Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/167

 Charm against the Child-stealing Witch

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either you or your names or your images on an amulet I will not hurt that child.' And she took upon herself to lose every day a hundred of her children by death, there- fore every day roo Shiddim die. If we now write those names on an amulet for little children, and she sees those names, she remembers her oath and the child gets cured."

In this version we have the oldest form, containing first the historical part, then the epical element giving a minute description of the way how Lilith acquired the power to hurt children, that is, how she became a child-stealing and strangling demon, and the reason why the invocation of those mysterious three names has the effect of driving her away and of saving the patient. But even in this older form the charm is already curtailed, and proves therefore to be of far greater antiquity than even the composition of the book in which it is merely incidentally quoted. One thing at any rate is certain, viz., that it is of an Oriental origin.

It remains, however, to be seen from what source it is originally derived. The name "Lilith" points unmistakably to Babylon, and we have in these charms and conjurations the reflex of such old Babylonian charms, but hitherto no identical legend or conjuration is found among the Assyrian tablets as yet published. The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs, however, in another extremely ancient apocry- phal book which goes under the name of The Testament of Solomon, and dates probably from the first or second century of the Christian Era. In it there are blended different currents of thought; astrological and mystical beliefs have been combined together in such a manner that it would be very difficult to fix with any precision the immediate direct source for this compilation. It represents that peculiar fusion known as Gnosticism, resting upon a Jewish basis influenced by Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek, more especially Orphic, teachings. In chapter 57, we find now the following legend.

" And I adored the Lord God of Israel and bade another