In Capt. Richard F. Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights occurs a story of a female desert-monster, called Ghulah, who devours human flesh. Captain Burton, in a footnote, remarks:
"The Ghulah (fern, of Ghul) is the Hebrew Lilith or Lilis; the classical Lamia; the Hindu Yogini and Dakini; the Chaldean Utug and Gigim (desert-demons) as opposed to the Mas (hill-demon) and Telal (who steal into towns); the Ogress of our tales and the Bala yaga (Granny-witch) of Russian folklore. Etymologically 'Ghul' is a calamity, a panic fear; and the monster is evidently the embodied horror of the grave and the graveyard."
In its more usual spelling of "Ghoul," this graveyard monster will probably be familiar to most readers.
"The female Ghul * * * * appears to men in the deserts, in various forms, converses with them, and sometimes prostitutes herself to them * * * *
Here we see the (l) spirit bride, degraded to the level of a harlot, (2) vague and unreasoning terror, (3) loathing and horror of the spirits of the deceased all meeting under one name. So far has Lilith, the Borderland bride, fallen from her rightful estate by reason of the befogged imaginations of mankind.
"The Shiqq is another demoniacal creature, having the form of a half human being (like a man divided longitudinally) and it is believed that the Nasnas is the offspring of a Shiqq and a human being * * * * The Nasnas is described as having half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg, with which it hops with much agility." (A Dictionary of Islam [article Genii] by Thos. Patrick Hughes.)
This is another form of the giant progeny of Borderland unions a form so fantastic as to show that its origin is a subjective hallucination, and not an objective reality. In other words, the Mohammedan, Shiqq and Nasnas are both of them probably the subliminal invention of some imperfect earthly psychic in the centuries agone, who broke the Borderland law in his or her relations with a spirit bride, or a spirit husband and who was grossly misled, in consequence, by his or her own subliminal self. That others since then claim from time to time to see these fantastic
