Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/201

 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, 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,', pp. 293 sqq.]