Lecture V: Tale Types and Motifs

Your final assignment for this week is to read about the most famous Dead Legend - the Grateful Dead.  In 1999, my essay, "The Grateful Dead Legendstock," was published in Perspectives on the Grateful Dead. Robert Weiner, ed. Greenwood Press. Fall, 1999.  I have put it up for you to read.  It traces the influences of The Grateful Dead Motif.

(note:  in this web-study section, the pages will open as new windows, be sure to close windows when you are done to preserve machine resources!!)

In our continuation of Tale Types - Death - this special study session on Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, and other Undead.



Caption:  A Modern Vampire

"Decayed monsters with naked bone showing through their dried skin, traffic accident victims, the
morticians' concealing make-up sloughed away so that the ripped faces and bashed-in skulls showed,
women with their hair teased into dirt-clogged beehives where worms and beetles still squirmed and
crawled, their faces alternately vacuous and informed with a kind of calculating, idiotic intelligence"

-Stephen King

Our fascination with Ghosts has several parallel folk equivalents.  Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, and the forms of the Undead are legion in folklore and have as much popularity today as in the past.

Zombies


the list of Zombie films is testament to this fascination - even if Zombies have gone out of fashion a bit

1) Zombie Flesheaters

2) Night of the Living Dead

3) Dawn of the Dead

4) Day of the Dead

5) Return of the Living Dead

Bullfinch's Mythology idenitifes the Zombi with a Haitian origin, a feature of the vodun cult.  A zombie is a human being whose soul, having been "stolen" by a worker of evil magic, becomes as though dead.   The sorcerer digs up the body after its internment (hence the ugly appearance), and proceeds to use it as he wishes.  If the zombie is allowed to eat food with salt, or see the sea, he will return to his grave.  If necessary, the zombi can be turned into an animal, slaughtered, and the meat sold in the market (watch out!).  Many Haitian peasants claim that they have bought such meat, and that it spoils more quickly than other meat.

to explore the Zombie phenomenon today - see Zombies on the Web. 

Davild Chalmers, the creator of this site, is a philosopher from the University of Arizona.  He is engaged in studies of consciousness and has written a book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory .  It is interesting to note the way in which a folk notion has found a home in academia. 



Caption:  Werewolf blood

To see the Haitian roots of the Zombi folklore, you can visit the Voodoo Site .

 

and, if you aren't scared enough, go on to

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Vampires



Caption:  A dark vampire kisses a woman in pale blue satin

The Kiss of the Vampire

While vampire stories are found worldwide (India, China, Malaya, Indonesia), they are typically a Slavic concept.  The folklore of Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia abound with vampires.  Several theories about this "localization" have been advanced.  One traditional Vampire haunt, Transylvania, would seem to have been the ancient passage through a wood.  Most of us are familiar with the outlines of vampire myth.  The Vampire cannot rest in the grave, but must go out at night to seek human blood for sustenance.  It must return to the grave at sunrise (many of these motifs show up in the Motif index under Taboo as well as Death).  Anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one on death (or right away in much revisionist legend).  Vampires are also caused by a cat jumping over the corpse, and suicides, witches, and those who have been cursed may become vampiric.  The vampire can be killed by a wooden stake through the heart, the appearance of light, the ringing of church bells, application of something iron, and, yes garlic. 

We moderns are rarely hungry enough to desire human blood, but perhaps others have not been so fortunate.  In fact, there are so many reincarnations of Vlad Tepes, and his famous son, Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler - from Bram Stoker's famous book Dracula, to the whole series about the Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, that we might believe in them, after all.

Several theories attempt to account for a real and scientific explanation of the Vampire.

From the pages of Ken's  Everything You Need to Know About Vampires comes one explanation of the oft-cited "Dracula Disease"- one cherished view of what caused the trouble in Transylvania.  (He has also speculated about the origin of Vampires and has several stories about minor vampires - may be of interest.)

The "Dracula Disease"

This rare disease known as the "vampire" or "Dracula" disease, or by it's proper medical name, porphyria (pronounced por-fer-e-ah, or por-fi-re-ah) is thought to be one of, or the reason for the vampire scares throughout time, in cultures around the world. It is very hard to describe it out of a nurse's dictionary-- it's a lot on the technical side-- but I'm going to try my best to put it in layman's terms.

First of all, porphyria is a genetic disease. Because it is hereditary, it can't be caught by blood or other fluid exchange. There shoots down all those old legends of vampires biting someone and they become a vampire themselves. If having porphyria makes you a vampire, then you cannot give it to others. You cannot make other vampires. You cannot "embrace" anyone. I'm not sure to what percent it is that it gets passed from parent to child, i.e. I'm not sure if 100% of children of a porphyritic (making up a word here) parent gets it or if 50% of them do, or if it passes more readily into one sex or another or if grandchildren are more likely to get it than children (as is sometimes the case with hereditary diabetes). The only sure thing is you can't get it through blood or bodily fluid transfer. Sorry if that ruins your evening plans of a little... necking.

