Lidérc

Region/Culture: Hungary (Central and Eastern Europe)
Mythos: Hungarian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Shapeshifters
Mythical Attributes: A single name for three overlapping beings, the lidérc is by turns a featherless familiar chicken hatched to fetch gold, a fiery flying spirit that seduces the lonely and drains them to death, and the crushing weight that presses on a sleeper’s chest.
Role in Mythos: It is the profit and the predator of Hungarian folk belief at once, the thing that makes a household rich or wastes a body away in a single summer.
Relation to Humans: The lidérc lives entirely off people, either as a servant that must be kept endlessly busy or as a lover that gives its victim everything they long for while quietly killing them. Either way the human who takes one on tends to end up worse than they began.

A point of light comes loose from the night sky over a Hungarian village and drifts down, not falling so much as steering, toward the one window still lit. It crosses the yard low and quiet, trailing sparks that hiss out in the wet grass, and where it touches the ground a young man is standing. He wears the face of someone the woman inside has spent months grieving. She opens the door because of course she does. That is one shape of the lidérc, and it is the kindest-looking of them.

The word is old and its roots are lost. It may have come from Slavic neighbours, or from somewhere further back that nobody kept a record of. In plain modern Hungarian it still means a flickering marsh flame, the light that hangs over bogs and graves, and it lives on in two compounds: lidércfény, the will-o’-the-wisp, and lidércnyomás, literally “lidérc pressure,” which is the ordinary word for a nightmare. Across the regions it answers to other names too, lüdérc and ludvérc in the north, mit-mitke in the east, iglic and piritusz elsewhere. What ties them together is not a single body but a single appetite. The lidérc is really three creatures wearing one name, and they trade traits back and forth as the story needs.

The oldest of the three begins as an egg. Take the first egg laid by a small black hen, keep it warm under your arm against the skin, carry it there day and night until it hatches, and what comes out is not a chick. It is a lidérc, featherless and clever, and it can talk. Some tellings let any tiny black egg do the job, or say the egg must be buried and hatched in a heap of warm manure. However it arrives, it fixes itself to the person who warmed it and gets to work. It hauls gold from wherever gold is hidden and lays it at its keeper’s feet. It does chores no household could manage alone. It asks for almost nothing, a little butter, a bowl of milk. A man with a lidérc grows rich for no reason his neighbours can see, and that is exactly the reputation such a man gets.

The catch is the work. A lidérc cannot sit still. It must always have a task in front of it, and the moment one is finished it comes back demanding the next, pestering from before dawn until well after dark, and if its keeper runs dry of things to set it doing, the badgering curdles into something worse. An idle lidérc kills the master who cannot keep it busy. The only clean way out is a job it can never complete: carry water in a sieve, haul sand with a rope, thread itself through the knot-hole in a tree. Newer versions have people asking it to build a telephone out of sand. Set the thing an impossible errand and it will labour at it until it gives up in despair or bursts trying, and you can also simply trap it by luring it into a hollow trunk and sealing it in. The trick is never to run out of work.

The flying lidérc, the ördögszerető or “devil’s lover,” hunts differently. It goes abroad at night as a streak of fire, a shooting star, sometimes a whole bird made of flame, scattering sparks as it flies. It looks for the lonely and the waiting: widows and widowers, wives whose husbands are away soldiering, the betrothed left staring at the road. It slips into the house through the chimney or the keyhole and stands up wearing the shape of the very person the sleeper aches for, dead or absent, and it is a flawless mimic of voice and face. Night after night it gives its victim everything they want. Night after night the victim grows thinner, greyer, dizzier, until they have quite literally been loved to death, and then the lidérc turns back into a star and lifts off to find someone else.

