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                                LILITH


                     THE LEGEND OF THE FIRST WOMAN


                                  BY
                        ADA LANGWORTHY COLLIER


                                BOSTON
                        D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY
                      FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS




                           COPYRIGHT, 1885.
                         D. LOTHROP & COMPANY.




                               PREFACE.


    That Eve was Adam's second wife was a common Rabbinic
    speculation. Certain commentators on Genesis adopted this view,
    to account for the double account of the creation of woman, in
    the sacred text, first in Genesis i. 27, and second in Genesis
    xi. 18. And they say that Adam's first wife was named Lilith,
    but she was expelled from Eden, and after her expulsion Eve was
    created. Abraham Ecchelensis gives the following account of
    Lilith and her doings: "There are some who do not regard
    spectres as simple devils, but suppose them to be of a mixed
    nature--part demoniacal, part human, and to have had their
    origin from Lilith, Adam's first wife, by Eblis, prince of the
    devils. This fable has been transmitted to the Arabs, from
    Jewish sources, by some converts of Mohamet from Cabbalism and
    Rabbinism, who have transferred all the Jewish fooleries to the
    Arabs. They gave to Adam a wife formed of clay, along with Adam,
    and called her Lilith, resting on the Scripture: 'Male and
    female created He them.'"--_Legends of the Patriarchs and
    Prophets.--Baring Gould._

    Lilith or Lilis.--In the popular belief of the Hebrews, a female
    spectre in the shape of a finely dressed woman, who lies in wait
    for, and kills children. The old Rabbins turned Lilith into a
    wife of Adam, on whom he begat demons and who still has power to
    lie with men and kill children who are not protected by amulets
    with which the Jews of a yet later period supply themselves as a
    protection against her. Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_
    tells us: "The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis,
    before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils."
    A commentator on Skinner, quoted in the _Encyclopaedia
    Metropolitana_, says that the English word _Lullaby_ is derived
    from Lilla, abi (begone, Lilith)! In the demonology of the
    Middle Ages, Lilis was a famous witch, and is introduced as such
    in the Walpurgis night scene in Goethe's "Faust."--_Webster's
    Dictionary._

    Our word _Lullaby_ is derived from two Arabic words which mean
    "Beware of Lilith!"--_Anon._

    Lilith, the supposed wife of Adam, after she married Eblis, is
    said to have ruled over the city of Damascus.--_Legends of the
    Patriarchs and Prophets.--Baring Gould._

From these few and meagre details of a fabled existence, which are all
that the author has been able to collect from any source whatever, has
sprung the following poem. The poet feels quite justified in dissenting
from the statements made in the preceding extracts, and has not drawn
Lilith as there represented--the bloodthirsty sovereign who ruled
Damascus, the betrayer of men, the murderer of children. The Lilith of
the poem is transferred to the more beautiful shadow-world.