excerpts

THE WATER PIXY. Representations. The Water Pixy and the Human Head. The Water Pixy’s Wraith. Stories. The Water Pixy in Other Cultures

According to Romanian popular beliefs in Bucovina, the Water Pixy is a tall, heavily- built woman, some say as tall as a camel, that can appear as half woman, half fish, or half woman, half man, or according to others, being able to take any appearance she wants. She wears an embroidered blouse and a towel that gathers her long hair reaching the ground and shinning like gold in the sun. Her breasts are so big that she sometimes wears them over her shoulders.  

“The Water Pixy lives in rivers and springs and she demands one man’s head a day. When the rivers flood the fields, the Water Pixy reveals herself and the waters follow her, drowning and destroying everything they meet; when she is satisfied with the number of victims, she goes away, settling in ponds and waterfalls. In dry weather, she always demands a man’s head to be delivered at midnight.”

In Tecuci, although people do not believe in the existence of Water Pixies, they say that when the waters overflow from the riverbeds because of the rain or snow, devilish spirits possess them. Children are afraid to linger on riverbanks at that time of the year.

OltRiver asks for human sacrifice everyday, especially when its waters overflow.

The Water Pixy is helped by the Water Devils to get her victims. “The devils are not to live underwater, but they promised to sacrifice a human every day. That is why, somebody drowns in the Olt every day.

If a day goes by and no human has drowned, the river starts to howl and this is the best time for humans to stay away from the water, or else they will surely die.”

The Water Pixy comes out of the water facing east and calls everybody she can see to her, to drown them. On full moon nights or when the weather is bad, the Water Pixy wanders along the village paths until midnight, but she cannot harm any soul. However, if somebody picks on her, she would disfigure him in no time.

She calls for her potential victims with the following song:

The time has come

The man is none!

The time has come

The man is none!

Some people heard her singing these words on the Prut river banks, at midnight.

“Here is this lad, riding his horse, riding like the wind towards the water. But those men outnumbered the lad and grabbed him by the hands and legs.

‘Please, let me go and sink my feet into the water for a minute. I’ll feel better then.’

He barely touched the water with his feet and he died in an instant.”

A variant of the story often told in Bucovina is about the Water Pixy living in BistriţaRiver, to whose deeds a woman was witness.

“One summer when I was young, I was working in the field, gathering the hay in stacks. I was in a kind of hurry ‘cause the next day was Sunday. I finished working about midnight. Still, I had to go home and feed the cattle and then milk them. I took the way along Bistriţa’s banks because this was a shortcut. I was singing and carrying my water pails on my back. When I reached the precipice, a powerful voice came out of that hole:

The hour has come

Let my lad arrive!

And the voice was heard three times. By the time of the third saying, a very beautiful lad appeared, riding a thunder horse. He spurred the horse to the water, but the horse would not go in there.

Under the pressure of its master’s urges, the horse let out a terrifying roar. The mountains themselves trembled. The horse then jumped right into the water and sank with the lad on its back. Then the horse got out, but its master didn’t.

The Water Pixy demanded her victim and she had it all right.”

The same story is spread in Moldavia, as well.

“Once, some people were driving their carts loaded with wine barrels along the shores of a pond. They could hear a voice coming out of the water:

The time has come

The man is none!

Three times the voice repeated the demand.

Then they saw a man hoeing in the field. He suddenly leaves his tools aside and rushes to the pond.

‘What’s the rush, old man?’

‘I’m dying for a bath in the river!’

‘No way, my friend! Take it some other time!’

‘No, no, I must take it now!’

And he starts undressing. But those people held him tight.

‘Let me wet my feet into the river. Please!’

And they let him do that and the next minute he pushed his head back and died.”

The same story was heard in England, as well.

The Water Pixy starts groaning when the devilish spirit needs its sacrifice.

Water Pixies are common folk characters with other peoples, too.

The Bulgarians, the Greeks call them lamii, the Czechs Vodgnic. The Germans or other nations named them differently.

THE SOUL OF THE DEAD. When the Soul Does Not Leave the Body Completely: Wraiths and Ware Wolves. The Short Earthly Life of the Dead’s Soul. The Dead Shows up in Dreams. Other apparitions.

Popular Romanian beliefs talk about the transitory parting of the soul from the body; one is the story of the undead and the other is the story of werewolves that eat the sun and the moon and come back transformed into bugs.

A large number of beliefs are about the dead’s souls that travel to hell or heaven in the afterlife. What happens when they arrive there does not make the topic of our writings here.

Let us talk about the short earthly life of these souls.

When a person dies, his soul rests on the eaves of the house, by the white flag flapping there until after the funeral when the house is swept. After the body is buried, the soul travels for 6 weeks or 40 days to all places and locations the person went to when he was alive. Then, when the journey is completed, the soul flies to its destinations alone or accompanied by angels, to spend the eternity where God decides as a result of Judgment Day.

The living relatives are not very happy with a prolonged visit of the dead’s soul. 40 days after the funeral, they pray and give alms, to ease the soul’s traveling to its final destination decided by God.

The dead’s soul is most likely to bother the living in their sleep, while dreaming. That is why they must find a meaning to those dreams and act as such. If they dream the dead naked, it means his soul wanders without any clothes and the relatives must give clothes for charity. The soul is pleased then. If the soul is hungry, they must give food for charity, if it is thirsty, it is water is what they should think of.

If the dead is too attached to those who stayed alive, it haunts their dreams, fighting and arguing so much that the living feel tired the next day, they should give an onion for charity and the spirit will get upset and leave.

Sometimes the living calls for the dead in his/her dreams because they continuously think about the deceased. After the coffin leaves the house, they should look out the window for three times, to forget the dead person.

The souls of the deceased visit the houses where they used to live, taking the shape of a butterfly. It is a common incarnation for children, but not necessarily. They ask for food and drinks and once they got them, they rest in peace in their graves and the living in their houses.

We do not discuss about killers or wizards and witches whose souls are doomed; we will not further look into their visiting the living relatives or haunting them.

THE GHOST. Human Sacrifice Meant for Buildings to Last. Romanian and Foreign Tales. About Places Where Ghosts Show up. Representations and Names.

