Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

The Striges, though often confused with Lamiae and with Gelloudes, are essentially different from them. The two classes with which I have dealt are demons; the Striges, in the modern acceptation of the term, are women who possess the power to transform themselves into birds of prey or other animals; and it is only the taste for blood, shared by them with those demons, which has created the confusion.

The Striges moreover cannot, like the Lamiae or Gelloudes, be claimed either as an original product of the Greek imagination or as the exclusive property of Greek superstition at the present day. The Albanians have a word σ̈τρῑ́γ̇ε̱α, and the people of Corsica a term strega, both of which denote a witch of the same powers and propensities as are feared in Greece; and it is likely that all of them—Greeks, Albanians, Corsicans—have borrowed the conception from Italy. The ancient Greeks indeed had a word στρίγξ identical with the strix of Latin, but the shrieking night-bird denoted by it was not, so far as I can discover, invested by Greek imagination with any terrors. In Italy on the contrary the Strix was widely feared as a bloodthirsty monster in bird-form. Pliny evidently supposed it to be some actual bird, though he doubted the fables concerning it. ‘The strix,’ he says, ‘certainly is mentioned in ancient curses; but what kind of bird it may be, is not I think agreed[477].’ Perhaps in those ‘ancient curses’ it was invoked to inflict such punishment upon enemies as it once meted out to Otos and Ephialtes for their attempt upon Diana’s chastity[478].

The notion however that Striges were not really birds but witches in bird-form early suggested itself and found an exponent in Ovid[479]. ‘Voracious birds,’ he says, ‘there are ... that fly forth by night and assail children who still need a nurse’s care, and seize them out of their cradles and do them mischief. With their beaks they are said to pick out the child’s milk-fed bowels, and their throat is full of the blood they drink. Striges they are called ... and whether they come into being as birds or are changed thereto by incantation, and the Marsian spell transforms old women into winged things,’—such are their ways.

This was probably the state of the superstition when the Greeks added Striges to their own list of nightly terrors; and the very form of the word in modern Greek, στρίγλα or στρίγγλα (being apparently a diminutive, strigula, such as spoken Latin would readily have formed from the literary form strix), testifies to the borrowing of the belief.

In Greece the latter of the two ways in which Ovid explained the origin of the Strix seems to have been generally accepted as correct. It is true that the modern Greeks still have a real bird called στριγλοποῦλι[480] (either some kind of owl or the night-jar), which not only loves twilight or darkness in the upper world but is also said to haunt the gloomy demesnes of Charos below—thereby revealing perhaps some slight evidence of its relationship to the strix which tormented the brother giants; but the Strigla has long ceased to be a real bird, and (apart from the confusion with a Lamia or Gello) is always a witch.

The condition of the belief in the eighth century is noticed by John of Damascus[481]. ‘There are some of the more ignorant who say that there are women known as Striges (Στρῦγγαι), otherwise called Geloudes. They allege that these are to be seen at night passing through the air, and that when they happen to come to a house they find no obstacle in doors and bolts, but though the doors are securely locked make their way in and throttle infants. Others say that the Strix devours the liver and all the internal organs of the children, and so sets a short limit to their lives. And they stoutly declare, some that they have seen, and others that they have heard, the Strix entering houses, though the doors were locked, either in bodily form or as a spirit only.’

Again in the eleventh century Michael Psellus noticed the same superstition, though as we have seen his language suggests some confusion of Striges with Gelloudes. But he is really describing the faculty of the former to assume the shape of birds when he says, ‘The superstition obtaining nowadays invests old women with this power. It provides them with wings in their extreme age, and represents them as settling[482] unseen upon infants, whom, it is alleged, they suck until they exhaust all the humours in them’[483].

Leo Allatius, by whom this passage is cited, produces both from his own experience and from the testimony of others several instances of such occurrences, and mentions also the various precautions taken against them. These include all-night watches, lamps suspended before the pictures of patron-saints, amulets of garlic or of coral, and the smearing of oil from some saint’s lamp on the face of the child or invalid. It will suffice however to quote his general description of the Striges according to the beliefs of the seventeenth century. Striges (στρίγλαις), he tells us in effect, are old women whom poverty and misery drive to contract an alliance with the devil for all evil purposes; men are little molested by them, but women and still more commonly children, being a weaker and easier prey, suffer much from them, their breath alone[484] being so pernicious as to cause insanity or even death. They are especially addicted to attacking new-born babes, sucking out their blood and leaving them dead, or so polluting them by their touch that what life remains to them is never free from sickness.

