Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/166

 156 Chanii against tJic CJiild-stcaliiig Witch.

" The son of King Nebuchadnezzar was taken suddenly ill. The king thereupon said to Sirach, ' Heal my son, for if thou dost not cure him, I will kill thee.' Sirach wrote out an amulet in perfect purity, and wrote therein the names and forms of the angels appointed over the cure, with their wings, their hands, and their feet. When the king saw that amulet, he asked, 'Who are these?' Sirach replied, 'These are the angels who are appointed over the cure of man, and their names are Snoi, Snsnoi, Smnglf.' (This is their his- tory.) When God created Adam, He said it is not good for man to be alone, and He created an helpmate for him also from the earth, and called her Lilith. No sooner was she created than she commenced quarrelling with Adam and saying, ' I am just as good as you as we have both been created from the earth.' When Lilith saw that she could not overcome Adam, she uttered the ineffable name of God and flew up in the air. Adam stood up in prayer and said, ' O Lord of the Universe, the wife which thou hast given me has run away from me.' Whereupon the Lord sent these three angels after her to bring her back, and they said unto her, ' The Lord has decreed that if thou art willing to return, it be well with thee, but if not, thou must take upon thyself as punishment that each day 100 of thy children should die.' The angels went after her and found her in the midst of roaring waters, and the very same waters where the Egyptians later on were destined to be drowned [evi- dently the waters of the Red Sea]. They told her God's command, but she refused to return. So they said unto her, ' We must drown thee in these waters.' But she begged of them, and said, ' Leave me, for I have been created for the purpose of weakening [destroying] little babes, if it be a boy, eight days from the day of his birth, and if it be a girl, that I should have power over her up to twenty days.' When they heard her words, they urged more strongly upon her to obey, and she then said, ' I swear unto you by the name of the living and great God, that whenever I shall see