 Ghosts (stafia, stafia, stihia or stacia) are spirits of dead persons that remain stuck to the place where they led their existence, acting as a guardian or ghost of that respective person.

Since not all people die the same death or under the same circumstances, ghosts are consequently of several kinds.

Let us remember what happens in the legend of Argeş Monastery: the leader of the masons starts building the walls of the monastery, but everything collapsed at nighttime:

… Masons worked so hard

Hold the strings so tight

Measuring the place

Digging large foundations

Working night and day

Building up the walls

Still, when night arrives

Down go all the walls

Day in day out

Day in day out…

Alecsandri tries to supply an explanation to the above lyrics:

“Popular superstitions are many when building is involved. They believe that a building can last for many a year only if mystical traditions are fulfilled. One of them mentions the burial of a person alive right at the foundations of the respective building. The masons are in the habit of steeling one’s shadow that is to measure the shadow with a reed and then wall it up in the foundation. The man whose shadow was stolen dies within 40 days and turns into a ghost that protects the newly built establishment.”

This is a common belief: “Why do people steal one’s soul to lock it inside a wall or in a bridge’s foot? Because they pay that soul to the Devil. Everything that people would build, crumbled down eventually. Then they thought to pay the Devil something and now their problem is gone.”

The Macedo-Romanians share a similar myth: “When the time to build a monastery, a house or a bridge has come, people should bury a young animal or a human’s shadow at the foundation. The creature will die within 40 days.” The sacrifice guarantees the durability of the construction for many years.

If somebody’s shadow is stolen and locked up by accident, the person dies anyway.

The imperative of cementing a human being into the walls of the monastery is communicated to Manole in his dream, the next day:

My great nine masons

Do you want to know

What my dreams can show?

Lord has sent me word

About our work

Completed by day time

Shall collapse by night.

We must made our minds

To wall up a wife

The first one to come

Tomorrow by dawn

Bringing food to us.

Manole had no choice but to act as the dream predicted. He walled up his own wife and so he could finish the most beautiful monastery in the kingdom. Unfortunately, his creation eventually triggered his death, too.

The owner of the house must feed the ghost; otherwise the specter will haunt the house, the attic and will frighten the inhabitants with its noises.

Many people believe in the existence of ghosts.

Let us look into the ancient peoples’ beliefs now. Let’s take the Jews, for example:

“During Ahab’s reign, Hiel from Bet-El rebuilt Jericho; he buried his first born, Abiram, at the foundation, and his youngest son, Segub, under the gates as Joshua from Nun interpreted the words of Jehovah for him.” These are the predictions: “Joshua cast his curse: doomed shall be the man that seeks to rebuild the citadel of Jericho; he shall build it on his first born child, and shall erect the gate over his youngest son!”

Out of the younger peoples that share the same myth, we consider here the following:

The Greeks sing the song of the ArtaBridge and of PeterBridge from Boeotia.

The Bulgarians believe that human sacrifice helped erecting the bridge over Struma as well as the fortress of Salonika.

The Slovaks tell the same legend about the city of Scodra.

The Hungarians connect this myth to the fortress of Deva. Still, they do not incorporate in their culture the tradition of stealing shadows or of human sacrifice (as it is seen in Transylvania and with the Bulgarians). This variant is also spread in Brasov.

The people in Montenegro weave the story around the construction of CetinTower.

The Albanians know similar tales.

This is the story of HonnenbergCastle in German culture.

The Russians seem to have walled up a girl that carried water in her water pails inside the stones of KoronivslovayaTower.

And we could write about many other nations.

The ghost, the shadow, the specter represents the soul of a dead person who will wander around that building, protecting it from other spirits that might desire to destroy it.

It goes without saying that a human shadow also helps building other establishments such as fountains or cellars.

People who die an awful death turn into ghosts: those who hanged themselves, who were shot, who died when hit by lightning or caught under crumbled river banks etc. We will deal with drowned people later, however. If someone dies before midnight, the soul comes out and scares the belated travelers, right at the location where death occurred.

When somebody was robbed and killed on the road, his ghost is most likely to haunt the commercial roads, the inns built in the fields, the watermills etc.

Here is the story of the three ghosts that show themselves on the road between Bozieni and Săveni, at the “mound of the three Germans,” in Western Moldavia:

“Whoever takes the road of Bozieni must hear the voices of the three Germans and must feel cold shivers down the spine. Not far from Băşeu brook, half way to Bozieni, there is an irregular, tall mound, wrinkled at the top, with three huge bulks resembling three human heads. This is the devilish hill of the Germans.

These three Germans tried to settle down in Botoşani with all their bad habits and vices. One night they arrived on our territory. What happened then, nobody knows. I only know that they started a fight and ended up killing each other. They were found deadly shot the next morning. People buried them right on that spot, under the mound.”

However, even today the three Germans’ ghosts appear at midnight. After a terrible fight carried out in their language, they rush to Băşeu, whose waters are accustomed to their behaviour. The misfortunate fainthearted traveler who happens to pass by gets frightened at the sound of their voices. And frighten he shall be since he has Bozieni graveyard on the right side and from the other side he can hear the horrible voices of the Germans, he can see them fighting furiously and then running towards him on the road, giving him goose bumps all over the body.

They wore German clothes. They looked like three giants, with black boots, white trousers, red coats and blue fezzes like the bottom of a hat. They jump into the devilish hills.

In Ţepu village, Tecuci, ghosts are often seen around the three precipices where people dig for clay to repair their houses and some of them died there under the crumbling ground. There is another ghost seen at Palade’s, that is in a place where a man named Palade hanged himself. Other wanders in the grove along the GipsyValley where once a gipsy was found hanged.

Many people believe in ghosts: the Poles, the Mongolians and the inhabitants of Iceland.

Sinful people who did not confess their sins to the priest, those who did not enjoy rightful funerals or those killed by evil spells turn into ghosts, too.

Ghosts look like humans, dressed in white, red, black or yellow garments.

When somebody tells a story about ghosts looking differently they say those were visions, arătări, vedenii, videnii, vidanii, năluci, nămetenii, nămetii, nazarinii, matahali or budihaci. These are faces of the devil himself that would haunt and harm people over that area, knowing that people are not so afraid of other people, as they are of the evil one.

