In Bulgaria one method of abolishing the vampire is said to be by bottling him. The sorcerer, armed with the picture of some saint, lies in ambush until he sees the vampire pass, when he pursues him with his picture. The vampire takes refuge in a tree or on the roof of a house, but his persecutor follows him up with the talisman, driving him away from all shelter in the direction of a bottle specially prepared, in which is placed some favourite food of the vampire. Having no other alternative, he enters this prison, and is immediately fastened down with a cork on the interior of which is a fragment of an eikon or holy picture. The bottle is then thrown into the fire and the vampire disappears for ever. In Bulgaria the vampire does not invariably seem to have the thirst for human blood, unless there happens to be a shortage in his human food—a distinction which marks him from the species found in other countries. CHAPTER VIII VAMPIRE BELIEF IN RUSSIA The Slavonic belief in vampires is one of the characteristic features of their creed. The Little Russians hold that, if the 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 babies he finds in a house, and afterwards 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 a vampire, wakes from his sleep within the grave he begins to gnaw his hands and feet, and as he gnaws, first his relatives, and then his neighbours, 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. Generally he sucks the blood of sleepers. Ralston, in his _Songs of the Russian People_, says that it is in the Ukraine and in White Russia—so far as the Russian Empire is concerned—that traditions are most rife about this ghastly creation of morbid fancy, and that the Little Russians attribute the birth of a vampire to an unholy union between a witch and a werwolf or a devil. He relates the following as a specimen of the vampire stories prevalent in the country:— “A peasant was driving past a graveyard after it had grown dark. After him came running a stranger, dressed in a red shirt and a new jacket, who said: ‘Stop! Take me as your companion.’ “‘Pray take a seat.’ “They enter a village, drive up to this and that house. Though the gates are wide open, yet the stranger says, ‘Shut tight!’ for on those gates crosses have been branded. They drive on to the very last house: the gates are barred, and from them hangs a padlock weighing a score of pounds; but there is no cross there, and the gates open of their own accord.