More on Irish Vampires – Foras Feasa ar Éirinn

I have frequently discussed the myth of the Irish vampire in the past.

Basically, this newly-manufactured myth claims that the Irish author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, was influenced by a substantial body of vampire lore in Irish tradition and that this lore goes back hundreds of years.

Where did these stories about Irish vampires come from and what evidence exists for them? I intend to go through these claims and debunk them one by one. The first claim (chronologically) is that there is evidence for the Irish vampire tradition in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (A Basis of Knowledge About Ireland), the history of Ireland written in the Irish language by Seathrún Céitinn (anglice Geoffrey Keating) in the 17^th century.

Haining and Tremayne (who I will discuss in detail later) in their 1997 book, The Undead, claim that this work contains an account of vampirism:

It has been suggested by the prolific Irish author and novelist Cathal Ó Sándair (1922-1996) in ‘Dracula Domharfa’ (Dracula the Immortal), Irish Times, 18 May 1993, that while at Trinity College, Bram undoubtedly came across and read Seathrún Céitinn’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, the History of Ireland, written between 1629 and 1631. Dr Céitinn dwelt on the subject of the neamh-mhairbh (the Un-Dead) in Volume I, Chapter 10.

Is this true? Well, we can dispense with this nonsense very easily and very quickly, by quoting the relevant passages in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, in both the original Irish and in an English translation. The passage deals with the great magicians of Irish mythology, the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were living in Greece on their travels when the country was attacked by the Syrians. The Tuatha Dé Danann used magic to reanimate corpses to fight for their Greek hosts:

Tárla mu’n am soin go dtáinig cobhlach mór ó chrích na Siria, do dhéanamh cogaidh ar lucht críche Ateniensis go mbíadh cathughadh laitheamhail eadorra; agus an drong do marbhtaoi do na h-Ateniensis is iad bhíodh ar a bhárach ag cathughadh re lucht na Siria. Tré dhraoidheacht Tuaithe Dé Danann do-ghníthí an siabhradh soin: óir do chuiridís deamhna is na corpaibh ceudna d’á dtoghluasacht. Agus mar thugadar lucht na Siria sin d’á n-aire, téidhid do dhéanamh comhairle re n-a ndraoi féin. Ráidhis an draoi riu, faire do chur ar láthair nó ar ionad an ármhaigh, agus cuaille do bhior caorthainn do sháthadh tré mheidhe gach mairbh do bhíodh ag aitheirghe chuca, agus má’s deamhna do-ghníodh a gcoirp do thoghluasacht go gclaochluidhfithí i gcrumhaibh fo cheudóir de sin iad; agus damadh é a n-aithbheodhadh dá ríribh do-ghníthí, nach géabhdaois na coirp truailleadh ná claochlódh chuca. Tigid lucht na Siria do chur an chatha ar a bhárach, agus maoidhtear rompa, agus sáithid na cleatha caorthainn tré sna marbhaibh amhail ro ráidh an draoi riu, agus do rinneadh crumha dhíobh do láthair; agus lingid lucht na Siria fótha iar sin d’á n-óirleach.

It happened about that time that a great fleet came from the country of Syria to make war on the people of the Athenian country, so that there was daily warfare between them; and those of the Athenians who would be slain, it is they who would be on the morrow fighting with [i.e. against] the people of Syria. That necromancy used to be done through the art magic of the Tuatha Dé Danann: for they would put demons into the same bodies to restore them. And when the people of Syria became aware of this, they go to take counsel with their own druid. The druid says to them, to set a watch on the site or on the place of the battle-field, and to thrust a stake [of a spit] of quicken-tree through the trunk of every dead person who would be rising up against them; and if it were demons who would cause their bodies to revive, that they would be from that immediately turned into worms, while, if it were really their revival that had been brought about, the bodies would not suffer change or corruption. The people of Syria come to join battle on the morrow, and it is won by them, and they thrust the stakes of ash through the dead, as the druid had told them, and presently worms were made of them: and the people of Syria fell on the others after that, slaughtering them.

As you will see, there is no reference to the word neamh-mharbh (plural neamh-mhairbh) in this text, which is unsurprising given that its first recorded use was in the 1930s. The dead are referred to as bodies or as the dead. There is no reference to them drinking blood and they are not regarded as vampires. And while the staking of the dead to kill them might make us think of vampirism, such anomalous burial practices are found in many countries and cultures. Bodies have been found with stones wedged in their mouths, others with stakes through them at crossroads, yet others buried face down and others with bolts or nails through their ankles or hips to stop them walking. These traditions are not exclusively Irish and they certainly aren’t all aimed at vampires, only at unhappy spirits who might choose to leave the grave and go for a walk.

The County Derry story of Abhartach (which I will deal with next) is not mentioned at all in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, as many of these garbled accounts of Irish vampirism wrongly claim. It is of no relevance that Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or its English translation might have been seen by Stoker in Trinity College Library, because Foras Feasa contains no reference at all to vampirism or to Abhartach.