Ghosts may take form from other creatures, as well, but one can tell them apart: “if it’s human, it blows your candle out; if it’s a rooster, it picks your cheeks, if it’s a ram, it prods you.”

They too need to gather for advice or for parties. They meet in secluded places where people cannot disturb them such as new or old cemeteries, churches, watermills, schools and deserted or ruined houses. Deserted establishments are very favourable locations for wandering ghosts to come together, since, for many reasons, those specters can no longer populate their residences. These establishments are never to be demolished or moved because ghosts spread throughout the village and can provoke damages. The ghosts move along with the establishment they are attached to.

THE UNDEAD

The undead – strigoiul, strâgoiul (fem. hobgoblin or strigoaica), the specter, the phantom – moroiul, muroiul (fem. moroaica, muroaica) – the werewolf or The Damned, is called by the Megleno-Romanians vampire (having the masculine plural strigoni and fem. hobgoblin, strigoane, străgi, strige).

The Romanian population from Bucovina, influenced by the Ruthenians, call it like these, specter (vidmă, pl. vidme).

The name of phantom (moroi) can be encountered especially in Ardeal (Transylvania) and in the western parts of Muntenia, as well as in Oltenia. The word being borrowed in the other regions as well, it couldn’t be placed alongside with the name of undead, but they sought to give it a difference in meaning, however small, and this, of course, in a forcible and inconsistent way. So it is that “some say that the physical injury is not due to the undead, but to the phantom,” as they say in Bucovina; others say that “the undead turns into hound, into a wolf, and the phantom into a fly. Both these beliefs, are just some inconsistent observations that will never be able to separate the two major names of that evil spirit, embodied in a living human, “in flesh and blood,” or only embodied, that is, between the living undead and the undead raised from the grave.

There are also half undead, especially hobgoblins, some apprentices of the true undead, that play the lot and kill people. This observation too presents an isolated case, because, if we are to believe it, we must believe that there are people more devilish than the devils, if we are to believe the saying: “this one is a devil and a half.” In this way, we will give the meaning that is due to this observation from Romanati: “the gypsies or the gipsy women who cast the evil eye on the children will be called also phantoms or she-phantoms.” There is something else here: the gypsies usually have black eyes; black eyes are considered by the Romanian people as the ones that cast an evil eye the most often, and, as the undead, among other shortcomings, also have the attribute to cast an evil eye, the gypsies were named by someone, and by chance, phantoms: the people who cast an evil eye like the phantoms.

How is the undead born or made?

The undead is born like any child; but he isn’t aware of the world because he has a cap, drape, hood on his head or, on his body a shirt or a leather busby. Such a baby is born by a woman that, while she is pregnant, drinks unclean water mixed with devilish slobber, or when such a woman gets out at night without wearing anything on her head. Then, Satan comes and places a red cap on her head like the one he has, and when the baby is due, he makes it to be born with the undead cap.

In order to prevent such a misfortune, it is recommended that this cap should be immediately taken from the baby’s head, because it is said that otherwise the baby pulls it and swallows it and it is likely that it becomes undead.

Such a cap is believed to be useful to be kept to heal those sick of the evil eye; so the mothers collect it, dry it, and, when they have children upon which an evil eye was cast, they tear a piece of it, spit on it and rub their belly button with it, so that they will be healed.

In Teleorman county, the child that is born an undead has its head and face wrapped in a skin; the skin is immediately torn apart so that he won’t swallow it and become a hostile undead that casts an evil eye badly, and after death eats his relatives. In the end, the midwife makes sure that she gets with the baby outside, after she bathed and swaddled it well, to climb on the house – if it is an earth hovel – or to get to the back of the house and to shout, holding the baby in her arms:

 “You undead

 You hobgoblin,

 You lion

 You lioness

 You evil eye male caster,

 You evil eye woman caster,

 There you should go,

 There you should sleep…

Hear you people that a wolf was born on earth! It is not a wolf which will eat the world, but a wolf which works and cares for it!”

This way the power of the undead is ruined, and the evil is turned to the benefit of the house, because the power of the summoned undead increases, bringing good luck in everything.

The undead can be made also from children born of relatives – brothers and first cousins – who, in order to be hidden from the world, are killed and so die without being baptized and not being sprinkled with holy water for four years, as well as the ones aborted – lost, that is, stillborn before due time, which are buried at the sides of the cemetery, a belief upheld by the Ruthenians as well.

The undead can appear from children of the undead, that those leave near the unguarded new mothers, after they take the women’s babies.

They are made from the babies that the midwives, at birth, destine to become undead.

They are made from the babies born in the bushes.

They are made from the babies turned to the breast, that is from those who, once they are weaned, are suckled again.

They are made from the baby that suckles in secret from its mother, one week after it has been weaned.

They are made of those that a mosquito bites on Saint George’s night.

An undead is the seventh son of the seven sons born to a couple, in a row; the same way, a hobgoblin becomes the seventh daughter of a series of seven daughters, as the Ruthenians also believe; some other time, one of the seven brothers or one of the seven sisters becomes ghost or hobgoblin.

They are made of the ones who commit perjury.

Out of the evil and contemptuous souls, be they animals or people.

Out of the old women that have something to do with the Devil.

Out of the people that die in the circumstances that we will present later.

What are the signs by which we recognize the living undead? – i.e. those men and women, especially, around us, together with whom we live in a terrible danger which is difficult to find out? Because, how can you know that the next-door neighbor or the woman across the street, who go to sleep at night in their houses, don’t leave their bodies overnight, on the bed, soulless, and don’t go out, to get together with other evil spirits, to do the most devilish things? There are a few signs by which one can recognize the undead, but even those are hard to notice.

The undead is bald on the top of its head – but we cannot draw the conclusion that all the bald men are undead.

When they are small children, the undead cast an evil eye, whence the connection with the above mentioned idea that the gypsies that cast an evil eye are called undead.

The undead don’t eat garlic and onion.

Only the twins up to the age of seven – that is when, although they see, they can’t share their knowledge with the others, – can distinguish the undead.

The undead are afraid of incense.

As Saint Andrew is approaching they sleep outside.

 They have a tail, that is the backbone is prolonged in a tail, covered with hair, that in some areas is called costroş. With some undead, this tail is short; but it closes at heath. The tail is strength for the undead because it carries them and it also brings them back to life.

