[15] Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (translation by Stallybrass, p. 392) remarks—“One principal mark to know heroes by is their possessing intelligent horses, and conversing with them. The touching conversation of Achilles with his Xanthos and Balios finds a complete parallel in the beautiful Karling legend of Bayard. (This is most pathetically told in Simrock’s Deutsche Volksbücher, Vol. II, Die Heimonskinder, see especially page 54). Grimm proceeds to cite many other instances from European literature. See also Note 3 to the XXth story in Miss Stokes’s collection. See also De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, Vol. I, p. 336 and ff. See the remarks in Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 237.
[16] The keeper of a burning or burial-ground would be impure.
[17] Probably the people sprinkled one another with red powder as at the Holi festival.
[18] So in Grimm’s Märchen von einem der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen the youth is recommended to sit under the gallows where seven men have been executed. Cp. also the story of “The Shroud” in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 307.
The belief that the dead rose from the tomb in the form of Vampires appears to have existed in Chaldæa and Babylon. Lenormant observes in his Chaldæan Magic and Sorcery, (English Translation, p. 37) “In a fragment of the Mythological epopée which is traced upon a tablet in the British Museum, and relates the descent of Ishtar into Hades, we are told that the goddess, when she arrived at the doors of the infernal regions, called to the porter whose duty it was to open them, saying,
“Porter, open thy door;
Open thy door that I may enter.
If thou dost not open the door, and if I cannot enter,
I will attack the door, I will break down its bars,
I will attack the enclosure, I will leap over its fences by force;