is generally taken in a raw state by the invalid, who lifts it to his mouth like jelly between his fingers and thumb.” It must be remembered that the Aborigines firmly believe in the existence of the soul after death, and since blood during the life proves the most helpful and sustaining nourishment it will communicate the same vitalizing qualities if bestowed upon one who has passed beyond, for they do not entertain the idea that death is any great severance and separation.
This certainly gives us a clue to the belief underlying the practice of scratching the body and shedding blood upon the occasion of a death, and there can be no doubt that, although possibly the meaning was obscured and these lacerations came to evince nothing more than a proof of sorrow at the bereavment, yet fundamentally the blood was offered by mourners for the refreshment of the departed to supply him with strength and vigour under his new conditions.[33] These practices, then, involved a propitiation of the dead; further, a certain intimate communication with the dead, and assuredly bear a necromantic character, and have more than a touch of vampirism, the essence of which consists in the belief that the dead man is able to sustain a semi-life by preying upon the vitality, that is to say, by drinking the blood of the living. Accordingly we are fully able to understand why these customs, heathenish and worse, were so uncompromisingly denounced and forbidden in the Mosaic legislation. It was no mere prohibition of indecorous lamentations tinged with Paganism, but it went something deeper, for such observances are not free from the horrid superstition of black magic and the feeding of the vampire till he suck his full of hot salt blood and be gorged and replete like some demon leech.
The word Vampire (also vampyre) is from the Magyar vampir, a word of Slavonic origin occuring in the same form in Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, and Bulgarian with such variants as Bulgarian, vapir, vepir; Ruthenian vepyr, vopyr, opyr; Russian upir, upyr; South Russian upuir; Polish upier. Miklosich[34] suggests the Turkish uber, witch, as a possible source. Another derivation, which is less probable is from the root Pi—to drink, with the prefix va, or av. Prom the root Pi—come the Greek πίνω I drink, some tenses of which are formed from the root Po—, such as a perfect πέπωκα[35]; a future passive ποθήσομαι[36]; to which must be added the perfect infinitive