It is easier to know if there are undead in a village; this can be known by the draught that exists there – for the hobgoblins stop the rain, and by the hail with which God beats them just because these evil spirits don’t let him cast clean rain, and by the rains while the sun is shining in the sky, when it is believed that one of the undead is getting married.

Whoever wants to find out who is a hobgoblin, can find out at Easter at the church, the following way: they have to catch a snake, cut its head, put three cloves of garlic in its mouth, and keep it in their bosom, in church, on Easter Day. Then they will see who is a ghost.

“If you want to be able to tell the undead from the rest, kill the first snake that you see in March and cut his head. Put summer garlic in his mouth and on Saint George’s Day, before sunrise, place it in the ground. After it grows, you gather it. Next year, on Saint George’s Day, rub that garlic on your chest and climb a tree, and all the hobgoblins will come to that tree and will worship you as a king. Then ask them:

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to this one to make him poor.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to that one to drive him insane!”

Another one is going to make somebody ill.

“You don’t go there, but go to the ninth border, and fight one another, and then go home again, because I’ll know if you don’t obey me!”

Whoever spends Easter Monday on a bridge, will see the hobgoblins passing by.

You can distinguish the hobgoblins and the witches if you gather cheese from the teeth in the first Monday of the Easter fasting period, if you keep it until Easter and then if you take it to church, because the hobgoblins will show up

Anyway, we will find out about other ways when we will talk about the evils and damages that the undead do to people.

I will describe now the way in which the people who die turn into undead, no matter if those, during their lives, were undead or not, and what measures can be taken to prevent this great misfortune.

If the one that died was an undead, the thing will happen more easily. If the deceased wasn’t an undead during his life, the thing is more difficult. However, according to the signs that I have mentioned so far, people can suspect what will happen to the others, and what is done with the dead person that was a ghost, will be done also to the one suspected to turn into a ghost.

Among the ones suspected are:

The children that die without being baptized.

The ones that in this world were evil doers, enemies and envious; after death, the evil Spirit enters their bodies, and some of them will turn into undead.

The ones that die a sudden death: hanged, drowned, shot, the ones that “drop dead out of the blue,” in a word those that “don’t die the right way.” These turn into undead. With this we compare the undead with the ghosts, on the basis of the news that will be provided in due time.

The sick, if they are unguarded while they lie in bed, and if a cat has passed over them, will turn into undead. The same thing will happen to the unguarded dead, over which jump cats, dogs, chicken or any other birds, mice or any other living creatures. This thing is valid for the tomb, as well, as long as it is open.

For this, the dead, as long as they are kept in the house, are guarded against the above mentioned creatures and against the evil Spirit, that may get into them, to bring them back to life as undead. By the evil Spirit we mean the Devil himself.

According to other beliefs, the undead are made from the creatures that jump over a dead person.

When for whatever reason, somebody is forced to leave the dead person alone in the house, they must place a scythe and a ring on its chest, to guard it against the evil spirits.

When the dead is to be placed in the coffin, and the rope that ties its legs must be cut, this rope must be put in the coffin: the relatives must pay attention so that nobody steals it, because the dead will turn into an undead.

There is fear for the dead which leaves behind a brother born in the same month; the latter must pour wine in the coffin, or enter and get out from the deceased’s grave three times, otherwise the undead will eat him.

The transportation of the dead person to the grave must be done carefully, so that a dog won’t pass under the hearse, because, if such a thing happens, the dead turns into an undead.

The undead appear from the dead whose burial service wasn’t well done by the priests.

One shouldn’t give a cock in remembrance for the dead person, because he will turn into an undead.

If a dead person turned into an undead, he either wasn’t well guarded, or he was an undead during his life as well; you know him by the fact that his nose is red, because the devil may suck the blood from his body, but he keeps away from the nose so that the dead won’t see him with his eyes!

All the souls of those turned into undead will take, a certain time after their death, human shape again, and sometimes they can’t be distinguished from humans. They will live in those parts where nobody knows them, and where no man or dog born in the same place as them, or born before Easter can recognize them. As soon as such a dog senses or meets such a person, these undead will die instantly and forever.

There are areas where they believe that the soul of the man turned into an undead will turn into the night insect called little undead (strigoieş), death’s butterfly or undead’s soul, which, in Vâlcea district, when caught, is pinned or nailed in the girder or on the wall of the house.

The measures that are taken against the dead undead and against those suspected to turn into undead after death are the following:

A piece of incense is placed in their nostrils, so that they won’t be able to breathe, in their ears so that they won’t hear the advice of the evil one, in the eyes, so that they can’t see the Devil, and in the mouth, so that he won’t be able to tell the Devil the name of his relatives.

With this purpose still, in other areas, a brother of the deceased fills the latter’s eyes, mouth and ears with millet, pebbles or garlic.

Some people say that the dead person’s head should be cut and placed at his feet.

Others tie the head and the body of the deceased with a thorn bush, so that, when the undead awakens, he will tumble over the thorns and will be incapable of getting out. Instead of a thorn bush, in some areas they put a hip rose branch in the coffin, after an old woman that knows what to do has pierced his head with a long needle and rubbed him with grease from a pig cut at Christmas.

Others add the pot stick in the coffin.

Some dead people are thrust a knitting needle in the belly button or in the heart. In other areas they thrust into their heart a spit heated at the fire, a splinter, or a stake. The stake must be made of hornbeam. When the stake is thrust, the blood springs 7 meters upwards, then the other heart of the undead dies.

In other cases it is the head that is pierced, if it isn’t cut altogether, as we have seen.

In Bucovina the coffin is made of yew tree, and in this coffin the dead person is placed with the head where his feet should have been, or he is placed face down.

After the burial, a man – a relative of the deceased or of his wife, or the dead man’s wife – goes to the grave, carrying in his bosom flax tow, goes round the grave, after which he sets the tow on fire and says:

“This man won’t turn into an undead or a phantom!”

In some areas the undead are exorcised in the following way: pebbles are placed around the dead man, and a thorn bush and marble are placed in his lap. When they take him to the grave, a man takes millet and spreads it along the way saying:

“The undead shall eat a bean a year and shall not eat the hearts of his relatives!”

