quite know whether they were Devs or monsters.[44] These, too, were mostly to be sought and found in ruins.[45]
VII. ALS
The most gruesome tribe of this demoniac world was that of the Als. It came to the Armenians either through the Syrians or through the Persians, who also believe in them and hold them to be demons of child-birth.[46] Al is the Babylonian Alu, one of the four general names for evil spirits. But the Armenian and Persian Al corresponds somewhat to the Jewish Lilith and Greek Lamia.
Probably the Als were known to the ancient Armenians, but it is a noteworthy fact that we do not hear about them until mediæval times. They appear as half-animal and half-human beings, shaggy and bristly. They are male and female and have a “mother.”[47] They were often called beasts, nevertheless they were usually mentioned with Devs and Kaches. According to Gregory of Datev“[48] they lived in watery, damp and sandy places, but they did not despise corners in houses and stables. A prayer against the Als describes them as impure spirits with fiery eyes, holding a pair of iron scissors in their hands, wandering or sitting in sandy places. Another unnamed author describes an Al as a man sitting on the sand. He has snake-like hair, finger-nails of brass, teeth of iron and the tusk of a boar. They have a king living in abysses, whom they serve, and who is chained and sprinkled up to the neck with (molten?) lead and shrieks continually.
The Als were formerly disease-demons who somehow came to restrict their baleful activities to unborn children and their mothers. They attack the latter in child-birth, scorching her ears, pulling out her liver and strangling her along with the unborn babe. They also steal unborn children of seven months, at which time these are supposed in the East to be fully
