch this tiny soul-embodiment, he may through it have his revenge by maltreating or destroying its bodily owner. Some say these 'mury' come by night to men, sit upon their breasts and suck their blood, while others think it is only children's blood they suck, they being to grown people mere nightmares. Here we have the actual phenomenon of nightmare, adapted to a particular purpose. The second