The Valkyries, with their shirts of plumage, who hover over Scandinavian battle-fields to minister to the souls of dying heroes are of the same order of beings as the Hindu Asparas and the Houris of the Mussulman. The Lorelei sirens with their fish-tails, their golden combs and mirrors, who lure fishermen to their doom on the rocks, are not far removed from the same family. All are partly human and allied with more or less fanciful animal forms and characteristics. They are frequently the precursors of evil or at least of danger to mankind, but many of them possess a sweetness and charm which is unsurpassed and unsurpassable.
Far more terrible than sirens and swan-maidens were the Berserkers of Scandinavia in the ninth century who, possessed by a strange mania, arrayed themselves in the skins of wolves or bears and went forth to see whom they might devour.
The Mara is a more peaceable but nevertheless a more uncanny being, a kind of female demon who comes at night to torment sleepers by crouching on their bodies and checking respiration. Sometimes she is to be seen in animal form, sometimes as a beautiful woman. She has been known to torture people to death, and may perhaps have some distant affinity to the vampire, but is far less vindictive and self-seeking, though gifted with powers of darkness.
A pious knight, journeying one day, found a fair lady nude, and bound to a tree, her back streaming with blood from the stripes of lashes. Rescuing her from her unfortunate position, he took her to his palace and made her his wife, her extraordinary loveliness winning her fame throughout the neighbourhood.
Her husband, the knight, accompanied her to mass every Sunday, and to his great surprise and regret she always refused to stay in the church while the creed was said. Just beforehand she would deliberately rise from her seat and walk out. Her husband questioned her about this strange habit, but could get no satisfactory explanation, nor would she consent to alter her behaviour. He used entreaties and even threats without avail, and at last he decided to keep her in the church by main force. Seizing upon her with both hands, he held her in her seat, and then he noticed her frame become convulsed and her eyes grow unnaturally large and dark. The service stopped and everyone in the building turned to see what was happening. "In the name of God, speak," cried the pious knight, "and tell me what or who thou art!" and as he said these words his wife melted away and disappeared, while, with a great cry of anguish, a monster of evil shape rose from the spot where she had been sitting and, passing through the air, vanished through the roof of the church.
Another legend about the Mara is that if she be wrapped up in the bedclothes and held down tightly, a white dove flies out of the window and the bedclothes will be found to contain nothing. This belief is apparently isolated and unrelated to other phenomena and is probably only a tribute to the elusive character of this she-demon.
One of the Calmuc stories concerns three sisters, who, coming across an enchanted castle tenanted by a white bird, are each in turn offered marriage by the owner. The third sister marries the bird, who turns out to be a handsome cavalier, but having burned his aviary, she loses him, and cannot regain her husband until the aviary is restored.
In the well-known story of "The Brahman Girl who marries a Tiger," the tiger assumes human shape and makes a beautiful girl fall in love with him. Soon after their marriage he threatens her, saying, "Be quiet or I shall show you my original shape."[87] When she urges him to do so he changes and behold, "four legs, a striped skin, a long tail, and a tiger's face come on him suddenly, and, horror of horrors, a tiger, and not a man stands before her!"
She has to obey all his orders and finally gives birth to a son, who also turns out "to be only a tiger."
She gets her brothers to help her, murders her child and runs off home. In the end the tiger is killed by her relatives, and the Brahman girl, in memory of him, raises a pillar over the well and plants a fragrant shrub on the top of it.[88]