In the house, where he lies, a knife is placed at his feet and a spindle at his head and they say:

            Should the undead come from the east,

            May he be in the knife thrust

            And if he should come from the west

            May the spindle pierce its chest!

In Teleorman county, when the undead dies, he is taken care of in the following way: pebbles are put in his eyes, ears, mouth, under the nails, so that he has something to chew, an they put millet in his lap, so that he will spend many days, until he eats it, and the coffin is surrounded by a thorn bush. (In fact the thorn bush is used nowadays for all the dead).

When the relatives go, after three days, to burn incense, they also take nine spindles that they thrust in the grave, so that they would pierce him when he tries to get out of the grave.

If the deceased has brothers or sisters who are born in the same day or month, they are “unchained.” The coffin, with the dead man inside is placed on the threshold of the house. They tie the dead man’s right leg to the leg of his brother or sister born in the same day or month with an iron chain, usually the ears of basket, and the ends of the chain are locked with a padlock.

Somebody else, not a relative, and of a different sex from the person that is alive, asks:

“Are you my brother (or: sister) until you die, to unchain you?”

“I am,” the one tied by the leg answers.

They ask and answer this for three times. After the third answer, the padlock is unlocked, and the one unchained remains in the house.

Then they are given a wooden fork, just cut of a tree, to break it. Over the threshold – one outside and one inside – they break the fork which is the sign of their brotherhood until death, since they are not able to become husband and wife.

Afterwards, the deceased is taken away to the church, while the priest sings.

In some regions, it is said that it is good to set pigeons on fire on the tomb of the deceased.

They thrust three branches on the back of the others, near the tail.

In Oraviţa , when the dead person is laid on the table, a woman cuts some strands of hair, that are kept so that if later the dead person will turn into an undead and will come, the hairs will be lit up and so he will be driven away.

Some other time, before putting the dead person in the coffin, a woman takes a bunch of lovage, thorns and tow, places them around the coffin, spreads gunpowder over the tow and kindles them with the cane, covers them with the lid of the coffin and then places the dead person, so that he won’t turn into an undead.

In Banat, after the funeral, later on, a relative goes with bread and wine to the tomb of the one that rose suspicion. He sprinkles the ground with the wine and he gives away the bread. Now he mourns and burns incense, having faith that the dead person won’t turn into an undead.

In Vâlcea county, a cock is put in the coffin at the funeral, in order to prevent the undead from raising from the grave.

In some area of Moldavia, after seven years have passed from the birth of stillborn babies, non-baptized – of which it is believed that they will turn into undead – the women carry in their mouths holy water collected on Epiphany and sprinkle their tombs so that they won’t be transformed into undead.

In other regions, for this purpose still, the people sprinkle such graves with holy water gathered from seven churches in eight vessels. About three meters of linen is given away for the dead person as linen in which the godmother wraps the child after he was baptized.

In some places they pour it in a cross over the tomb or they pour into the coffin through a hole made in the ground, and they say:

“I baptize the servant of god, N., in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen!”

We must add to these the following belief: the undead don’t come only of undead, living or dead, but, just like people, they multiply by birth. This thing happens especially during winter, “when Saint Ilie doesn’t cast a lightning upon them, but they can’t do anything during summer, because the saint casts the lightning upon them as the evil spirits that they are.”

A characteristic feature of the undead is their fighting one another, especially during the night before the great celebrations that I have mentioned.

In Ardeal it is said that the undead rub themselves with garlic or something else and then they go through the air to a mountain, mounted on a shovel. They are in their bodies. There they meet their Mammon – the head of the undead.

But it is said almost everywhere that before they go to their meeting place, the undead wander through the villages and collect the blades of the brakes, little brakes and big brakes.

With these tools the undead gather at the margins of the estates and villages and there they start fighting.

In some areas they say they fight with the swords in the woods, and hidden places, at the crossing of the roads or around a fire.

In Bucovina, it is said that these battles happen between devils and the undead because the devils grudge the undead. But in most regions it is said that the fight takes place only among the mixed undead, that is between the living and the dead undead.

We can’t be sure if this gathering and fighting takes place at the command of a spirit, “the old hag, the queen of all evil spirits” that some identify with Samca or Avestiţa, Satan’s wing.

The fight among the undead starts when one of them says “red garlic,” and stops when another says “white garlic” or when the cock crows at midnight.

As long as they fight, the undead say:

“I hit, but don’t cut!”

When the undead are mad at people, they are very determined. A man, seeing a hobgoblin near the cemetery, threw a stone at her. Then the hobgoblin started a wind and threw him down, so that two years passed until he recovered.

The undead trouble the people they meet at night if the latter think of making the sign of the cross.

But most of the beliefs and stories show the undead as some of the most dangerous spirits for humans, and especially for their own relatives.

They suck the blood from the hearts of the relatives and sometimes from those of the strangers.

They come to the babies during the first nights after birth. “If I find the baby, the mother and the midwife sleeping, I’ll take the baby’s heart, and he won’t ever become a grown-up human.”

When the baby is older and it is dressed in a shirt – that is, tied around his neck with two strings called chiotori – these have to be untied every evening, otherwise the undead come and take his heart. One day, a child, disobeying his mother, didn’t untie the strings and went to bed like this, and during the night his mother heard:

“Aye, my heart!”

And she dashed to the child only to find him dead!

They eat the liver and the bowels of others, especially children.

They suck the blood through a pipe or only with their mouth, to recover their strength.

They pull the souls of some other people out through the window.

They bring physical damage to others, making their nose or mouth bleed, bring them pains that grow stronger until death comes.

The song of the undead that sucks the blood is the following, a little unclear otherwise:

Love, love

Thy heart starts to shout

And at Judgment day cries,

And sobs for you:

Rabbits, snakes and deer

Don’t they make good hunting here?

Rabbits, snakes and deer

Don’t they make good hunting here?

For the hearts of men

Where you find you also lose them

Their blood makes me sweet

I am fed with their meat

They’re exactly what I need.

When the undead falls in love with somebody – which means he wants to eat them – that one dreams stag beetles. This love happens especially between the dead boys’ phantoms and big girls, with respect to which we present a few stories.

The first one is from Romanaţi county:

There was a priest and he left with his wife to visit his relatives, and left his daughter alone at home. And the daughter called the daughter of a neighbor to sleep in her house with her. While the girl went to call the other one, a stranger came by, entered the house and got under the bed, under a trough. And the girl came with the neighbor’s daughter and she laid the table.