It has one flaw it cannot mend. However perfectly it copies a beloved, it can never fix one of its legs, which stays the scaly foot of a goose or a chicken, or the iron-shod hoof of a horse. Its tracks in soft ground are a horse’s prints. Scatter ashes across the threshold and in the morning you will read the truth in them, one clean bootprint and beside it a splayed webbed foot. There is a tale from Gajcsána, set down in 1961, of a bell-ringer whose daughter begged to sleep out in the barn all summer and slowly wasted, dizzy and shrinking, while a handsome young man came to her each evening. One night the father saw a star drop onto the barn roof. The next night he put on his daughter’s clothes and lay in her bed himself, and when the visitor settled in beside him he ran a hand down its leg and felt the cold scales of a goose. He bolted for the house and got the door locked in time. In the barn they left a straw dummy smeared with filth, and the lidérc raged over it for nights, spitting fire and flinging sparks against the walls, before it finally gave up and never returned.

The third face is the quietest and the most familiar. This is lidércnyomás itself, the pressure that comes in the dark when the sleeper cannot move or breathe and something is sitting on the chest, heavy and patient, sometimes bending to drink a little blood, and leaves them weak and ill by morning. A close cousin haunts the second household variety, the földi ördög or “earthly devil,” a tiny thing found by accident in old rags, in a box, in a glass bottle, in the pocket of a coat nobody wears. It makes its finder suddenly rich and capable of impossible feats, but the price is steep: the person’s soul is understood to have passed to the lidérc, or through it to the Devil.

Its gifts and its dangers come from the same source. Because it is born of fire and flight it can burn, blaze across the sky, breathe flame, and break out sparks wherever it likes; because it is a shapeshifter it can be a chicken, a lover, a fallen star, a bird of fire; because it feeds on people it can labour past any human strength or drain a life to nothing. Its weaknesses are just as plain. Garlic will hold it off, and so will incense and branches of birch laid at the door, and the plain trouser-cord that keeps other night things out. The impossible task undoes the familiar, the hollow tree cages it, the scattered ash exposes its foot, and none of the flying kind can outstay the dawn. At the first crow of the rooster it must be gone, and there is no lidérc fast enough to outrun that.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a lidérc?

A lidérc is a shapeshifting being of Hungarian folklore that appears in three overlapping forms: a featherless magical chicken that fetches gold for its keeper, a fiery flying spirit that takes the shape of a lover and drains its victim to death, and the crushing nightmare weight that presses on a sleeper’s chest. The three share one name and freely borrow traits from one another. The word also means an ordinary marsh flame or will-o’-the-wisp in modern Hungarian.

How do you get a lidérc chicken?

According to Hungarian belief, you hatch a lidérc from the first egg laid by a small black hen by keeping the egg warm against your skin under your arm until it hatches, rather than letting a hen sit on it. Some versions say any tiny black egg will do, or that it must be hatched in a warm heap of manure. What emerges is featherless, can talk, and belongs to the person who warmed it, fetching treasure and doing work in exchange for a little butter and milk.

How do you get rid of a lidérc?

The surest way to be rid of a household lidérc is to set it a task it can never finish, such as carrying water in a sieve, hauling sand with a rope, or squeezing through a knot-hole in a tree, so that it works itself to exhaustion or despair. It can also be trapped by luring it into a hollow tree and sealing it inside. The flying, seducing form is kept out with garlic, incense, and birch branches at the door, and it must vanish at the first crow of the rooster at dawn.

What is the ördögszerető, the lidérc lover?

The ördögszerető, or “devil’s lover,” is the flying form of the lidérc that hunts lonely people such as widows, widowers, and those waiting on absent partners. It flies at night as a fiery light or shooting star, enters through the chimney or keyhole, and takes the exact shape of the victim’s dead or absent beloved, giving them everything they want while slowly draining their life away. It can copy any face perfectly but cannot disguise one leg, which stays the foot of a goose or the hoof of a horse.

Why does the Hungarian word for nightmare come from the lidérc?

The Hungarian word for a nightmare, lidércnyomás, means literally “lidérc pressure,” and it comes from the belief that the lidérc sits on a sleeper’s chest in the dark, heavy and immovable, sometimes drinking a little blood and leaving the person weak and sick by morning. This night-pressing form links the lidérc to the wider European family of “mare” spirits behind the word nightmare itself.