The Count’s Irish ancestor
QUESTION Is it true that Bram Stoker based his classic novel Dracula on the early Irish legend of Abhartach, an evil chieftain?
WHEN Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, was first published in 1897, it created a sensation and it is still creating an enormous amount of public interest. By all accounts, Stoker did indeed use Abhartach as the basis for Dracula.
The ancient Irish legend of first came to light in modern times when it was published in an 1875 book called The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places, written by Patrick Weston Joyce.
Abhartach was linked with the parish of Errigal, between Garvagh and Dungiven in Co. Derry and the Abhartach was a dwarf magician who was also an appalling tyrant. He was said to have been alive during the fifth and sixth centuries BC.
Five years after his first book, Joyce published A History of Ireland, in which he made many connections between Abhartach and the Irish vampire tradition.
After carrying out many great cruelties, Abhartach was killed by a neighbouring chieftain, said by some to have been Fionn Mac Cumhail. The dwarf ’s body was buried in an upright position but the next day, he reappeared, crueller than ever. He was killed a second time, but the same thing happened all over again the following day; the dwarf reappeared and terrorised the country.
The chieftain then consulted a druid and killed the evil dwarf for the third time. He was buried in the same place, but upside down, with his head at the foot of the grave. He never reappeared. His grave is still there today, Slaghtaverty Dolmen, under a hawthorn tree. The land in which the grave is situated is considered to be ‘bad ground’ by locals. In 1997, when attempts were being made to clear the land, the workmen who were trying to cut down the hawthorn tree found that their brand new chain saw simply wouldn’t work.
But in some versions of the story, the dwarf still reappears from time to time to drink the blood of his victims. It’s said in these versions of the tale that the only certain way to kill Abhartach is with a sword made from yew wood.
For the past 60 years, it has often been claimed Dracula was based on a bloodthirsty ruler of Wallachia in Transylvania, now part of present day Romania. Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler, lived in the 15th century. The figure of Vlad the Impaler and Dracula became fused into one character, but in 1998, serious doubts were cast on this by Professor Elizabeth Miller in her book, Dracula: the Shade and the Shadow.
Professor Miller is a Canadian academic who has done much to debunk the myth that Dracula was based on Vlad III. She has written seven books on the subject and also set up the Dracula Research Centre.
She has always argued that Bram Stoker had no detailed knowledge of Vlad III, had little or no information about his reputation for cruelty, his bloodthirsty desire to impale his enemies or even his full name and had never even been to eastern Europe to see Transylvania for himself.
Two years after the publication of Professor Miller’s 1998 book, a further blow to the legend connecting Vlad III with Dracula came from Bob Curran, a lecturer in Celtic History and Folklore at the University of Ulster.
He went even further, by suggesting that since Bram Stoker was much more familiar with the legend of Abhartach, he based Dracula on that material.
The story of Abhartach also fits into a long tradition of Irish vampire tales, which have been part of local traditions throughout Ireland ever since Celtic times. In those ancient times, the nobility as well as local chieftains were all keen on consuming blood.
When Stoker was a civil servant in Dublin, working in his spare time to research and write the story of Dracula, the two books produced by Patrick Weston Joyce were very fresh in his mind. At the same time, the manuscripts of a 17th century Irish writer called Geoffrey Keating were also on display in the National Museum in Dublin.
These manuscripts had detailed accounts of the ancient Irish blood drinking vampire tradition and these too would have been seen by Stoker.
Even though Stoker had no Irish, he had many friends who were fluent and provided him with translations of Keating’s work.
With these literary connections so fresh in Stoker’s mind, it seems most likely it was the Irish vampire tradition and especially the tale of Abhartach that influenced him in the writing of Dracula.
Tony Doyle, Dublin.
QUESTION When was bleach invented and how is it produced?
CHEMIST Carl Scheele discovered chlorine in 1774; dissolved in water it produced an acidic solution with bleaching properties, although other bleaches were known before this.
Chlorine reacts with water to produce a solution containing hydrochloric and hypochlorous acid. It was found that by adding sodium carbonate a solution would be produced from which the chlorine escaped less readily. It is this that has been used as bleach since the 1780s.
Today it is a product of the chloralkali process which passes DC current through salt solutions.
In the Castner-Kellner process, the cathode is mercury. Sodium is produced as a mercury amalgam, reacted with water to make sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) solution with chlorine produced at the anode. These products are used to make bleach.
Traces of mercury can get into the product, which can be a problem as water treatment companies will not allow mercury to get into the environment. Another process using inert electrodes has a membrane separating the anode and cathode compartments, this time producing hydrogen at the cathode and caustic soda plus chlorine at the anode, which can be mixed to create bleach.
A plant just for bleach can dispense with the membrane and allow the anode and cathode products to mix in situ.
Bleach is not totally stable and has a limited shelf life.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants.
QUESTION Was the eccentric Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great And Small a real person?
THE main characters in the James Herriot books, films and TV series are based on real people.
Veterinary surgeon Alf Wight (James Herriot) arrived at 23 Kirkgate, Thirsk, in July 1940 to assist Donald Sinclair (Siegfried Farnon) and his brother Brian (Tristan) then still at veterinary college.
He met his wife Joan Danbury (Helen Alderson) when she was a secretary at Rymer’s corn mill in Thirsk.
Being a Scot and a football fan, he took the pen-name James Herriot after seeing the Birmingham City and Scotland goalkeeper play on television. Clive Paish, Chigwell, Essex.
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