It will have been noticed in this last account of the Striges, that the range of their activity is somewhat enlarged, so that women as well as children fall victims to them. At the present day, though they are believed to prey chiefly upon infants, even grown men are not immune, as witness a story[485] from Messenia.

Once upon a time a man was passing the night at the house of a friend whose household consisted of his wife and mother-in-law. About midnight some noise awakened him, and listening intently he made out the voices of the two women conversing together. What he heard terrified him, for they were planning to eat himself or his host, whichever proved the fatter. At once he perceived that his friend’s wife and mother-in-law were Striges, and knowing that there was no other means of escaping the danger that was threatening him, he determined to try to save himself by guile. The Striges advanced towards the sleeping men and took hold of their guest’s foot to see if it was heavy, and consequently fat and good for eating; he however, understanding their purpose, raised his foot of his own accord as they took it in their hands and weighed it, so that it felt to them as light as a feather, and they let it drop again disappointed. Then they took hold of the foot of the other man who was sleeping, and naturally found it very heavy. Delighted at the result of their investigation, they ripped open the wretched man’s breast, pulled out his liver and other parts, and threw them among the hot ashes on the hearth to cook. Then noticing that they had no wine, they flew to the wine-shop, took what they wanted and returned. But in the interval the guest got up, collected the flesh that was being cooked, stowed it away in his pouch, and put in its place on the hearth some animal’s dung. The Striges however ate up greedily what was on the hearth, complaining only that it was somewhat over-done.

The next day the two friends rose and left the house; the victim of the previous night was very pale, but he did not bear the slightest wound or scar on his breast. He remarked to his companion that he felt excessively hungry, and the other gave him what had been cooked during the night, which he ate and found exceedingly invigorating; the blood mounted to his cheeks and he was perfectly sound again. Thereupon his friend told him what had happened during the night, and they went together and slew the Striges.

This story exhibits all the essential qualities of Striges. The pair of them are women, and one at least, the mother-in-law, is old; they choose the night for their depredations; they can assume the form of birds, for ‘they flew,’ it is said, to the wine-shop; and their taste for human flesh is the motif of the story.

It must however be acknowledged that as the area of the Striges’ activities has become somewhat extended, so also has the ancient limitation of the term to old women become locally somewhat relaxed. In many parts of Greece a belief is held that certain infants are liable to a form of lycanthropy; and female infants so disposed are sometimes called Striges. A story from Tenos[486], narrated in several versions, concerns an infant princess who was a Strigla. Every day one of the king’s horses was found to have been killed and devoured in the night. The three princes, her brothers, therefore kept watch in turn; and it fell to the fortune of the youngest of them, owing to his courage and skill, to detect the malefactor. About midnight he heard a noise, and fired into the middle of a cloud that seemed to hang over the horses, thereby so wounding his sister that the mark observed on her next day betrayed her nightly doings. Not daring however to accuse her to his father, he fled from home with his mother to a place of safety, while the girl remained undisturbed in her voracity and consumed one by one all the people of the town.

But in other places where the same belief prevails, as we shall see later, these enfants terribles, who may be of either sex, are called not Striges but by some such name as ‘callicantzaros,’ ‘vrykolakas,’ or ‘gorgon’; and this variety of names is in itself a proof that, while the idea of infant cannibals is widespread, no exact verbal equivalent now exists, and each of the several names used is only requisitioned to supply the deficiency. A child can indeed enjoy the title of Strigla by courtesy; only an old woman can possess it of right.

Thus the old Graeco-Roman fear of Striges still remains little changed. The Church has repeatedly forbidden belief in them[487]; legislation has prohibited in times past the killing of them[488]. But the link of superstition between the past and the present is still unbroken; and witch-burning is an idea which in any secluded corner of Greece might still be put into effect[489].