Bob Curran

I have been reading Jason Colavito’s book Faking History recently (https://www.amazon.com/Faking-History-Jason-Colavito-ebook/dp/B00BYIZEY4). I have enjoyed it greatly, though I do have some minor criticisms. The book is full of trivial errors (fare spelled as fair, words missing, indefinite articles used with plurals, Otto of Freising written as Otto of Friesling, Pantagruel written as Pantagreul etc.) and could have done with a good proofreader. There is also a lot of repetition.

Having said that, the content itself is erudite, clever and well worth reading. In a series of short essays, Colavito tackles a variety of absurd claims made in pseudo-archaeology and fringe history books. The overall theme of the essays seems to be the way that error is created and replicated in the world of junk scholarship. In many cases, claims which have no basis in fact are copied from book to book, and nobody ever checks the original source. There are some truly amazing pieces of pseudo-history. For example, the famous medieval story of the Green Children from Suffolk was transposed to Catalonia in the 19^th century. The story about how the Christian world hated forks because of their pagan and demonic associations was also fascinating. However, I was also very interested to see that he criticises Bob Curran, author of a number of lurid and badly-written tomes on folklore, who has also been criticised on this blog. He describes how Curran helped to spread a claim as genuine information when in reality it is derived from the fictional writings of H.P. Lovecraft!

This is interesting, because Curran does exactly the same thing with a couple of Irish terms, supposedly ancient Irish names for vampires, the neamh-mhairbh and the dearg-diúlaí [sic].

In an incredibly sloppy article called Was Dracula An Irishman? published in History Ireland magazine in the year 2000, Curran claims that Stoker was influenced by Irish vampire lore and especially by the story of a character called Abhartach. Curran writes: “But it was the historian and folklorist Patrick Weston Joyce who actually made connections between Abhartach and the Irish vampire tradition. Joyce enthusiastically recounted the legend in his own book A History of Ireland (Dublin 1880).” I have looked through an online copy of this book and can find no reference to Abhartach, vampires or anything else related to this story. In another book by Joyce (The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places) it says that a dwarf (abhartach, or abhac in modern Irish) returned from the dead but doesn’t mention blood-drinking:

There is a place in the parish of Errigal in Derry, called Slaghtaverty, but it ought to have been called Laghtaverty, the laght or sepulchral monument of the abhartach [avartagh] or dwarf (see p. 61, supra). This dwarf was a magician, and a dreadful tyrant, and after having perpetrated great cruelties on the people he was at last vanquished and slain by a neighbouring chieftain; some say by Fionn Mac Cumhail. He was buried in a standing posture, but the very next day he appeared in his old haunts, more cruel and vigorous than ever. And the chief slew him a second time and buried him as before, but again he escaped from the grave, and spread terror through the whole country. The chief then consulted a druid, and according to his directions, he slew the dwarf a third time, and buried him in the same place, with his head downwards; which subdued his magical power, so that he never again appeared on earth. The laght raised over the dwarf is still there, and you may hear the legend with much detail from the natives of the place, one of whom told it to me.

Curran also writes in his History Ireland article:

… and the tradition of the blood-drinking dead was also recorded in Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (The History of Ireland) written between 1629 and 1631. In chapter ten Keating made much of the neamh-mhairbh.

As I have said before, there is no reference to vampirism in the Foras Feasa and the reanimated dead are not referred to as neamh-mhairbh (neamh-mharbh is the nominative singular, neamh-mhairbh the nominative plural; neamh-marbh and neamh-mairbh are misspellings) or anything resembling that word.

In recounting his version of the story of the abhartach, Curran has a chieftain called Cathán speak to a druid, who tells him: ‘Abhartach is not really alive’, he told the astonished Cathán. ‘Through his devilish arts he has become one of the neamh-mhairbh [the undead]. Moreover, he is a dearg-diúlaí, a drinker of human blood. He cannot actually be slain—but he can be restrained.’

Again, the trail for this conversation leads back to Curran, and as far as I can see, it goes no further, though some sources mention Peter Haining, Peter Tremayne and Cathal Ó Sándair as the originators of some of this nonsense. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any independent evidence for Curran’s version. There is no evidence that the term neamh-mhairbh existed in the Irish language before it was used as the Irish version of ‘undead’ in the Irish translation of Dracula which was published by An Gúm in 1933.

Curran claims that the term derrick-dally was used of apparitions in folk-tales but the assumption that this comes from dearg-diúlaí is hard to accept. There’s no evidence for this term existing. The noun dearg is not used as a term for blood. Diúlaí doesn’t sound like dally, and we can’t rule out terms like diabhal (devil) or deargadaol (a beetle associated with bad luck) as the source of derrick-dally. (I think we can safely assume that Derrick Dalley, Newfoundland politician, is not a revenant and has no connection with 19th century vampires.)

In other words, as in the case cited by Jason Colavito, Curran has taken fake information and treated it as real. Does it matter? Well, it matters to me. People all over the world are repeating the amazing fact that Bram Stoker was influenced by a sizeable body of vampire lore from Ireland, and moreover, that he took the term undead from the Irish neamh-mharbh, when in reality, it is the other way round. Of course, if this were really true, nobody would be doing more to spread it than me. But it isn’t true, and I want people to get to know the real Irish language and the culture associated with it, not some fake version manufactured by dilettantes like Cassidy and Curran.