The neighbor’s daughter sat with her back to the door and facing the bed. And as they were eating, the neighbor’s daughter looked under the bed at the trough and saw the stranger lifting the trough and watching them. She thought that the priest’s daughter had brought him with her, and shut her mouth, but started worrying and when she went to sleep, she told the priest’s daughter not to blow off the candle. And she didn’t want to and blew it off. The priest’s girl fell asleep but the other one didn’t, because she was afraid. And as she lay awake, the stranger came out of the trough and started to walk around them to see if they were awake. And he waved a dead man’s hand over them to make them numb. And she saw everything and he got out.

 The neighbor’s daughter started after him carefully, and locked the door and came back and woke up the girl and asked her about him. And that one said she didn’t know anything. And they got spits and axes to protect themselves.

And when he came back he found the door closed; and he tried to enter through the chimney but he couldn’t because they put the spits up the chimney. And he put his hand through the window to take the beams that blocked the entrance and the neighbor’s daughter cut his hand with the axe. When the priest came back, the girls told him everything they went through and, the priest, overjoyed, gave expensive gifts to the neighbor’s daughter. And the one with his hand cut off wasn’t seen there anymore.

After a few years a wolf came to the priest, because the undead turned into a spook and being wounded by the dogs, turned into a man, and asked the priest’s daughter to marry him. And as soon as she laid her eyes on him she recognized him because his hand was cut off and she wouldn’t have him because he was an undead and would have killed her.

The second story circulates in Vâlcea county.

“Once upon a time there were three daughters, and they went to the spinning yarn workshop. And two of them were beautiful and the third one was uglier. And the two girls were seeing two boys, and the ugly one was alone, and span the yarn, and had nobody.

A handsome boy came to the ugly girl. And the two beautiful girls were angry with the ugly one because the handsome boy had come to her and not to them.

The second night, the girl asked him:

“Where are you from, boy, and what are you doing here?”

And he wouldn’t say. And the girl tied a string to his leg, and he didn’t feel it. And when the boy left, the girl went after him, and she went to the church and saw him entering the grave.

The third time the boy came again to the girl and asked her:

“Tell me, sister, what you have seen, for if you don’t tell me you’ll find your mother dead!”

And the girl wouldn’t say, and she went home and found her mother dead.

The fourth night the boy came again and asked her:

“Tell me, sister, what you have seen or you shall die!”

Then the girl told him that she saw him entering the grave and the undead dropped dead.” The third story comes from Râmnicu Sărat county and has parts that resemble the previous one; but it has a fairy tale ending:

Once upon a time there were in a village a boy and a girl that were seeing each other, without the approval of the girl’s parents, because, as it seems, the boy wasn’t related to those with fat on their bellies. So it was, that when he came to ask her to marry him, her parents wouldn’t hear about such a son-in-law and the boy, if he saw that there was no other way, hanged himself from a tree and ended it!

Now, since he hanged himself, that boy turned into an undead, and as such he could come more often to his older lover, to make love to her as he wished.

The girl, of course, had loved him, but now, with all her love for him, she didn’t feel at ease keeping company with an evil spirit. What was to be done, what should she do, who to tell and who could advise her, to escape the danger and sins?

She went to an old woman who was a witch, and the old woman taught her what she needed to know.

So, one evening the undead came again and made love to her until late. And as it seems, when he felt he needed to go, he said goodbye to the girl and left. The girl did as the old woman had told her and pinned a needle with a thread from a big ball to the clothes on the undead’s back. The undead left, the thread of the ball began to unreel go-go, go-go, until suddenly it stopped. The girl – a courageous one, as it seems – went after the thread, down the street, farther and farther, until she entered the churchyard, and from there straight to a tomb nearby. From there the thread went into the ground and that was all!

The girl comes back home, but in the evening, as it grows dark faster, she goes to the tomb to see what is happening. After a short while the ghost comes out, goes to other tombs and opens them and eats the dead men’s hearts and then he goes into the village to see the girl. The girl – after him.

“Where were you last night and what did you see?” the undead asks her.

“Where was I to go! I didn’t go anywhere! I didn’t see anything!”

And the undead again:

“Know that, that if you don’t tell, your father will die!”

“I don’t care if he dies, the girl replied, I didn’t see anything, I don’t know anything, I won’t say anything.”

“All right!”

And it was true that the next day the girl’s father died!

Well! They buried him, they took care of him. Some time passes after that and the undead comes to the girl again. They make love and he tells the girl again:

“Tell me where you were on such-and-such particular night and what you saw, or else your mother will die too.”

“She may die nine times, the girl replied, what can I say, when I don’t know anything?”

The next day the girl’s mother was already dead. They buried her too, the girl did what the tradition demanded of her and time passes and the undead tells his lover:

“If you don’t tell me what you saw on that particular night, you shall die too!”

“So, what’s the use? Say! Do you want me to tell you lies? How can I invent them, cousin, if I don’t know and if I didn’t see anything?”

Those were empty words – as we know it – but what is to become of you now girl, with death coming, for you see, she had to die!

She called all her relatives – as the witch had told her – and she told them that she would most certainly die. If she dies, when they are about to take her out of the house, pray they don’t take her out through the doors, nor through the windows, nor under the beam, but to break the wall of the house and to take her out through that spot. Then they mustn’t take her to the cemetery but to the other side, at the edge of the forest, straight over the field not on the road, and there to bury her.

God let it happen that way. The girl died, the relatives broke a wall of the house, went across the field, with the coffin on the bier and buried her at the edge of the forest.

Now, God forgive her, and may he protect us, but wait till you see what happened next. On that girl’s tomb a marvelous flower has been growing – whatever flower that was: so beautiful, that there has never been another like it.

The emperor’s son passes by and sees it, and as he sees it, he quickly starts digging underneath not to touch its roots and brings it home, to the emperor’s castle, where he plants it near his window.

Time passes. The flower is ever more beautiful but the rumors are that the emperor’s son isn’t well at all. He wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t drink, he is not himself anymore. A very strange thing!

