The history of a demonic tradition that was stolen from women – and then won back again.

Folklore tales of terrifying female monsters have long been passed down through the generations and across different cultures around the world.

London-based historian Sarah Clegg says many of them stem from historical beliefs about "traditional womanhood".

"If you don't behave as you ought to, you are a demon, you are a monster. You belong on the outside of the world, not in civilised society,"

In ancient mythology, stories of female monsters have also helped women come to terms with the risks and perils of pregnancy and childbirth.

Medusa is one of history's best-known monsters, but Dr Clegg says there are plenty of others we should know about too.

Because in the modern day, these monstrous women have come to represent something very different from the past.

'Mother of all demons'

Dr Clegg, who is the author of Women's Lore: 4000 Years of Sirens, says ancient Mesopotamia's mythical Lamashtu is the mother of all demons.

She's often depicted bare-breasted with dogs suckling at her teats.

"She has these enormously horrifyingly long fingers that she uses both to grab onto babies and sicken them, but also to reach up inside women and drag out babies before their term," Dr Clegg says.

She says the creation of the Lamashtu myths and other such monsters reflects the poor health outcomes for mothers and their children at the time.

Between 3,000 and 500 BC, about a third of children would die before adulthood.

"About 8 per cent of women would die in childbirth. That doesn't even take into account how traumatic and painful the experience would have been," Dr Clegg says.

There's evidence of little clay dogs being buried under homes in the hope of warding off Lamashtu, dating to between 600 and 900 BC.

Another prominent mythical female monster in ancient Greek and Roman mythology is Lamia, who is a descendant of Lamashtu.

Unlike Lamashtu, Lamia has serpentine features.

She's often depicted as having the tail of a snake or having a snake coming out of her forehead.

According to ancient Greek mythology, she was once a beautiful queen, and was "seduced and/or raped by Zeus and forced by an envious Hera Zeus's wife to eat her own children", Dr Clegg says.

According to the myth, Lamia is filled with grief and jealousy because she can't have her own child, so "she seeks her vengeance by devouring babies and murdering pregnant women", Dr Clegg says.

But there's another side to Lamia, who may also be a precursor to the mermaid myth.

"She's quite sexy and she also will try to seduce men," she says.

According to folklore, a bare-breasted Lamia would lure sailors to her, concealing her serpentine lower half in the sand.

"And as soon as [the sailors] arrived close, then she would eat them alive," Dr Clegg says.

Lamia's story was commonly told to scare children into behaving, but she also represented a cautionary tale of what could happen to women if they lost their moral compass and expressed their sexuality.

Half-woman, half-bird

In Ancient Greece there was another mythical female figure who shared some of Lamia's behaviours, although they looked vastly different.

According to Greek mythology, sirens lured sailors to their deaths. They even sang Odysseus, the Greek king, into a shipwreck.

"A siren was half-woman, half-bird ... and she will eat you alive if she gets her hands on you," Dr Clegg says.

"And the thing about sirens is they're not sexy. At least ... not in ancient Greek mythology."

According to Greek legend, when the sirens sang to lure Odysseus to them, "it was not a song that is seductive".

"It's a song about how they'll give him knowledge about everything that's happened in the world and everything that will happen," Dr Clegg says.

Though sirens weren't seductive, they certainly had power. They were depicted as evil enchantresses, mythology which could have been fuelled by fears of women's sexuality.

Water spirits In Australia, a Yawkyawk, which means young woman spirit in Kunwinjku/Junwok language, is another ancient female figure.

"A Yawkyawk is known as the ancestral mermaid spirit," explains Caroline Edwards, a curator at the National Museum of Australia.

"She comes from the Kuninjku people, who are a group of Indigenous Australians whose country is in Central and Western [Australia] on Arnhem Land."

Yawkyawks have been described as fishtailed maidens who live in deep waterholes or freshwater streams.

Their story can be traced back many tens of thousands of years, with evidence of them appearing in rock art in the region, Ms Edwards says.

And they are both revered and feared.

Closely related to the Rainbow Serpent, they are said to protect the waterways. But they can also inflict bad weather on people who upset them.

"They share a lot in common [with] mermaids from cultures all around the world. They have a beautiful singing voice, and they sing from underneath the water and lure men with their sweet singing voice and [could] possibly take a man," she says.

The watering holes in which they live have also been associated with fertility and conception, Ms Edwards says.

Artist Jay Jurrupula Rostron has incorporated Yawkyawks into his artwork. In his artist statement he says, "Kuninjku people call mermaids Yawkyawk, but in my language, Kune, we call them Ngalkunburriyaymi".

He explains that Ngalkunburriyaymi was a positive force in his mother's life.

"My mum told me her story. Ngalkunburriyaymi gave her a baby. [She] came to her in a dream. In my mother's dream, she went fishing Marra-yii and Ngalkunburriyaymi came to her to tell her she was having a baby," he says.

"They gave her my brother."

Framing powerful women as evil

Sharyn Davies, an associate professor in Indonesian Studies at Monash University, says in Indonesian mythology there's a prominent female monster named Kuntilanak.

"The last part of the word — 'anak' — means child, and she's sometimes depicted as being pregnant," Dr Davies says.

"She's usually beautifully scary ... with a pasty white face, fiery red eyes and wispy long black hair."

She's viewed as a powerful predator who chases after men and she's often depicted wearing a long white dress smeared with blood, either from her own labour or from her victims.

"Some people read her as representing nature, wild and untamed, and as opposed to humans who are civilised," Dr Davies says.

"But a feminist reading would say that she's presented in this way to warn women about not becoming too powerful … that this is just a way to frame powerful women as evil."

Indeed, Dr Clegg says a lot of mythological female monsters or figures from folklore have been used to shame or oppress women.

But today, she says there are women who view them as figures "to be admired".

Dr Clegg says, rather than being demonised for daring not to have children or expressing sexual appetites, today the female "monsters" of the past might be perceived as "figureheads of a movement".

If a mythical woman "refuses to submit to men and refuses to have children, and wants to have sex because she'd like to have sex and not because she feels obliged to … [she's] quite an inspirational figure."

https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/womans-lore-9781804549650/