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there is a very old celtic legend from Scotland that sounds very much like vampires, but the name is older. i speak of the Baobhan Sidh, which is pronounced baavan shee. they were faery folk, beautiful women dressed in green, who would come out at night and entice men into dancing with them - but in the morning the victims would be found drained of blood, or wizzened and old - the sidh drained all the life out of them.

does anyone know exactly how old this legend is? the fact that bh is used instead of v would seem to make it predate the norse invasions, which is when the letter v was introduced into our alphabet. plus which, most of the legends of the Sidh predate christianisation.

the concept of the vampire is very old, but the term itself is only about a thousand years old.

still messed up
here's the address

http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Baobhan_Sith

yeah - i saw that one. it got most of it's source from the same book where i first heard of it about 32 years ago. the Celtic concept of the Sidh is complex. they are the root myth of faeries, but they were not normally thought of as the tinkerbell type faery - more like the elves of Middle Earth. the Celts were very allegorical in old times, so small person could mean someone of little influence. sometimes, Sidh meant elemental spirits, and sometimes it meant the ghosts of an older race - the aboriginal people of Prydain. sometimes it even meant the living remnants of that race - and there is evidence of co-existence between the Celts and the pictish people who inhabited these lands before the iron age.

the legends of the sidh often saw them as magical creatures - spirits with strange powers. and yet other tales describe them as simply being older tribes that even intermarried with the Iron age celts. my own family is said to have sprung from such a union.

some of the sidh were regarded as minor deities or demi-gods - such is the confusion between the retelling of myths and legends. rather like the tales of ancient Greece, where gods and mortals interbred to create heroes and monsters.

baavan shee sounds like banshee to me

that's interesting
is there anymore information in the book beyond what that website mentions?

i'm curious to say the least
i found the story about the man who was safe in the circle of horses because they had iron shoes entertaining. i'd like to read more like that

i had never heard of these creatures before

yes - it is from the same root - banshee used to be bainesidh. it's the Irish version of the myth. leanesidh is the Manx version. there are slight variations, but the overall mythology is the same. not all sidh are female though - there are male versions, but according to myth, the race had a procreation problem because they started to only give birth to females - so most sidh men were old men, and there are few of them. that is why the females married "mortal" men.

wow this awsome, I kind a like the part of their hability to use their nails...mine are kind a really long and hsarp keep cutting poeple around em when i am not carefull, once I cut my boy so deep in his face while catching him because he was gonna break his neck he had a scare for almost a month, it was scary, I felt so bad.

So as for if I beleive the Baobhan Sith to be the predecesseurs fo the vampires, it sounds like a very logical thing and I would think that indeed it could be possible. I just wonder if there are still some around as the article does not mention if their is still evidence fo their presence.

some say that their bloodline continued. certainly there is DNA evidence that some people in the north of Scotland carry DNA that can be traced to the oldest inhabitants of these lands. according to some myths, people who have wytchsight are descendants of the sidh.

natural born witches (not simply pagans) are supposed to be descendants of sidh. according to many British legends, a witch is someone who was born with supernatural powers. often, they are associated with the colour green, which in some places is said to be the colour favoured by witches for clothing.

Baobhan Sidh's are Vampiric Faeries whom seek out men at night,dance with them until they pass out from exhaustion then they feed on their blood.

The Sidhe were the folkes who live under the earth, in barrows, burial grounds of paleolithic times. They agreed to share the land in an agreement with humans. So their part was below, and humans lived on the top of the earth.
The legends of the Celts, where this story is found, also contain others of blood drinking Sidhe, around battles and battlefields.

Okay, I am hitting this one out of the ballpark with the imagination behind this theory... karnstein has stated that the creature(s) in question pre-date the lovely times of christiandom and has even qualified a statement regarding the word "banshee" (an ancient word in its own right) being a derivative of this . Well, consider the territories for the story in question and their access to the ever-untamed sea. Mermaids, banshees, sirens...hell the Kraken? The sea has been here before all, dominates our planet in presence alone and she still remains unconquered and all the more mystertious.

Older than vamps? Maybe?

There are references to the fairy folk who lived on the British Isles in the Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and I think in Mary Stewart's Arthurian series. They refer to a race of small dark skinned people who lived in Britain before the Celts arrived. Morgan Le Fey (King Arthur's sister) is descended from them or "Morgaine of the Fairy Folk" according to Bradley.

I like to associate them with witches more than vampires.

You may find some more information, if you register on the forums on druidry.org and ask of the many people there who are interested in Celtic culture.

here is the info i found on the subject hope it helps some
Home > Library > Reference > Wikipedia baobhan sith
A baobhan sith (pronounced baa'-van shee) is a type of vampire in Scottish mythology, similar to the Manx Leanan Sídheor Irish banshee. They are also known as the White Women of the Scottish highlands.

Usually found in forests or natural settings, a baobhan sith has the form of a beautiful woman in a green dress. One version of the legend says that they have deer hooves for feet, which they keep hidden under the dress. Often several baobhan siths will appear together as a group. Legends have them seducing young men with their beauty, inviting the men to dance with them and eventually drinking their blood.

