Was Dracula Really An Irish Bloodsucker?

So what does Transylvania and an Irish romance have in common? The Urban Dictionary says that an Irish Dracula is a paragon of slow execution, physically or mentally. This must be an inside joke unknowable to a Hungarian like myself, so we'll move on to the idea that Dracula was an Irishman.

Was Dracula really based on an Irish legend? Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, himself was an Irishman who grew up playing in graveyards, and there's a fascinating legend that the Irish version of a vampire was more Stoker's inspiration than Vlad the Impaler:

Abhartach was either a dwarf or a small, deformed man who was a tyrannical Celtic chief over his people and thought to have magical powers. The legend goes that the local people were so afraid of him that they hired a warrior to kill him. The warrior succeeded, but Abhartach rose from the grave, demanding a blood sacrifice to drink from his subjects. The warrior killed him two more times, and two more times the Celtic chief rose, demanding more blood, becoming what the Celts called the marbh beo--or the living dead.

In desperation, the subjects turned to a Christian (or in another version, a Druid) who said Abhartach must be killed with a yew sword, buried upside down, covered with a large stone, and the grave was to be planted around with thorn bushes. Finally, Abhartach was no more. The site remains in modern day Garvagh and is known as the place where the man was buried three times.

No wonder the term for 'bad blood' in Irish is Droch Ola.

Poor Keanu had no idea!



As history eventually decides where the
'real' Dracula hailed from, you can enjoy a sweet, blood-free romance
where the darkest thing is a stubborn Irishman's attitude.

Check out the other blogs talking about Transylvania, and enter to win great prizes like Kindles and gift-cards!

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Rachel Firasek

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Linda Wisdom

Kiss Me, I'm Irish. Available for Kindle, Nook, print, and Smashwords. To 3 random commenters, I'll be gifting copies of Kiss Me, I'm Irish in any e-form or print.