Mormo

What it is

Mormo is a female spirit in Greek folklore. Her name was the one mothers and nurses called out to frighten children and keep them from misbehaving. A second word for her, mormolyce, is treated as the same being, and its variant spelling mormolyceum carries the same sense. Writers today describe her as a spectre, a phantom or a ghost, one of the frightening female figures of Greek story. A lexicon compiled in the Byzantine period, the Suda, sets her beside Lamia and the mormolykeion, counting them together as beings that scare people.

Where it comes from

One account survives in a single text: the first Mormo was a Corinthian woman who killed her children and ate them, then flew off. Sophron, active around 430 BC, gives the Doric form Mormolyca and names her as the wetnurse of Acheron. The word itself points to fear. Mormones, the plural of mormo, is explained as 'fearful ones' or 'hideous ones', and belongs with a set of terms for fright. Mormolyce is read as 'terrible wolves', built on a stem, -lykeios, that means 'of a wolf'.

How it is done

The practice is verbal. An adult speaks the name to a child as a threat, which makes it a piece of folklore rather than a ritual. Aristophanes puts the name to use in his plays. The poet Erinna, in her poem The Distaff, looks back on the fear she and her friend Baucis felt as girls whenever Mormo was mentioned. The same custom appears in the Alexiad, the history of a Byzantine princess, from the period of the First Crusade, where the name served to alarm small children.

What it is for

The aim was discipline rather than harm: the name was a way to hold children back from bad behaviour. The Suda calls Mormo and Mombro a bugbear, using phobētron, a word for anything that frightens. Fright was the whole point of the figure, and the name could work on its own, without a story attached. That is why it turns up in comedy, in a poem's memory of girlhood, and in a later history as a threat for babies.

Who does it

Mothers and nurses are the ones who spoke her name, women minding children at home. Sophron casts Mormolyca as a nurse herself, the wetnurse of Acheron, which shows how tightly the figure was bound to the nursery. In Erinna's poem the children who feared her are girls, Baucis and the speaker. The Alexiad, from a later century, shows the same habit among those looking after infants.

Peoples and places

Her name belongs to the Greek-speaking world, and the Greeks used it as their bogey word. The form Mormolyca comes from Doric Greek, as written by Sophron. Greek comedy and Greek poetry both carry her: Aristophanes on the stage, Erinna in The Distaff. A Byzantine-era lexicon, the Suda, preserves the glosses on her, and a princess's history from the time of the First Crusade shows the name still in use centuries after Sophron.

What people believe

Mormo belongs to a Greek world of female spirits that frighten people. In Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the female phasma is known by several names, and mormolyce is one of them. Modern interpretations link a mormo, and also a lamia, with the empusa, a phantom that the goddess Hekate sends. The Suda equates Mormo with Lamia and the mormolykeion. One scholiast, glossing the same cluster of words, gave Mormo and Gello as other names of Lamia.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Much of what is recorded comes through lexicographers and scholiasts, the ancient and medieval writers who explained difficult words and passages. The Suda, a Byzantine lexicon, is one such source. Modern commentators describe Mormo as a female spectre, phantom or ghost. Only one text carries the story of the Corinthian woman, so that version rests on a single witness. Philostratus, in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, lists mormolyce among the names for a phasma, and a scholiast adds the claim that Mormo and Gello were both Lamia.

Compare and confuse

She overlaps with several other frightening female figures. The Suda treats Mormo and the mormolykeion as the same kind of being and equates her with Lamia; one scholiast lists Gello as another name for Lamia. Mormolyce and mormolyceum are variant spellings of the equivalent word, and Mombro is a further form. The Suda also gives Mombro, or Mormo, as a bugbear.

Questions people ask about Mormo

Good reading and sources

• Mormo on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data