An Irish Dracula

Paddy Dracula…..

Bram Stoker was born in Fairview, a suburb of Dublin on 8^th November 1847 and considering that his famous novel, Dracula, has been the subject of more than 1,000 films, he is seldom if ever classed as one of the great Irish writers of his time. More importantly, the book has never been out of print since first published in 1897 and apart from the Bible, it is reputed to be the biggest selling book of all time.

The most famous version of the filmed story is without doubt the 1931 version starring Bela Lugose

Some Irish scholars believe that the name Dracula comes from the Irish Gaelic words ‘Droch Ola’ which they claim to mean ‘Bad Blood’. I have some personal doubts on that score, as my Gaelic is not that good.  'Droch' does mean 'bad'.  However, I feel that the ‘ola’ part refers to ‘drink or drinks’.  One dictionary refers to 'ola' as meaning 'oil' so I suppose it could be loosely translated as they suggest.

However, Stoker’s mother, a staunch feminist, came from the West of Ireland where in 1832 there was a cholera epidemic. She often told the young Bram that she had witnessed people being pushed into large graves with poles ‘while they were still alive’................  It is also most likely that she would have been a fluent Gaelic speaker.

The second point is that during the period of Stoker’s boyhood, it was believed that anyone who committed suicide would become a vampire unless a stake was driven through their heart.

There was in fact a suicide burial plot in Clontarf, Dublin not far from his home and he used to spend most of his spare time playing in the graveyard. In fact, it was St. Michan’s Church and the Stoker family had a burial vault there. 

It is also a fact that anyone who committed suicide could not be buried in 'consecrated ground' thus barring them from internment in a church graveyard.   It was not uncommon for such deceased to have their coffins lifted over the walls of the cemetery and buried without the knowledge of the Priest or Pastor........

"By some atmospheric freak in this churchyard and vaults, bodies are preserved by a natural mummification, or they were in the past" the same scholars claim..

It is also a fact that as a young boy, he would have witnessed the emigrants making their way to the Dublin Port to escape the Great Famine en route to Liverpool. He would have been used to seeing near dead starving refugees dressed in rags making their way to the ‘coffin ships’.

A term that he may have become used to hearing at the time was that ‘the landlord up at the big castle (house) was sucking the blood of the peasants’ - referring to the Manor Houses and the Lords who were evicting tenants who could not pay their rent............

.Bram Stoker died on 20^th April 1912.

Personally I have little doubt that the story incorporates various frightening aspects of old Irish storytelling and the fact that his mother was from the West of Ireland, he would have been told whilst young many of the horror stories that she would have heard from travelling story-tellers. His ramblings around the churchyard and what he without doubt witnessed as a boy may well have fired his imagination.....................

Remember also that there was no television, radio or films during his lifetime and the vast majority of such stories were oral. I have mentioned before, about sitting around a large open fire in my Grandfather’s cottage with Granddad or one of my uncles telling with gusto the stories of murder, headless coachmen and other evil things.   I don't know about Stoker, but they used to frighten the living daylights out of me when I was a boy……………..

So……there is only one question left to be answered……was Dracula Irish?

----------Mike----------