What was going on? The flower from the window, changed, over night, into a girl, as she had been before, beautiful as she once had been in her village, as the mistress of that boy. And as she took human shape again, she would go through the window to the emperor’s son and made love to him all night, without anybody else from the court realizing it and without the emperor’s son becoming aware of it.

This lasted for a while, until one day, when the girl couldn’t hold back anymore; then she leaned over the emperor’s son and kissed him on the forehead; the emperor’s son suddenly woke up, and when he saw how beautiful the girl was, he said: “What could it be?” As the saying goes

 What is was

 May it last!

And after this they made a vow: he to be hers and she his, as long as they should live. They embraced and kissed, let the emperor and the empress know and all the people from the court clapped their hands and said they were made for each other. And they celebrated the wedding, and they lived happily together, the merry couple.

All was well, but something went wrong: the wife agreed to everything except to be taken out of the house. God protect us sinners: she was afraid of the undead, end of discussion!

Until one day. That day, the emperor’s son took her by force, threw her into a carriage and off they went, to the holy church. Suddenly, as they return, the undead appears. The wife, as she sees him, jumps from the carriage and runs as fast as she can into the church. There the wife hides behind an icon. The undead makes a move to grab her, but when he wants to take hold of her, all of a sudden, the holy icon falls down onto the undead and the undead turns into smoke and vanishes away.

And the wife and the emperor’s son remained for as long as they might have lived, protected of the danger and sin.

There are living werewolves, known by people. “They are the ones that the people recognize by their dry and pale face, by their deep sleep, when, they think, the soul gets out and goes to the moon and starts eating it. It is thought that it isn’t just during the eclipses (darkness) that the werewolf eats the moon, but also when the disc of the moon is reddish, copper-colored. “The blood of the moon” they think, is spilled at the werewolf’s corners of the mouth and overflows its disc.”

When the soul of the werewolf feels like eating a little bit of the moon, the man that has such a soul starts feeling drowsy at first, then he feels like sleeping as if he hadn’t slept for a week. His soul then flies to the moon and he remains as if he were dead. If you wake up or just move the werewolf that has fallen asleep, he remains permanently asleep, because the soul doesn’t find the mouth, through which he got out, in the same place, to be able to get in.

Briefly I have showed the way in which the humans can protect themselves against the undead. I will present the whole picture here.

In the days when it is known that the werewolves wander, at Saint Andrew during the winter, especially, all the people should eat garlic, should rub their joints with garlic, should rub the window frames, the doors, the door of the oven, the poles of the gates, the horns of the cattle and especially all the things in the household with garlic, because the undead run away from garlic.

Some undead even ask the people of the house:

“Have you eaten garlic?”

The householders even if they have eaten garlic should keep quiet not to be hurt.

They say in Bucovina that “you should protect yourself against the undead, that even the devil fears, by carrying garlic and rice bread with you.”

In Dorohoi county, in those nights of the undead, it is believed that people mustn’t sleep, but tell stories, uninterruptedly, and they must do this at least until the cock crows. The werewolf fears the places where stories are being told.

On Alexa, the women from Transylvania take a pot, fill it with embers, place sanctified incense and juniper tree on top of it, and so they fumigate the house three times to protect it from the hobgoblins.

The people from Bihor, at Arminden, go outside and shout:

“Can you hear me?”

“We can hear you!” others answer.

“The ones who for him cry,

May the devil fry,

On a spit

That is fit!”

Then this is said for the second time, being thought that if you do this you chase away the undead.

The name of “undead” must never be mentioned, and especially at night, because they happen to appear before the ones that call their name, and in a second they throw him to the ground. But when the man is forced by circumstances to say their name, he must say, “garlic under the tongue.”

Here is a story about these things:

There was a woman who wouldn’t eat garlic for the world, not would she sleep on a bed that was made, with pillow and sheets. Another woman noticed that in the morning the bed was not made. That woman wanted to find out the cause, because they lived together under the same roof. She took a lit candle and entered her house around midnight. There she saw her sleeping on an empty bed, without a night gaunt; she had a half-meter tail. The hobgoblin, as soon as she sensed light in the house, jumped and dashed to the woman:

“Why did you come at midnight with the candle?” she asked her.

And the woman answered:

“The garlic has a cross and I have a cross on my forehead!” And she made her go away with these words. Lucky for her that she thought of these words, because, if she had shut up, the hobgoblin would have sucked her blood and nobody would have known the cause of her death.

We will move on to showing the means by which the undead that get out of the graves are defeated. A new burial sermon held by the priest, as it is done in some parts of Oltenia, or sanctifying the bones when they are unburied – where we should place the origin of this tradition – are the mildest.

The other means are awful.

When too many people die in a family one after the other or at the same time, or only two people die one after another, when people’s cattle die, when the drought goes on, when you can hear the church bells toll, there is obviously one undead or several undead that must be destroyed in that village.

The most favorable event would be to find the body of the dead person who wasn’t placed in a grave, as he died too early; such an undead doesn’t even need to be buried anymore.

To find out the undead you do the following:

First you search carefully to see which grave has collapsed: it is that one that the undead came out from, and in its place the ground collapsed.

If there aren’t any collapsed tombs, one should search the ground at their head to see if there aren’t any holes, through which the souls of the undead crept out to take shape then on Earth.

The French have the same belief.

But it happens that some undead level out well the tomb they get out of and you can’t see the trace, and so, in order to discover them, you rub honey on the crosses from the grave in the evening and the next day you go and see if the honey is still on the crosses or not. If it isn’t, it is a sign that the undead licked the honey, and so he has to be dealt with, that is, unburied, and done away with it according to the tradition.

In other places they put millet on the holes of the tomb. If the millet disappears by the next day, it is a sign that the undead has eaten it; in some areas this thing is done by several people on a Saturday evening and the second investigation is made on Sunday morning.

If you can’t find the tomb of the undead by this means either, you look for a black horse, without a single string of white hair, or sometimes for a completely white one, mount it, go round the cemetery for three times and then you start passing among the tombs. The tomb where the horse will neigh and stop or over which he won’t pass, is the dwelling place of an undead.

In other areas, this trial is done with a bull, which is brought to pass among the tombs.

A black cock can be brought among others. The cock stops and sings at the tomb of the undead.

Finally, in other areas, they take a gander and they make it go among the tombs. They believe that the undead lies in the tomb where the gander stops and hisses.

