Legends and Myths
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Supernatural
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STRYX, STRIGES What we know today about ancient Roman belief about the Stryx (plural: Striges) is from what Ovid wrote in his book Fasti. According to Ovid, the Striges atttacked children at night in a form resembling that of a screech owl.
(Italian) Versione Romana delle Lamie Greche. Conosciute in tutto il periodo dell'antichità anche come «Mormos», le Striges hanno le stesse caratteristiche delle «Lamie». A volte la qualifica di Striges veniva data a delle cortigiane particolarmente depravate; primo esempio storico del metodo comparativo che nel nostro secolo porterà le «donne fatali» ad essere chiamate «Vamp», da «Vampiro». Belief that the undead were corpses possessed and animated by demons is not to be found in Romanian lore. Instead, it was thought that the souls of the undead were unable to leave the world of the living. In Romanian lore, the names for an undead vampire include:
All of these names can be used to mean an undead vampire who periodically leaves his grave to prey upon the living and returns to his grave to rest. But each term also has a special meaning. However, there are also living vampires and witches. STRIGA, STRIGE, STRIGELE In the article "The Vampire" in Romania by Agnes Murgopci, published in the December 1926 issue of Folk-Lore, it is said that the Strigele are either the spirits of living witches or of dead witches who appear as little points of light in the air. They sometimes come together in groups of seven or nine and dance together." After they break off their dance, they do mischief to human beings. It seems obvious that the Romanian name Strigoi, which can mean either a "living vampire" (strigoi viu) or a "dead vampire" (strigoi mort) is derived from this. STRIGOI (fem. STRIGOAICA), STRINGOIU Generally said to be friendly towards Gypsies, the beings called Strigoi are based on the Roman term stryx for screech owl which also came to mean demon or witch. In Romania, the name Strigoi (fem: Strigoaica) is the most common one applied in general to people who died and and returned from their graves as vampires who prey upon the living. But this is same name can apply to anyone living who becomes destined to become a vampire after death and has certain supernatural powers already before death. To put it simply, there are two types of Strigoi:
According to some Romanian lore, the living vampires join together in covens which socialize with the undead vampires on certain nights. In some accounts of this, the undead vampires teach the living vampires teach the living vampires on the art of black magic. On certain nights such as that of the Eve of St. George (April 22) and the Eve of St. Andrew (November 29) they met together to celebrate a sort of Witch's Sabbath and to generally terrorize normal living people. But there are also recorded accounts of Romanian folk belief where it is said that on some nights both the strigoi vii and the strigoi morti travel to a place at the end of the earth. There, wielding either the tongues of hemp brakes (trestle-like tables used for crushing hemp) or (more rarely) swords as weapons, they engage each other in a general free-for-all battle. They become reconciled with each other again after the battle is over. There are numerous ways to become a Strigoi. A person born with a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, a suicide, or who died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. So was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. And naturally, being bitten by vampire, meant certain condemnation to a vampiric existence after death. More... (Italian) Vampiro originario della Romania e della Valacchia. Il nome ha una chiara etimologia dagli «Striges» citati. Altri termini romeni per designare il vampiro sono «Nosferatu» e «Moroi». Alla lettera, il termine «Moroi» e' piu' indicato di «Strigoi» per designare il vampiro, perche' «Moroi» significa «non-morto». Chiùnque puo' diventare uno Strigoi dopo la morte, ma favoriti sono coloro che possiedono il pelo e i capelli rossi. Per distruggere questo vampiro, basta inchiodarlo alla sua tomba, con una picca, o meglio ancora con un abete che sara' poi dato alle fiamme, bruciando ovviamente anche il cadavere del vampiro. BENANDANTI [Friuli] During the 16th century (and most probably before), in the northern Italian region of Friuli, there were the benandanti. These were all men who were born with a caul (amniotic membrane still attached to the top of the infant's head and forming a veil). Such a person was usually brought into the league of benandanti when he was in his late teens. They left their bodies at night to fight against witches who threatened their community. What we know about them is from records of trials in which one or more of them were accused of practicing witchcraft themselves. From this, it seems that the biggest battles occurred during four periods of the year: Wednesday to Saturday after the first Sunday in Lent (which begins on Ash Wednesday, forty days before Easter), and three four-day periods which included Pentecost Sunday (the seventh Sunday after Easter, also known as Whitsunday), Holy Cross Day (September 14), and St. Lucy's Day (December 13). At stake was the success of the harvests. The souls of both the benandanti and those of the witches would leave