There is a certain legend in regards to the baobhan sith, where a group of young travellers stopped for the night in a small glade in the Highlands. They build a fire and begin to wish for the company of beautiful women. Four stunning women appear, and begin to dance with the men. The dance, which started out for enjoyment, becomes harsh, and the women tear at the men and draw blood. One of the men runs from their shelter and hides between two horses. The strange women circle the horses, but cannot seem to cross to him. When dawn comes, they disappear. He finds his companions dead and drained of blood. It is thought that the Baobhan Sith could not cross to him because of the iron in the shoes of the horses.

The weakness of the Baobhan Sith seems similar to most vampires: they cannot enter daylight. It also seems that they do not use fangs to draw blood, and rather use sharp fingernails. Similar to other vampires, Baobhan Sith use seduction to gain their victims. According to legend, they arise from their graves once a year to feed, and a way to stop them from waking is to build a cairn over their grave.

At the 2005 West Coast Salsa Congress in Los Angeles, USA, a team from Singapore called Salsa Fanatico performed a hybrid Scottish-Salsa dance called Bao Bhan Sith to a standing ovation. It closely followed the legend.





See also
Banshee
Vampire
Bubbancy
Sith (disambiguation)


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

there are much older sources for vampires.

In the bible the curse of cain is vampirism. When cain kills abel his brother and tells god he is not his brother keeper god knew he killed his brother and for spilling his blood god banished his forever to wander the night. Cain said people would kill him and god put a mark on cain to protect him from being killed and as a curse to whoever tried to kill cain. That they would get 10 times worse than cain.

You want to know the oldest vampire legend then there you go. Far far before christ was even thought of so your talking bc.

vampirealexander, that is not in any copy of the bible i have ever read. also, what you said is totally impossible - no book that predates the english language could possibly state that word for word. try to think about it. what you speak of is at best a modern translation.

do not be so hasty Karnstein, it may not be in English but it does exist but i think it wasn't god that punished him, it may be older and a choice from said Cain.

I could not telling you how old the legend of Baobhan Sidh. From my readings, I can only gather that it can be traced back to Gaelic oral traditions.

Baavan shee sounds alot like banshee maybe they are one and the same...

this is so interesting. ive never heard of this at all.

it does make sense that it is possible to be a banchee. but werent banchees beautiful women with crazy loud voices. or screams. (or are they old adn creepy) they are spirits to come and take the souls of the dead.

no. im pretty sure they were young beautiful wemon. and yeah, they had ear pircing screeches that whould couse ears to bleed or something. they are kick ass. lol.

Vampirealexander

I would just like to mention that the ancient sumerians (much older than the bible texts as they had all but been conquered by the time the first books (old testament) of the bible were written by moses) indeed had a word for the creature they knew as a vampire and the word was akhkharu.

Maybe if you did a little more research on the ancient cultures and where the various myths came from, you may indeed see that there are older myths than the biblical texts.

I would also like to point out that the ancient egyptians also believed in vampirism and indeed sometimes practised it themselves in ancient rituals.

M

well what i was saying is, all the "myths" that came about of the "vampire" started after Vlad. the whole thing about the teeth and turning into bats and shit. i didnt say that there wasent early texts about "simular" acounts of such.

the greeks had sirens...same thought

I have heard of this yet as far as how old they/it is.... well I have read where it has been around for a very long time and as to being older than vampires... well I would have to say yes. I believe that there are many others whom are older and have been around alot longer than vampires. Just an observation ...

I have heard of it, being Celtic myself. I also believe that it was true, and that the Sidh had existed long before vampires. They were like a mix of fairies, Harpies, and Vampires.

Correct me if I'm wrong (we are all learning here)
I did a report a long time ago on Countess Elizabeth Bathory and just a bit of the report touched on vampires. I read that the first vampire was cast out of Heaven by God and sent to the darkness (why vampires dont like light) and all he could feed on was animals and drink their blood.
I wish I could remember where I read it. But has anyone heard of that?

well there are legends of vampires and vampiric creatures through out all of history. im not sure which came first but the one u discribed sounds an awful lot like a Deirdre from ireland. (not sure if thats the exact spelling)

Interesting post....

And aye, I have heard about these beings...
seen as beings of nature, they could be either benevolent towards mortals or malevolent...

The banshee, that is a rather nasty being...

but I guess it all depends how we look upon their natures,
what makes them more ancient, or merely a variation of a "vampyre"...
qui sais...

Carpe Noctem...
Lord Markus

I have heard this legend before but with any myth it is going to be hard to tell when i started, i have looked online for information but their is not to much about this legend, but i really do not think this legend is older than vampires...

nearly all cultures have there vampiric legends... reverence and fear of the return of the dead seems to be an ingrained horror. Some of these stories seem great, I'd like to follow some of them a bit more

that's interesting
is there anymore information in the book beyond what that website mentions?

i'm curious to say the least
i found the story about the man who was safe in the circle of horses because they had iron shoes entertaining. i'd like to read more like that

i had never heard of these creatures before