slumber, to the stake which was
driven into the corpse suspected of being a vampire, to prevent its
rising any more from the grave and troubling the living.

Now it may be admitted that there is much that is plausible, much even
that is true, in this theory. It might be urged in its behalf that (as
we have had more than one occasion in the course of this work to know)
Fairyland is frequently not to be distinguished from the world of the
dead. Time is not known there; and the same consequences of permanent
abode follow upon eating the food of the dead and the food of the
fairies. Further, when living persons are stolen by fairies, mere dead
images are sometimes left in their place. These arguments, and such as
these, might well be added to Liebrecht's; and it would be hard to say
that a formidable case was not made out. And yet the theory fails to
take account of some rather important considerations. Perhaps the
strongest point made--a point insisted on with great power--is that of
the taboo. The case of the lady of Argouges is certainly very striking,
though, taken by itself, it is far from conclusive. It might very well
be that a supernatural being, in remaining here, would be obliged to
submit to mortality, contrary perhaps to its nature; and to remind it of
this might fill it with an irresistible impulse to fly from so horrible
a fate. I do not say this is the explanation, but it is as feasible as
the other. In the Spanish story it was not the utterance of the name of
Death, but of a holy name--the name of Mary--which compelled the wife to
leave her husband. Here she was unquestionably regarded by Spanish
orthodoxy, not as a spirit of the dead, but as a foul fiend, able to
assume what bodily form it would, but bound to none. The prohibition of
inquiry as to the bride's former home may arise not so much from a
desire to avoid the recollection, as from the resentment of impertinent
curiosity, which we have seen arouses excessive annoyance in
supernatural bosoms. The resentment of equally impertinent reproaches,
or a reminiscence of savage etiquette that avoids the direct name, may
account at least as well for other forms of the taboo. Liebrecht
suggests most ingeniously that assault and battery must strike the
unhappy elf still more strongly than reproaches, as a difference between
her present and former condition, and remind her still more
importunately of her earlier home, and that this explains the
prohibition of t