ing chanted the triumphant
account of his contest and victory, this mangled conqueror fell dead
before them. The body of Assueit was taken out of the tomb, burnt, and
the ashes dispersed to heaven; whilst that of the victor, now lifeless
and without a companion, was deposited there, so that it was hoped his
slumbers might remain undisturbed.[19] The precautions taken against
Assueit's reviving a second time, remind us of those adopted in the
Greek islands and in the Turkish provinces against the vampire. It
affords also a derivation of the ancient English law in case of suicide,
when a stake was driven through the body, originally to keep it secure
in the tomb.

[Footnote 19: See Saxo Grammaticus, "Hist. Dan.," lib. v.]

The Northern people also acknowledged a kind of ghosts, who, when they
had obtained possession of a building, or the right of haunting it, did
not defend themselves against mortals on the knightly principle of duel,
like Assueit, nor were amenable to the prayers of the priest or the
spells of the sorcerer, but became tractable when properly convened in a
legal process. The Eyrbiggia Saga acquaints us, that the mansion of a
respectable landholder in Iceland was, soon after the settlement of that
island, exposed to a persecution of this kind. The molestation was
produced by the concurrence of certain mystical and spectral phenomena,
calculated to introduce such persecution. About the commencement of
winter, with that slight exchange of darkness and twilight which
constitutes night and day in these latitudes, a contagious disease arose
in a family of consequence and in the neighbourhood, which, sweeping off
several members of the family at different times, seemed to threaten
them all with death. But the death of these persons was attended with
the singular consequence that their spectres were seen to wander in the
neighbourhood of the mansion-house, terrifying, and even assaulting,
those of the living family who ventured abroad. As the number of the
dead members of the devoted household seemed to increase in proportion
to that of the survivors, the ghosts took it upon them to enter the
house, and produce their aerial forms and wasted physiognomy, even in
the stove where the fire was maintained for the general use of the
inhabitants, and which, in an Iceland winter, is the only comfortable
place of assembling the family. But the remaining inhabitants of the
place, terrified by the intrusion of these spectr