The First Mrs. Adam

1895

She Was Lilith and Was Expelled After Being 130 Years Married.

Whether Lilith was one of the female creation of chapter 1, or a demon, or something between the two, she was, considered matrimonially, a complete failure. she was expelled after living with Adam 130 years and subsequently became the wife of Satan, by whom she was the mother of the Jinns, so familiar in Persian fairy lore.

The emphatic remark of Adam when he first saw Eve, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," makes, it is suggested, a comparison between Eve and the beautiful but fiendlike Lilith not complimentary to the latter, while the reference on the birth of Seth to him as Adam's son "in his own likeness, after his image," conveys a painful hint of the uncanny offspring born to Adam and Lilith.

Perhaps in revenge for this Lilith — The name occurs translated "night monster" in Isaiah xxxiv — became the sworn foe of little children, whom she was wont to strangle with one of her glorious golden hairs, unless the watchfulness of their mothers drove her away. It has indeed been gravely suggested by an etymologist of great daring that our word lullaby is simply a corruption of "Lilla abi," Lilith, avaunt, which mothers and nurses would croon over the cradles or write on the doorpost. — All the Year Round.