[200.1] Le Braz, 321, Story No. 60.
[201.1] Boas, Ind. Sag., 267. Compare a curious Tlingit story of a girl who married a dead man (ghost), who in consequence came to life again (Swanton, Tlingit Myths, 247).
[202.1] The ghostly visitant might be of either sex, though the masculine was perhaps more common. The visit was generally attended in either case with fatal effects. See below as to Lamiæ.
[203.1] Herodotus, vi. 68, 69.
[203.2] Augustine, Civ. Dei, xv. 23.
[203.3] Malleolus, De Credul. Dæmon. adhibenda, Malleus Maleficarum (Frankfurt, 1582), 428. See also Bodin, De Magorum Dæmonomania (Frankfurt, 1603), ii. 7. By this time, however, there began to be sceptics. Cf. Wierus, De Præstigiis Dæmonum (Basel, 1577), 358; Ulr. Molitor, De Pythonicis Mulieribus, Malleus Mal., 83. The extensive information possessed for many centuries by these learned men was not limited to the incubus. There were also corresponding female demons commonly known as Succubi, or Lamiæ, whose ravages were almost equally great. Awful tales were related by way of warning against their temptation. Compare the putiana of the Moluccas, cited below. See also Lecky, Rationalism, i. 26 note. Among the ancient Assyrians and the modern Arabs the possibility of cohabitation by a man with a spirit or non-human supernatural being, who may even bear him children, was and is believed. But they are very jealous (Encyc. Rel., iv. 571; F. L., xi. 388).
[204.1] Strausz, 454.
[204.2] Bartels, quoting Wladimir Bugiel, Zeit. des Vereins, x. 121. Apparently the throwing of the poppy-seed imposed on the ghostly visitant the necessity of counting the grains before proceeding to his attack. See Andree, i. 81; Wilken, iii. 226 note, citing Mannhardt.
[205.1] Scott goes on to refer to the old Scottish ballad of Sweet William’s Ghost, founded, like that of Bürger’s poem, on the same superstition. It is reprinted, with an account of the literature on the subject, in Child, Ballads, ii. 199 sqq., 226 sqq.; v. 293, 294.
[205.2] Black, 113.