Salvete, omnes. I'm author DL
Wainright and welcome to another
episode of Mythic Monday. Today we're
going to be talking about the strix,
because I promised in a previous episode
that I would and someone in the comments
sort of reminded me that I said that, so.
Yep. So, like I said in that episode, which
was the Strigoi one, both strigoi and strix have the same root word,
which is in Latin it's strido or
stridere. Which means like to
screech or to scream. And that also
kind of derives from the ancient Greek
strínx. Probably not pronouncing that
right. Uh, which similarly is like it's
something that is screeching. Strix today
is often used in the genus of most owls,
and there's a reason for that. Partly
because owls screech, but also because
strix in it's mythological concept was
an owl or referred to an owl like-thing.
The earliest recording of the use of
strix in Greek mythology or reference to
what became known as the strix was in 4th century BCE.
There was a story of a woman named Polyphonte, and Polyphonte rejected Aphrodite
and went off to live with Artemis in the
woods. And this ticked Aphrodite off, so
she cursed Polyfonte to fall in love
with a bear. Artemis kind of happened to
see this amorous connection and was
understandably repulsed by it. So then
turned the bear and other animals
against Polyfonte. Polyfonte fled to
her parents' place, where she then gave
birth to her monstrous bear hybrid
children. Two sons that were giant,
and they were horrible horrible people.
and they just were not respectful to the
gods, they were jerks to humans--and in
fact tended to eat people. So eventually
the gods, Zeus in particular, decided
enough was enough and was going to
punish Polyfonte and her two monstrous
boys. Initially he was going to have
their heads cut off and their
limbs removed, but Ares who was an
ancestor of Polyphonte, stepped in
and ask for mercy. Mercy in this context
ended up being instead of being killed,
Polyfonte and her two sons were turned into different birds. Polyphonte
particularly was turned into a screech
owl, or a strix. However, many stories both
in ancient Greece and then later in
Roman times tended to refer to this
creature as a type of thing, almost kind
of like a harpy or something, as opposed
to it being Polyphonte herself in
monstrous bird form. The Romans sort of
had this concept of it being different
old ladies who were turned into these
horrible bird things, but then there's
also alternate stories where they just
always were bird things that's just what
they were born as. For the most part, this
creature is called a strix, but
throughout the areas that Rome touched
it has sort of variant names, and even
over time in Rome and central Italy it...
its name changed or it became changed
itself into something similar but
different. So it might be called a strix,
but it might be called a strige or
a strege or a striga or stria, or
pretty much if you see anything that has
sort of a strig kind of, or strix-y kind
of root to it, chances are it was a
strix and it kind of
evolved into this other entity concept.
So what is a strix-slash-strega or strege?
It's a oftentimes witch kind of thing,
but also a horrific bird thing that
would feed on babies in particular. Though strixes were also known to eat the
intestines of just grown-up people. For
the most part though their primary food
source were infants. They would sneak
into the infant's room and then they
would suck out all of its blood or its
marrow and sometimes also its intestines.
And sometimes also its heart. And then
sometimes it would, like, stick other
things in the place of its heart and
intestines. But, it would leave them a
husk that was once a baby. Later on
during like all of the witch trials and
the Middle Ages and things like that
they started to take more human-like
aspect. And so then they would disguise
themselves as wet nurses and they would
feed the infants. They would suckle the
infant's themselves, however what they
gave them wasn't nourishing milk but was
a poison, and so it would either put the
infant or sometimes small boy under a
spell and they would steal them away or
it would just kill them and then they
would take 'em and they would eat them.
But either way they still continued to
prey on infants and small children
pretty consistently, until again you get
toward sort of more of like the Middle
Ages. But, like, for centuries beforehand
they would be associated with different
types of owls, be it screech owls or
horned owls or sometimes something
called a "night raven." ...It's honestly probably just a type of owl. And the only person
who tried to associate them with bats
was a professor named Oliphant during
the early 1900s. And he tried to argue
that they were bats instead of owls,
despite all of these centuries worth of
things talking about them having
feathers and beaks and owl-like
attributes, because his argument was they
expressed mammalian traits, such as
being able to suckle. And you know birds
don't have teets. And so he evidently was
just completely oblivious to the fact
that hybrid beings were very common in
belief systems in the Mediterranean
especially. There were many things that
were crosses between birds and people or
people and other creatures, that would
normally not express mammalian traits
but now since they're spliced with
people they do. So I would not really
consider Oliphant's argument entirely
valid. Another reason why I really
wouldn't give much credit to it is
because it makes more sense--again, in
that region of the world--for them to be
associated with owls than it does for
them to be associated with bats. Because
bats that drink blood only exist on the
American continent. Over in Europe
there's...bats aren't very threatening.
They're tiny, they're cute, they-they
don't do anything but eat bugs.
Owls however can get massive, and owls
can be terrifying, because they can eat
your cat or your small dog or indeed
your baby. So it makes more sense that
these terrifying night monsters that
would feed on infants were related to owl
incidents, than anything to do with bats.
Bats would have nothing to do with
babies, they would be no threat to babies,
and there would be thus no resulting
folkloric beliefs in bat monsters
hurting babies. Now during the Middle
Ages, there were some changes to the
concept of the strix--then commonly more
called things like the strege or the striga-- because they were being
influenced by a lot of the other
aforementioned, like, witch hunts and trials
of the time.
So there started to be accounts of them,
instead of being owls they would be
wolves or they would be cats, but again
no bats. Bats are-bats are small and not
harmful. They're very cute, if you've ever
met a bat. However it should be noted
that the strege of central Italy, though,
that would be put on trial for witches--
for being specifically strege witches--
were noticeably different from the
witches that were put on trial elsewhere
in Europe. Because the other witches, they would be witches who were in a sense
sort of desecrating Catholicism.
They were desecrating the the holy
rituals of Catholicism. The Eucharist and
things like that. They were in particular
just very anti-God and would make pacts
with the devil and things like that.
The strege still had its roots in
the strix, and so it didn't make pacts
with the devil. It just didn't care about
that. It could fly on its own instead of
having to fly on the backs of some other
animals by making, like, pacts with them
because again it doesn't need to do that.
Unlike other witches who would have
covens and things like that, at most you
would maybe see strixes in pairs. They
were kind of loners, they did their own
thing. And while stories of other witches
would eat infants whole--you know, kind
of think Hansel and Gretel and how she
wanted to cook him up--these left most of
the infant. They just drank all the blood
out of it. So they were kind of a
separate thing that were not quite the
same as the other witches and they also
weren't necessarily defiling
Christianity as they were defiling the
home and motherhood in a sense. Because
remember these ones were also the ones
who would take the form of, like, wet
nurses, and who would suckle the babies.
They would perform a motherly duty but
it was twisted and wrong kind of
aspect. It wasn't what it was supposed to
be. Instead of giving nourishing fluid,
it drained the life's blood and fluid
out of an infant. So they are completely
different things, while still being
"witches." So that's all really that we're
going to talk about with strixes. If
there is a particular thing from any
type of folklore that you want me to
talk more in depth about, go ahead and
say so in the comments. And finally, as
with every Mythic Monday, a plug for my
book. So if you want to read something
that has strixes, my book series does! In
the first book they're kind of more in
the shadows; in the second book you
actually have the characters interacting
and talking to one. However there is a
striga--which, again is a being that is
influenced by the tales of the strix--that is a pretty prominent character
starting in book one. Her name is Branka.
She's pretty coo.l Until next time.
Valete.
