Strega
The Italian and German words for witch, strega and Hexe, with the ambiguous village figure behind them.
Also: hexe, striga, witch in italian, witch in german
Strega is Italian for witch, from the Latin striga, a night bird said to harm children; the German word is Hexe, whose origin is less certain. In villages the word could mean a woman believed to harm with a glance or with spells, a healer who was feared as well as sought, or a figure from stories such as the streghe said to gather at a walnut tree near Benevento. In the early modern witch trials, especially in the German-speaking lands, many thousands of women, and some men, were tried and executed as Hexen. Charles Leland's Aradia (1899), which claims a surviving Italian witch religion, is disputed by historians. In modern Italy, the Strega name is also a famous liqueur.