Mitologjia Shqiptare

Shtriga (vampiric witch)

Shtrigë / Shtriga

Blood-witch / night predator entry

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Story paths

Description

The shtriga (shtrigë) is the Albanian vampiric witch: by day often an ordinary or aged highland woman (neighbor or forest-edge figure); by night she drains infants’ blood as they sleep, then becomes or travels as a moth, fly, or bee. Only she can cure those she has drained — classic Durham highland physiology. Soft cluster with other witch names; not the four-eyed oven hag Syqenëz and not Plaka e Vatrës as identity.

Signs

Belief-signs this figure carries.

Motifs

  • infant blood drain night
  • moth fly bee transformation
  • spit cure only she can
  • daytime ordinary woman
  • made witch barrenness envy
  • pale white eyes sybardha
  • crooked nose hateful stare
  • evil eye syri i keq

Lead story

By day she is a woman of the village — grey at the temples, crooked nose, eyes too pale for comfort. Children are told not to meet that stare. Garlic hangs where the cradle breathes. Someone has already touched salt to closed lids and whispered syt i dalçin syt i plaçin into the flame. Night is different. The room keeps its stone and wool, but something thin as a moth finds the crack. The infant does not wake the way a dream wakes — colour leaves the face by degrees. Folk say she takes the blood and carries it into the woods; if you find where she casts it up, a silver coin wrapped in cloth will keep her off forever. If you catch her while the child still lives, only she can put the life back — spit in the mouth, or the wasting goes on. On Easter they still tell of the pig-bone cross at the church door: the ones who are only women walk out; the one who is shtrigë cannot. No one needs a foreign doctor’s coat for that story. The fear is older than the costume — cradle, moth, spit, threshold.

Aliases

shtrigë · shtriga · shtrige · shtrigu · shtrigan · witch (generic Albanian sense) · grandmother of witches (Wheeler Underworld tale)

Region

Northern Albanian highlands strong (Durham field); pan-Albanian lexical witch; Catholic holy-water and Muslim Qur’an (Ayat al-Kursi) overlays that turn harm aside.

Relations

Linked stories

  • Zjermi & Handa — Schirò I Gemelli (Piana)Recorded

    Red-fish twin birth; ora deathbed + life-token rings; almond fork; Handa enters garden of zanas (Schirò); witch petrifies; lily dew / dragon-tongue cure; e Bukura e Dheut cave; kulshedra city-plague; Barkulku; sword of chastity. Wheeler: Zef/drangue + Mamadreqja; omits zanas/bed.

  • Shtriga, Flama, and AvullusheRecorded

    Shtriga drinks infant blood; Flama personifies disease; Avullushe smother with vapor. Keep them in the blood–nightmare cluster, not as one kind.

  • Strige of Tetovo–Gostivar — shtriga dialect noteRecorded

    Poloska’s Macedonian/Albanian dialect strige/striga is the blood-witch under another spelling. Cradle, moth, spit-cure stay on shtriga; add NMK regional note only.

  • Kore of Kelmendi (Easter effigy)Recorded

    Elsie: Kelmendi female child-eating demon; burnt symbolically in Easter processions at Selcë and Vukël. Not Greek Kore; not Shtriga.

  • Magjia — Kosova wish-hagRecorded

    Kosova old hag who harms by wishing bad luck — peer of other witch types.

  • Shtriga bars the Beauty’s roadReconstructed

    Witch/petrification gate stands between hero and Earthly Beauty (Twins hedge + Kurti-title adjacency). Path obstacle, not Beauty’s identity.

  • Nëna e Vatrës — clean ash, food in flameReconstructed

    Hearth mother of each house: evening cleaning, feast food cast into fire, old woman spinning/combing by vatër. Night children taboo. Elsie optional ID with three Miras — overlap, not merge. Not the same as B. shtriga.