golden hair.

Lilith is the Babylonian Lilithu, a feminine form of Lilu, the
Sumerian Lila. She resembles Surpanakha of the _Ramayana_, who made
love to Rama and Lakshmana, and the sister of the demon Hidimva, who
became enamoured of Bhima, one of the heroes of the _Mahabharata_,[89]
and the various fairy lovers of Europe who lured men to eternal
imprisonment inside mountains, or vanished for ever when they were
completely under their influence, leaving them demented. The elfin
Lilu similarly wooed young women, like the Germanic Laurin of the
"Wonderful Rose Garden",[90] who carried away the fair lady Kunhild to
his underground dwelling amidst the Tyrolese mountains, or left them
haunting the place of their meetings, searching for him in vain:

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As ere beneath the waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover...
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

_Coleridge's Kubla Khan._

Another materializing spirit of this class was Ardat Lili, who appears
to have wedded human beings like the swan maidens, the mermaids, and
Nereids of the European folk tales, and the goddess Ganga, who for a
time was the wife of King Shantanu of the _Mahabharata_.[91]

The Labartu, to whom we have referred, was a female who haunted
mountains and marshes; like the fairies and hags of Europe, she stole
or afflicted children, who accordingly had to wear charms round their
necks for protection. Seven of these supernatural beings were reputed
to be daughters of Anu, the sky god.

The Alu, a storm deity, was also a spirit which caused nightmare. It
endeavoured to smother sleepers like the Scandinavian hag Mara, and
similarly deprived them of power to move. In Babylonia this evil
spirit might also cause sleeplessness or death by hovering near a bed.
In shape it might be as horrible and repulsive as the Egyptian ghosts
which caused children to die from fright or by sucking out the breath
of life.

As most representatives of the spirit world were enemies of the
living, so were the ghosts of dead men and women. Death chilled all
human affections; it turned love to hate; the deeper the love had
been, the deeper became the enmity fostered by the ghost. Certain
ghosts might also be regarded as particularly virulent and hosti