Europe's inner demons

Belief in the mysterious ladies and their nocturnal visitations was sufficiently widespread to inspire practical jokes, or at least stories of practical jokes. A Latin treatise compiled in France in the first quarter of the fourteenth century tells how some ruffians tricked a rich and credulous peasant.^*** Dressed as ladies, they forced the door of his house one night and went dancing through the rooms. Singing “Take one, give back a hundred”, they took away all his most valuable belongings. Meanwhile the peasant looked on as though bemused, and when his wife tried to stop the looting, told her: “Shut up and close your eyes! We’ll be rich, for these are the good beings and they will increase our belongings a hundredfold.”

⁽²⁸⁾ Another anecdote concerns an old woman’s attempt to extract a reward from the parish priest. She describes how she and the “ladies of the night” entered his home, though it was locked up, and found him naked on his bed. If she had not had the presence of mind to throw a cover over him, the ladies would have punished this disrespectful behaviour by beating him to death. Unimpressed, the priest beat her about the shoulders with a cross, to teach her not to believe in dreams.

The “ladies of the night” were known in Italy too. The thirteenth-century archbishop Jacobus de Voragine mentions them in his collection of legendary lives of the saints, which under the title of Golden Legend

became one of the most popular and widely translated religious works of the Middle Ages. He tells how the fourth-century bishop, St Germanus, after dining at the house of some friends, was astonished to see the table re-laid. When he asked for whom the meal was meant, the answer was: “For the good women who enter at night.” He sat up and watched — and suddenly he seemed to see “a multitude of demons in the form of men and women”. His hosts, summoned from their beds, recognized the visitors as their neighbours; but the bishop, unconvinced, tried exorcism, and with excellent results. The visitors admitted to being devils who had disguised themselves as particular friends of the family. As demons go, these were harmless enough — they intended nothing worse than a practical joke, and yielded to exorcism quite happily. Nevertheless the moral is clear: if you believe in “the good women”, demons will enter your house.⁽²⁹⁾

Although Jacobus de Voragine does not mention the supernatural queen, she was just as familiar in Italy as in France and Germany. The fourteenth-century Dominican Jacopo Passavanti in his guide to asceticism shows how the fantasy described in the Canon Episcopi had persisted through five centuries, undergoing some elaboration yet still recognizably the same: “It happens that demons taking on the likeness of men and women who are alive, and of horses and beasts of burden, go by night in company through certain regions, where they are seen by the people, who mistake them for those persons whose likenesses they bear; and in some countries this is called the tregenda

. And the demons do this to spread error, and to cause scandal, and to discredit those whose likenesses they take on, by showing that they do dishonourable things in the tregenda. There are some people, especially women, who say that they go at night in company with such a tregenda, and name many men and women in their company; and they say that the mistresses of the throng, who lead the others, are Herodias, who had St John the Baptist killed, and the ancient Diana, goddess of the Greeks”.⁽³⁰⁾

Even today, many Sicilian peasants believe in mysterious beings whom they usually call “ladies from outside”, but also sometimes “ladies of the night”, “ladies of the home”, “mistresses of the home”, “beautiful ladies” or simply “the ladies”. According to the few who have ever seen them, these are tall and beautiful damsels with long, shining hair. They never appear by day, but on certain nights, especially Thursdays, they roam abroad under the leadership of a chief “lady”. When they find a well-ordered house they will enter through cracks in the door or through the keyhole. Families who treat them well and offer them food and drink, music and dancing, can expect every kind of blessing in return. On the other hand any sign of disrespect or any resistance to their commands will bring poverty and sickness on the house — though even then they are quick to forgive, if they find themselves properly treated at their next visit. Though they are feared, as supernatural and uncanny beings, they are not confused with witches. Whereas witches are human beings, and essentially evil, the “ladies from outside” are spirits, and essentially good. In fact they are guardians, not destroyers.⁽³¹⁾