their bodies on these nights and fly through the air astride horses or other animals. The place they met for battle was sometimes described as "the Plains of Jehosaphat." The benandanti used bundles of fennel as weapons; the witches used bundles of sorghum. According to the trial testimony of one wife of a benandantu, her husband instructed her not to move his body on such nights when he was in a trance-like state lest his soul could not return to his body. It was also said that the soul of a benandantu could be seen leaving their bodies through his mouth or nose in the form of a fly. KOZLAC, KOZLAK [Dalmatia] A Dalmatian vampire about whom very little is known. Prevalent among Croat beliefs. LAMIA / LAMIAE, LAMIA EMPOUSA [Ancient Greece] In Greek mythology, Lamia was a Queen of Libya who became a child-murdering daimon. In later writings she is pluralized into many lamiai. Similar in type to other female monsters from Greco-Roman myth, such as the empousai and the mormolykei, she is distinguished from them by her description as half-woman and half-serpent. Her name comes from the "gullet" (Greek: Laimos), thus she devoured human children. Lamia was the daughter of Poseidon and Lybie, a personification of the country of Libya. Lamia was a queen of Libya herself, whom Zeus loved. Hera discovered the affair and stole away Lamia's children, whereupon Lamia in her grief became a monster and took to murdering children herself. Zeus granted her the power of prophecy as an attempt at appeasement, as well as the related ability to temporarily remove her eyes. Either Hera turned her into a monster; The grief from Hera killing all her children, save Scylla, made her monstrous; or she was already one of Hecate's brood. Plutarch heard that Lamia had the gift to be able to take her eyes out and then put them back in. A paternalistic embroidery on this archaic mytheme is that this gift was the gift of Zeus, and by a further explanatory improvisation, that Lamia was "cursed" with the inability to close her eyes so that she would always obsess over the image of her dead children. Horace, in Ars Poetica (l.340) imagined the impossibility of retrieving the living children she had engulfed:
Alexander Pope translates the line:
Apuleius, in The Golden Ass, describes the witch Meroe and her sister as Lamiae: "The three major enchantresses of the novel—Meroe, Panthia and Pamphylia—also reveal many vampiric qualities generally associated with Lamiae," David Walter Leinweber has noticed. Stesichorus identifies Lamia as the mother of Scylla, by Triton. Further passing references to Lamia were made by Strabo (i.II.8) and Aristotle (Ethics vii.5). In the Vulgate Jerome translated Lilith, the spirit in Isaiah 34:14 who conceived by Adam a brood of monsters, as lamia, thus sealing Lamia's image as a seductress in the Christian imagination. VUKODLAK [Dalmatia] In documented testimony from a trial that began in October 1737 and ended in 1738 in the then independent city-state of Dubrovnik, not far north from Montenegro, the names given for "vampire" include Kosak, Pricosak, Tenjac, and Vukodlak. (In the part of Croatia on the Adriatic penninsula of Istria and in neighboring Slovenia, the name Kudlak, an abbreviation of Vorkudlak is sometimes used - see above.) The defendants in the trial were vampire hunters from the island of Lastova, about 60 miles by sea from Dubrovnik. Earlier that year, there was an outbreak of severe "diahrrea” on the island. Among the defendants were a band of vigilante style vampire hunters, who believed the epidemic was due to vampirism, and parish priests accused of cooperating with them. They were accused of desecrating graves. The trial began on October 14. On the next day, a man, evidently an Italian, named Lovro Lucenta testified: “I was on Lastovo about 16 years ago and gathered coral...Many people died on the island at that time...Vampires (kosci) would enter houses at night, and they would chew on people’s hearts, because they feed on the hearts and innards of the living and drink their blood, above all those with whom they’ve had a quarrel....” This quotation is from an English translation of the trial testimony, on page 88 of The Darkling by Jan Perkowski, Slavica Publishers (1989). VORKUDLAK [Serbia] In Serbia, the most common names for an undead vampire are Vampir and Vorkudlak. In Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro, the names include not only the two just mentioned but also Lampir. (These terms are detailed elsewhere.) SHTRIGA [Albania] Belief in the ancient Roman striges survived in the Balkans into the early 20th century, Albanians believed in the Shtriga, an elderly woman who preyed upon infants by drinking their blood, also caused adults to wither and die, and who could change into a moth, fly, or bee at night. Most of what we know about Shtriga is from two written works by Edith Durham who traveled through Albania and other Balkan countries. At least as late as the early twentieth century, the Shtriga was blamed for otherwise unexplained infant deaths - what we in America today call “crib death” or “sudden infant death syndrome” (“SIDS”). In Higher Albania, many Albanian infants ironically died in their cribs from being so over-protected from the Shtriga with swadelling blankets that they grew pale and sick from lack of fresh air and sunshine. Edith Durham reported that she tried to persuade some mothers to reverse this, but