The Scholomance ( , Solomonărie ) was a fabled school of black magic in Romania, especially in the region of Transylvania. It was run by the Devil, according to folkloric accounts. The school enrolled about ten students to become the Solomonari. Courses taught included the speech of animals and magic spells. One of the graduates was chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker and tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather. The school lay underground, and the students remained unexposed to sunlight for the seven-year duration of their study. The dragon (zmeu or balaur) was kept submerged in a mountaintop lake, south of Sibiu, according to some accounts. Folklore An early source on the Scholomance and Dracula folklore was the article "Transylvanian Superstitions" (1885), written by Scottish expatriate Emily Gerard. It has been established for certain this article was an important source that Bram Stoker consulted for his novel, Dracula. Gerard also published similar material in Land Beyond the Forest (1888), which Stoker might have also read, and other commentators stated this was Bram Stoker's direct source for Scholomance in his novel. Twenty years earlier, a description of the Scholomance and its pupils (the Scholomonariu) was given in an article written by Wilhelm Schmidt (1817–1901), a German schoolteacher at the Romanian town of Hermannstadt. Some modern commentators have referred to the school as "L'École du Dragon" or "The School of the Dragon". Curriculum The school, it was believed, recruited a handful of pupils from the local population. Enrollment could be seven, ten, or thirteen pupils. Here they learned the language of all living things, the secrets of nature, and magic. Some sources add specifically the pupils were instructed on how to cast magic spells, ride flying dragons, and control the rain. The duration of their study was seven or nine years, and the final assignment for graduation required the copying of one's entire knowledge of humanity into a "Solomonar's book". There was also the belief that the Devil instructed at the Scholomance. Moses Gaster remarked that this association with the Devil indicates that the memory of the school's origins as having to do with King Solomon had completely faded. Location The Scholomance, according to Gerard, was at some unspecified location deep in the mountains, but the dragon (correctly spelled zmeu, though given phonetically in German as ismeju) was stabled underwater in a small mountaintop lake south of