such a spectre is called Brukolacas in Servian Wukodlak.  We do not however recollect the appearance of a vampyre, in any genuine production of modern Greek or Servian poetry.  It seems as if the sound sense of the common people had taught them, that this superstition is too shocking, too disgusting, to be admitted into poetry; while the oversated palates of the fashionable reading world crave the strongest and most stimulating food, and can only be satisfied by the most powerful excitement.

In the whole series of Slavic ballads and songs, which lie before our eyes, we meet with only one instance of the return of a deceased person to this world, in the like gloomy and mysterious way, in which the Christian nations of the North and West are wont to represent such an event.  This is in the beautiful Servian tale, “Jelitza[10] and her Brothers.”  As it is too long to be inserted here entire, we must be satisfied with a sketch of it.  Jelitza, the beloved sister of nine brothers, is married to a Ban on the other side of the sea.  She departs reluctantly, and is consoled only by the promise of her brothers to visit her frequently.  But “the plague of the Lord” destroys them all; and Jelitza, unvisited and apparently neglected by her brothers, pines away and sighs so bitterly from morning to evening, that the Lord in heaven takes pity on her.  He summons two of his angels before him;

  “Hasten down to earth, ye my two angels,
  To the white grave where Jovan lies buried,
  The lad Jovan, Jelitza’s youngest brother;
  Into him, my angels, breathe your spirit,

  “Make for him a horse of his white grave-stone,
  Knead a loaf from the black mould beneath him,
  And the presents cut out from his grave-shroud;
  Thus equip him for his promised visit.”

The angels do as they are bidden.  Jelitza receives her brother with delight, and asks of him a thousand questions, to which he gives evasive answers.  After three days are past, he must away; but she insists on accompanying him home.  Nothing can deter her.  When they come to the church-yard, the lad Jovan’s home, he leaves her under a pretext and goes back into his grave.  She waits long, and at last follows him.  When she sees the nine fresh graves, a painful presentiment seizes her.  She hurries to the house of her mother.  When she knocks at the door, the aged mother, half distracted, thinks it is “the plague of the Lord,” which, after having carried off her nine sons, comes for her.  The mother and daughter die in each other’s arms.[11]

This simple and affecting tale affords, then, the only instance, in Slavic popular poetry, of a regular apparition; but even here that apparition has, as our readers have seen, a character very different from that of a Scotch or German ghost.  The same ballad exists also in modern Greek; although in a shape perhaps not equal in power and beauty to the Servian.[12]