they could not be persuaded to depart from tradition. Apart from the infant deaths, the Shtriga was also sometimes blamed for diseases that occured among adults. At night, she often sought her prey in the form of an insect such as a moth, a fly, or a bee. One way to create a charm to protect against the Shtriga is to follow a Shtriga in her natural human form at night. Eventually she will vomit some of the blood she had drank from her victims. According to the belief, if you scrape up some of this vomit onto a silver coin, wrap the coin in cloth, and wear it always, no Shtriga can harm you. The Shtriga usually lives incognito in a community. She even goes to church for the regular services. She could be detected during such a service by passing out bread spiced with garlic. A Shtriga will always refuse to eat anything containing garlic. The second way is to place a cross of pig bone on the doors of the church after everyone in the community has gathered inside. Everyone but a Shtriga will be able to leave the church through these doors. For more in-depth coverage of the Shtriga, read:
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VESTITIZA [Montenegro and Serbia]
The vjeshtitza were most powerful during the first week of March. A protective ritual during this time was to stir the ashes in the hearth of the house with two horns which were then stuck into the pile of ashes. Like the witches of Western Europe, it was believed that a vjeshtiza could not drown. So, when a woman was accused of being such, she was sometimes bound and cast into water. If she floated, she was guilty. If she drowned, she was innocent. Two early twentieth century sources on this are: the article "Of Magic, Witches and Vampires in the Balkans" in the journal Man (December, 1923) and the book Hero Tales and Legends of the Serbs by Woislav. M. Petrovich (London: G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1914, 1915, 1923). |
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Primary sources:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran Created: Thursday, October 26, 2000,
Last updated:
Sunday, August 16, 2009 |
In a tale about the
striges that Ovid gives, the Striges create wounds upon on an infant's chest with their beaks and talons and then drink the blood from theses wounds. The
striges returned night after night to prey upon the infant until the parents appealed to the demi-goddess Crane. Crane then appeared and went through the home performing rituals to ban the return of the
Striges. Her last act was to place a branch of white thorn in the window of the infant's room. This is rather interesting because white thorn is a species of hawthorn and in later European lore it was believed that hawthorn could provide a barrier against both witches
and undead vampires. Ovid wrote that he was not sure whether the
Striges were born in owl-like form or whether they were women who supernaturally transformed into such form. But the latter notion seems to be the case. In Italian language,
Strega literally means "witch" and in Italy during the middle ages it was believed that the
Strega transformed into a bird [crow] at night to prey upon infants by drinking their blood. The Latin root is also obvious in the Albanian
Shtriga and the Romanian Striga.
In an old text written in Latin,
Descriptio Antiqui et Hodierni Statue Moldavie translated into Romanian and published in Bucharest in 1973, it is said that people in the Romanian regions of Moldavia and Transylvania believed in the
Strige (plural: strigele), a witch who killed infants in their cradles. Like the witches of Western Europe and the
Vjestitza, a woman suspected of being such a witch was often subjected to a trial where she was bound and tossed into a deep water.
(This is based this mostly on a footnote in the article "The Romanian Folkloric Vampire" by Jan Perkowski, published in the September 1982 issue of
East European Quaterly.)
With the exception of the
Striga which might be regarded as a special kind of Strigoaica
via, the Romanian living vampires rarely drink blood, but they can rob people, animals, and crops of their vitality to enhance their own. They can also leave their own physical bodies at night to travel in animal form such as that of a wolf, a dog, a cat, a hen, or a raven, or as a small glowing ball or spark of light. People who are born with a caul (fetal membrane still attached to the head), with a little tail, or some other such peculiarity were believed to be such living vampires. And the living vampires become undead vampires after they die unless their corpses are treated at burial by such means as used to destroy the undead vampire, i.e., a stake driven into the heart, decapitation, cremation, etc.
The
vjestitza (plural: vjeshtitze; pronounced as "vyeshtitza" and sometimes spelled as
vestizsa) is another female witch of the Balkan countries whose main prey was infants but were also sometimes blamed for adult illnesses. The
vjestititza is typically an old woman whose soul leaves her body at night when she goes to sleep. Her soul then takes the body of a hen , a black moth, or a fly. In this form, she enters houses and feeds upon the blood in the heart of her victims. On certain nights, the
vjeshtitze in such forms meet together in the branches of trees to hold coven meetings. An old woman may join such a coven if she agrees to follow the rules prescribed by the veteran members.
