Cogas (singular: coga)

Region/Culture: Southern Europe (Sardinia, Italy)
Mythos: Sardinian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Shapeshifters
Mythical Attributes: Shapeshifting village witches who anoint themselves to take the form of cats or flies and drink the blood of sleeping infants.
Role in Mythos: They are the household predators of Sardinian folklore, ordinary women by day who hunt the very young by night and who can both curse and cure.
Relation to Humans: A coga lives among her neighbours as a normal woman, which is exactly what makes her dangerous, since the threat comes from inside the village rather than the wilderness. Families guarded their children against her with iron, counting-charms, and the name of San Sisinnio.

By daylight she was the woman three doors down, sweeping her step, lending a cup of flour, ageing the way everyone ages. People greeted her at the well and thought nothing of it. What they did not say aloud was that she had been born with a small soft stub of a tail at the base of her spine, and that on certain nights she rubbed an ointment into her skin, folded herself down into the shape of a cat, and went looking for a cradle.

This was a coga, one of the witches of Sardinia, in the plural is cogas, the coghe of the old island stories. The name runs straight back to the Roman strix, the screech-owl woman of antiquity who flew by night and fed on the young, and the cogas inherited her appetite. They were not spirits, and they were not imported devils. They were neighbours. A coga married, kept a house, grew old in plain sight, and carried inside her a second nature that woke after dark.

The mark of one was small and easy to miss. The tales say a coga is born with that vestigial tail, a stub of flesh she hides her whole life, and that this above everything else is how you know her. The tail gave them away. In her own form she is usually drawn as old and ugly, a worn witch’s face, though what she looked like as a woman mattered less than what she could become.

The change came through ointment. A coga anointed her body with an unguent and lost her human size, slipping into the body of a fly, of a cat, of nearly anything small enough to pass a threshold unnoticed. In the dark of a sleeping house the transformation was its own quiet event. There was the faint smell of the salve, the woman shrinking back against the wall, and where she had stood a black cat now stepping soft-footed across the floor toward the corner where an infant slept.

What the coga wanted was blood, and she wanted it from the very young. Working sometimes alone and sometimes in a silent group, the cogas crept into the rooms where babies lay and drank, draining the child until it woke pale and exhausted, or did not wake at all. The stories single out boy children as the favoured prey. A healthy infant who sickened and faded for no reason a family could name was a child a coga had visited.

Her power did not stop at harm. Like the witch in every village everywhere, the coga held both ends of the same rope. She could lay a curse and she could lift one, blight a household or mend it, and the same woman feared for what she might do in the night was sometimes the one quietly asked for a cure by day. On the island magic wore a single face for both errands.

Because a coga could not be kept out by a bolted door, the mothers of Sardinia learned to keep her busy instead. In Villacidro a woman with a small child set traps of distraction at the threshold. An iron tripod stood on its head, a broom leaned upside down, an old toothless sickle was left where the witch would find it. A coga who came upon such a thing was compelled to count, the teeth of the sickle, the beads of a rosary laid across the cradle, and here was the flaw worked into her. She could only count to seven. Each time she reached it she had to start again, and the night drained away beneath her while she counted, until the first grey light forced her back into a woman’s body and out the door with nothing taken.

The surest guard was holier than iron. The mothers of Villacidro pinned a small image of San Sisinnio to their doors and called on him, and against that name the coga had no answer. Faith, iron, and arithmetic did between them what walls could not.

One story from Villacidro tells of a father who heard something moving in the room where his baby slept. He took up su suadori, the long iron tube used to blow life into a hearth, and crossed to the doorway on quiet feet. A black cat was creeping toward the cradle. He brought the heavy iron down across its back, and the cat sprang up and was gone into the night in a single bound. The next morning the neighbour woman came out of her house bent over a walking stick, cursing him under her breath for what he had done to her in the dark. Everyone understood then what she was. After that she gave up her witching for good.

Set out plainly, the gifts of a coga were these. She could take almost any shape and any size, small enough to enter wherever she pleased. She could pull the strength and the blood out of the helpless. She could curse, and she could heal. The strix’s old night-hunger ran in her, narrowed down into something domestic and close, a danger that lived on your own street instead of out in the hills.

Her limits were just as homely. Daylight ended her work and pushed her back into her own skin, so she belonged wholly to the hours of darkness. She could not stop herself from counting, and she could not count past seven, which turned a sickle or a string of beads into a snare. A blow landed on her in animal shape stayed with her in human shape, the cat’s bruise reappearing as the woman’s limp. A saint’s name could turn her at the threshold. For all her borrowed forms she remained a woman of the village, knowable, beatable, and in the end nameable, which is why so many of these stories close on a neighbour recognised and a witching stopped.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a coga?

A coga (plural cogas) is a witch from Sardinian folklore, an ordinary village woman who can shapeshift and who feeds on the blood of infants by night. The name descends from the Roman strix, a night-flying child-killer of antiquity. Cogas were believed to both curse and heal, but were feared above all for what they did to sleeping babies.

How do you recognize a coga?

According to Sardinian tradition, a coga is born with a small vestigial tail at the base of her spine, and this hidden mark is the surest way to tell one. In human form she is usually described as an old hag, but her defining power is the ability to change shape, most often into a cat or a fly.

What do cogas do to babies?

Cogas creep into rooms where infants sleep and drink their blood, leaving the child weak and pale or dead by morning. The stories say they preferred boy children. A baby who sickened and wasted away with no explanation was thought to have been visited by a coga.

How can you protect a child from a coga?

Sardinian mothers used objects that forced the coga to stop and count, such as an upturned sickle or a rosary laid on the cradle, because a coga can only count to seven and must keep starting over until dawn drives her off. In Villacidro the strongest protection was an image of San Sisinnio pinned to the door and a prayer to the saint.

Where does the word coga come from?

The word coga descends from the Latin strix, the blood-drinking screech-owl woman of Roman belief, placing the cogas within a long Italian and Mediterranean tradition of vampiric witches. Related figures appear across the region, from the Roman strix to the Slavic strzyga.