Lidérc

The lidérc is a many-sided being from Hungarian folklore, recorded in Hungary and in Hungarian communities in Transylvania and Moldavia. Folklorists distinguish three forms that overlap: a household chicken, a tiny “earthly devil,” and a flying fire.

The household form hatches from the first egg of a black hen kept warm under a person’s arm. It sleeps beside its owner, fetches money and gold, and keeps asking what to bring, and an owner who cannot answer faces trouble. Wealth comes at a price: in many tales the lidérc drains its owner’s strength, causing sickness and sometimes death. The “earthly devil” form is a tiny being found by chance in a box, rags or a pocket.

The flying form travels at night as a fiery light, a will-o’-the-wisp or a fire-bird. It can take the face of an absent husband or lover while keeping an animal’s leg, enters through the chimney or keyhole and leaves soot behind. It must leave by first cockcrow.

To be rid of one, tales say the owner sets it an endless task, such as carrying sand in a rope or water in a sieve. The word survives in modern Hungarian: lidércfény is a will-o’-the-wisp, and lidércnyomás means a nightmare, though folklore sources note that nightmares were mostly blamed on witches.

A bald, talking chicken; a tiny devil; or a flame that flits at night, sometimes with a human face and an animal’s leg.

Farmhouses, hearths and marshes; the flying form is a night apparition near wetlands and cemeteries.

The lidérc appears in Hungarian tales, in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (as a spell using black hens’ eggs), and in modern fantasy and television.