As soon as you find the tomb of an undead, the sick one, the one who believes that the undead sucked his heart, takes earth from the grave and places it on his heart and drinks it with water, hoping that he will be better like this.

But most of the times, you must search the coffin, to see even better if the dead person buried there is an undead or not.

The signs showing that the dead from the graves are undead are the following:

The hair that they had when they were buried falls and new hair grows, shorter, according to some, longer according to other beliefs.

Some undead have red mouths.

Their teeth fall and smaller ones grow in their place, and according to other beliefs the canines grow bigger because of the amount of blood that they suck.

A tail grows on the dead undead, and it becomes like a whip.

Instead of feet they have goat hooves. It is turned with its face down or on one side, inside the grave.

If god allows it and such an undead is found, then “it is the end of him.” Anyway, you need to be very careful, for, if you can’t prove it is an undead, it brings a terrible death upon its entire family.

You unbury it without anybody from the village knowing about it. If the undead shows up in the dreams of other as well it won’t be unburied.

Sometimes you unbury it without the checks mentioned above, when the people are confident that it is there that the undead lives. In this case, the undead won’t be unburied after five years, as it is customary, but after six weeks.

When you unbury it, some say that it is enough if the priest reads the service once, but in most of the cases that reading doesn’t help.

In order to destroy the power of the undead, his heart is pierced with an oak, yew, or ash tree pole, it is pierced with a spit, or a nail, or a knife, meaning that in the future it will be bound to the coffin in which it was buried and it won’t come out of the grave, to do evil.

You need to be very careful when you stab or pierce the undead’s heart, because the undead’s heart hides not to be pierced.

According to some beliefs the pole must be thrust through the rear.

At the same time with the piercing, they believe, in the Tecuci region, that it is good if three cloves of garlic are placed in the coffin of the undead.

They put nails through the joints of the hands and legs of the undead, or through their bellies.

The heads of other undead are put in chains.

Some undead are split in two with a scythe, then they boil wine and they pour upon them and as such they are buried again. Some other times only their heart is kept in wine.

They pull out the liver and heart of some other undead, after they split their belly, they burn them until they become ashes and the ashes that is obtained is mixed with a glass of water and all its relatives drink from it, to be protected.

In Mehedinţi county the undead are unburied and are taken to the mountains, where they are thrown away or buried; in other areas they are taken to the border of the village.

After they cut a few others, they take away strands from their hair, and blood, and with these they fumigate all the sick people, if they are not content with dipping a headkerchief in the blood that can be found at the dead person’s mouth, and with fumigating with it, so that the diseases and the undead won’t touch them.

Some rub the undead with gas and then burn them, some burn them with thorns.

Some burn only the heart, while they cut the body to pieces and then bury it.

Some throw the ashes in the air, some place it back in the tomb and others throw it down the water.

Many peoples believe in the existence of the undead, I will mention only a few of them.

The Poles call them Wieszczy and the populations near Danzig call them Strzyga or Zmora, “a demonic being of human origin,” made of a baby born with teeth, which, after death, will climb in a belfry and will call the one he wants from there, and that one, if he hears it, dies; or from a baby that is not born normally, that will suck, at night, the blood of those who sleep.

The Ukrainians call the undead Upior and believe that some come from the dead and others from the living; that they are born from people that drowned or hanged themselves. They make people do evil things.

The Bulgarians have almost the same beliefs as ours: they call them, probably after the Greeks, Vrykolakas or Vucodlac like the Serbs.

The Cheremish “nail the soul to the body with iron nails.”

One must make the difference between the undead and the souls of the dead people that come from the other world sometimes, a belief that we find, again, under more or less different names, with all peoples.

THE DOG OF THE EARTH (CĂŢELUL PĂMÂNTULUI)

Names. Minor Beliefs. Ţâcul Pământului and the Making of the World

Căţelul Pământului, Cânele Pământului, Ţâncul or Ţincul Pământului, Grivan or Orbetele Pământului is a creature which resembles a dog and lives at the back of the Earth, far away from villages, that is away from places where people dig up fountains.

Occasionally, at nighttime, when darkness is thick, this creature comes outside to the face of the world and tries to frighten the lost travelers, baking or even attempting to bite them.

Some people say they saw it or heard it; others say they hear it barking at the back of the Earth when they place the ear against the ground.

Eminescu wrote a poem called “Wraiths” rooted in these popular beliefs:

In the name of God

Listen to the barking dog

Under the stone cross!

These devilish creatures disturb those who died recently, shaking their sleep by barking and even trying from time to time to eat them. In Transylvania, relatives of the dead pay a visit to the grave after the funeral, sprinkle holy water all over the place, they incense the grave and bow down piously 15 times while candles burn. The ritual is said to protect the dead from Căţelul Pământului.

In Tutova, people believe that Căţelul Pământului comes to visit the dead during the first three days from the burial. Căţelul Pământului asks the dead:

“Why have you come to disturb me?”

The dead answers:

“I’ll pay you!”

But Căţelul Pământului does not give up. It barks and chews the deadman’s nose for three days on end. On the third day, the creature says:

“Pay me now!”

If the dead has a coin, he pays to the creature, if not the creature nibbles his nose, leaving him mutilated when the judgement day comes.

The dialog you’ve just read occurs only at nighttime.

Our forefathers believed in Cerberus, a character that is still present in many cultures, under different names.

I finish my story with a cosmogony, although I am not totally sure that it is about Ţâncul Pământului, as well.

They say that when God created this world, He made it too large to fit under the sky. What shall He do? How should He act? God calls for the bee and sends it to Ţâncul Pământului to probe for ideas.

The bee flew to Ţâncul Pământului, but this creature would not reveal any of his ideas:

“If He is God Almighty, let Him do His own way!”

However, the bee did not fly back to God, but stayed hidden by Ţâncul Pământului’s gate. Thinking he is alone, Ţâncul Pământului says to himself:

“Well, well! He asks me what to do. He should take the Earth into His hand and squash it. The ground would wrinkle up then and so the world would fit under the sky all right.”

The bee heard everything and flew directly to God, delivering Him the solution. God rewarded the bees with the gift of making honey that people enjoy eating. This is how the bee had become God’s friend.