Porphyrins (hence the lack of them gives you the name of the disease), combined with iron form hemes in the blood. Heme is what makes blood red. If you don't have the right porphyrin content, you don't have the right heme contents, and then things start to go bad. Prophyria imbalance can cause the following:

gastrological problems (stomach cramping, nausea)
neurological and psychological disorders (you get crazy)
photosensitivity (intolerance to sun or bright lights)
pigmentation of the face (skin changes color, usually getting lighter, losing color)
anemia (blood deficiency) with enlargement of the spleen (an organ acting as a reservoir for blood)
and excessive amounts of porphyrins are excreted in the stool and urine, giving it a dark red, bloodish color.

If you look at all the symptoms of porphyria, you can begin to see how it could start looking like what we know as a vampire. Mentally unstable people, perhaps snarling, flashing their teeth. Perhaps biting others. Some people report that porphyria is helped by giving blood, IV. Back before such things, you might find people suffering of the disease drinking blood to help them feel better. They are photosensitive, their skin, in extreme cases, prone to blistering and burning in the sunlight, so they would have a preference to avoid it. Discoloration of the skin or loss of pigmentation, coupled with a low amount of blood, would give suffers a very pale appearance indeed. But before you say "Aha!" and pronounce this as the truth behind the vampire scares, be advised, this is a very rare disease. There are several classifications of it as well, not all of them having all of the symptoms. Those symptoms closest to being "vampire related" appear only in a handful of cases. As of 1991, there were only 60 reported
cases of the form of porphyria, CEP, that has symptoms most commonly linked with vampirism.*

Quick facts about Anemia, Catalepsy and Porphyria
Porphyria
Porphyria and vampires **

Another speculation about Vampires concerns the bloody face that is often depicted in folklore.  Apparently, in olden times, some hapless characters were buried while they were still alive [this is the scenario in many of the Edgar Allen Poe stories - since the Poe stories are essentially well-crafted ghost tales].  In any case, a person finding him-or-herself alive in a coffin would likely turn over to capture the air at the bottom of the coffin, and would bite lips, etc. as he/she was suffocating.   [egad]


But if you think none of this is true - visit the Pathway to Darkness.  

much like the Vampire, the Werewolf is an eternal favorite, and, also must do most of his work at night.

 

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Werewolves



Caption:  Werewolf calling in old days

 

The werewolf stories are classified in Thompson's motif system under D113.1.1 - Werewolf, and are associated with a number of other motifs about death/enchantment.  The word "werewolf" actually means "man-wolf" in Old English (wer = man; wolf = yes, you guessed it!).

Yet, even in cultures where wolves are not found, the fear of such a kind of creature exists.  In India and Southwest Asia, the animal is the tiger, South American folk stories feature the jaguar, and in Greece and Turkey, we may find a ravenous boar.

These tales fall under the Motif of Death, but they are characterized by another common motif, shape-shifting.  Shape-shifting stories from around the world can involve the crocodile, the hyena, the leopard and so forth.  You might want to think back on the animal gods of Egypt, as well, who are portrayed either as the whole animal, a man with the head of the sacred animal, or as a man (or woman) with a headdress that identifies the animal or its totem.

While we are familiar with grown-up wolves, much of the folklore about werewolves involves the potential harm that might come to a child who is turned into a werewolf.  Unbaptized babies are particularly vulnerable.  Anything can happen!  A witch or sorcerer can sneak into the house and brand the child, a pregnant mother can be exposed to the "evil eye,"  the Devil himself can claim the child (sometimes for reasons that are not clear at all).  Holy water is good for protection, but to be perfectly safe, it is recommended that you surround the child's crib with rowan leaves, place a knife or other iron object under the pillow [this reliance on iron to protect one from the supernatural undead is quite curious, and we will examine it in later lectures--some scholars believe it has to do with the advent of the iron age, its value and scarcity at one time].  Also, to seal the bargain, put a piece of communion bread under the pillow, too.

 



Caption:  Sketch of execution of werewolf at Ansbach (Middle Ages)

From the Werewolf page:   the ways to become a werewolf:


You eat the brain of a wolf.

You drink from the paw print of a wolf, or drink out of a pool
of water that wolves have drank out of.

You eat roasted wolf flesh.

You wear or smell the plant wolfbane.

You have tasted human flesh.

You wear a garment made of wolf skin.

You wear a belt made of the skin of a executed criminal.

You are bitten by a werewolf.



Caption:  Werewolf attacks another woman dressed in satin.

The Werewolf page is full of fascinating information, sounds, and images.



Caption:  same werewolf calling

end of Lecture V. for Tale Types and Motifs - Please see Resources Page for more general links!