Dracula – the original vampire novel that spawned countless movies, fan fiction, cartoon characters and Halloween costumes was written by Irish writer Bram Stoker and first published back in 1897. Historian and podcaster Donal Fallon makes the somewhat controversial case on The Ryan Tubridy Show that Stoker is the Irish writer who has had the biggest impact worldwide:
"To my mind, I think more than any other Irish writer, he had an enormous impact on popular culture. I can hear listeners shouting at the radio 'What about James Joyce? What about Ulysses?' They might be more critically acclaimed. But when it comes to pop culture, Dracula is unmatched. It's been parodied from The Muppets to Carry on, it's been boot-legged by Nosferatu. It's in everyone's driveway across the United States this weekend with Halloween."
As you would expect from a historian who loves his Gothic literature, Donal told Ryan he's been visiting his local graveyard for research and inspiration during the lockdown periods. Dublin's Mount Jerome Cemetery also happens to be the resting place of Bram Stoker's mother and another Irish writer whose work inspired the creation of Dracula, as Donal points out before quoting the inscription on the headstone:
"It's where Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, who paved the way for Stoker, is buried. Beautiful headstone. 'The invisible prince. Writer of ghost stories. Sheridan le Fanu buried here.'"
The Irish claim to have invented Halloween is also safe, according to Fallon:
"Halloween to me is deeply, deeply rooted in Irish folklore. It's rooted in Samhain, that great festival that's described brilliantly in one 10th century text 'When the summer went to rest. As far as the Celts were concerned, Samhain was the beginning of the new year, it was a weird kind of between time, you might say, when mortals could visit the dead and vice versa."
Donal says the transition from pagan to Christian Ireland involved some overlapping of the two cultures. He says some of the customs we associate with Halloween, like lighting bonfires, are actually pagan traditions that were never fully banished by Christianity:
"Some of their things made it through into Christian Ireland. So the bonfires, they thought, had kind of protective and cleansing powers.”
The roots of ‘Trick or Treat’ are also pretty ancient, Donal says. He says there is evidence to link it to a pagan custom called 'Mumming':
"Another lingering thing from Samhain was this great tradition called Mumming. Mumming basically was going house to house, dressed in costume. The Americans have bestowed the name Trick or Treat on that one."
Donal Fallon explains why the Dracula myth refuses to die (yes, really), the politics behind Bram Stoker’s vampire and the Bram Stoker Festival in the full interview with Ryan Tubridy here.
The Bram Stoker Festival runs from the 30th October – 2nd November 2020 and you can find out more here.
You can listen to Donal Fallon’s special edition of his Three Castles Burning podcast on Bram Stoker here.
Ruth Kennedy