her dead lover, cooking the dead man’s head in boiling porridge, its voice calling through the steam: “Come, come, come!” In Little Russia [Ukraine] they have a folk song similar to that of the Serbs. The Russian version of the legend is dressed up in a poem by Zhukovsky, just as the Polish, or Lithuanian, is by Mickiewicz. The German ballad Lenore by Gottfried Bürger is generally well known. A Scottish folk song has sweet William’s ghost visiting his fair Margaret, while an old Breton song tells of a brother who, having fallen in battle, comes at night to take off his poor beloved sister, named Gwennolaik, to the other world. This remarkable currency of one and the same myth among peoples distant in geography and language clearly points to its ancient origins. Related to it are the legends of vampires and werewolves, which are as prevalent among the Slavs as they are among many other European nations. And your body, lovely, white, would have ended like these shirts. That is, torn into pieces. In Slavic myth, a young girl leaves her furs with a vampire as suchlike ruse to get free of him. When midnight comes, the vampire first devours the furs and then goes for the girl, who is hiding in her home. The vampire beats on the door, while the girl uses various pretexts to keep him at bay outside until the cock crows.
noon witch As at midnight, noon, too, according to folklore, has its maleficent beings, and the hour between eleven and twelve is when they exercise their ruinous power. This type is called a “noon witch” or
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