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Dracula Bites Night
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
~ Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
Just because you’re among the undead doesn’t mean you can’t be impeccably dressed in tartan for your dinner guests! The Vampire tartan was created with a palette carefully chosen to summon an air of elegant menace. Black evokes the darkness of night—when vampiric deeds are likely. Red recalls the vivid hue of freshly sought blood. Midnight blue represents the hour when mortals should beware of trespass into the shadow realm. And Caput Mortuum, a deep puce tone, mirroring the color of dried blood—an artist’s pigment both eerie and evocative!
In the quote above from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count speaks not of the warbling of mere mortals, but of the chilling howls of his wolves as he escorts an unsuspecting guest through his castle. Stoker’s 1897 novel forever shaped the modern image of the vampire—one that continually resurrects itself in popular culture in different guises, most recently in the 2024 film Nosferatu, a reimagining of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic. The undead have also been serenaded and channeled through decades of music: Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Neil Young’s Vampire Blues, Radiohead’s We Suck Young Blood, and My Chemical Romance’s Vampires Will Never Hurt You all capture the allure and danger of eternal night.
While it’s still debated, some scholars believe Stoker wrote parts of Dracula in 1895 while staying at Crookit Lum Cottage near Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire—drawing inspiration from the brooding Slains Castle for the vampire’s Transylvanian fortress.
So, if you’re a mere mortal donning your darkest kilt this Hallowe’en Night, consider what you carry in your sporran. You never know when a revenant might rise and need to be rebuffed! Traditional apotropaics—objects believed to ward off evil—include garlic, a miniature Bible, a vial of holy water, crucifixes, a rosary, silver, and perhaps, alongside your sgian-dubh, you might consider a discreet wooden stake of ash, hawthorn, oak, or aspen ... just in case. 🖤 💙 ❤️ 🖤 🧛♂️ ⚰️ 🦇 ✝️ 🩸
Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term "vampire" was not popularized in the West until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to episodes of mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
The European style vampire often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance.
The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the highly successful publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori. However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provides the basis of the modern vampire legend and the gaunt, pale undead figure recognized today.
The Vampire tartan, designed by Carol A.L. Martin, employs carefully chosen colours to maximize the tartan terror:
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Black - for the darkness of night associated with vampiric deeds
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Red - for the colour of sought-after fresh blood
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Midnight Blue - for the time of night to be especially cautious if in their dark realm .. and
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Caput Mortuum - the puce colour of dried blood
Caput mortuum is a Latin term whose literal meaning is "dead head" or "worthless remains," used in both alchemy and as a pigment name.
For more fascinating facts about vampires, click the stylized book cover.