The Vampire, Montague Summers (Chapter Four):
In classical Latin, lamia is defined by Lewis and Short as "a witch who was said to suck children's blood, a sorceress, enchantress." (Read Full Article)
Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe (Donald A. Mackenzie [1917])
The mother who gave origin to demons as well as gods was evidently, like the Babylonian Tiamat and the blood-thirsty Ishtar, possessed of primitive demoniac traits. The peasants of Greece at the present day remember Lamia, the "Queen of Libya" who was loved by Zeus. Her children were robbed by Hera, and she "took up her abode in a grim and lonely cavern, and there changed into a malicious and greedy monster, who in envy and despair stole and killed the children of more fortunate mothers". Another kind of Lamia, the Gello, transforms herself into a fish, a serpent, a kite, or a skylark, and devours babes also. When one of these demons is slain, no grass grows where her blood falls.
Popular Romances of the West of England (collected and edited by Robert Hunt [1903, 3rd edition])
PENGERSWICK: ANOTHER legend relates that it was not the stepmother found by Pengerswick whose "skin was covered with scales like a serpent," but that the lady brought 'home from Palestine by him was an Ophidian--a serpent-worshipper. Hence she became celebrated as a woman possessed by a serpent--having a serpent's power--in fact, a Lamia. This is the only tradition of the kind with which I am acquainted in this county.
Etruscan Roman Remains (Charles G. Leland, Chapter Eight)
There are in the treatise on the Magic Walnut Tree of Benevento, by P. Pipernus (Naples, 1647), several passages in reference to Diana as Queen of the Witches, one of which is curious as it seems in a manner to identify Lamia with Lilith and Diana. It is to the effect that the witches who of yore seduced youths to their death, were the same with Lamia--a Lilith hebraeo, whence the Empusæ, Marmoliciæ or Lares and Lemures, appearing on one foot in various figures dedicated to Diana--in variis figuris Dianæ dedicatis. But Elias Schedius (see Dis Germanis, Amsterdam, 1648), has with great industry brought together from many sources, Hebrew and others, strong proof that Diana was identical with Lilith, the two being identified in the Roman Lucina:--
Tu Lucina volentibus
Juno dicta puerperis
Dicta lumine Luna."
(Catullus Epigr., 35)
Luna meaning here, Diana.
Legends and Popular Tales of the Basque People (Mariana Monteiro, 1887)
In the Basque language, as also in Castillian, the name of Lamia implies one of the fantastic creations of the popular mind. Lamia is a class of water fairy which differs from a mermaid in this: that while the latter only dwells in the sea, and her singing allures men for evil, the former lives both in the sea and in the rivers, and her singing attracts men to them in order to render them happy.
To the bed of rushes on the shores of Dondiz was given the Basque name of "Lamiaco," which, literally translated, means the shores of the Lamia. "But why was this shore of Dondiz called Lamiaco?" We shall learn further on. In the seventeenth century those plains, which are at the present day fruitful lands, thanks to the industrial character of the people, and will soon rival the best cultivated acres of Biscay, were overgrown beds of dark rushes and dismal marshes, which the people believed were the haunts of monsters and wandering spirits.
Etruscan Roman Remains (Charles G. Leland)
It has been suggested to me that in all this, only the name is in common with the Greek account of Empusa, who had one leg of an ass and the other of brass. All of which should be carefully considered by the investigator. It is not remarkable that the name is Greek, since the Tusci had from the earliest times much intercourse with Greece, and, what is more to be considered, that the name became popular in Italy at a later date as that of a bug-bear spirit which was one of the minor faun-like gods. Thus in a very curious and rare work, entitled, Idea del Giardino del Mondo, by Tommaso Tomai of Ravenna (second edition), Venice, 1690, there is mention of "demons called incubi, succubi, or empedusi, and other lemuri, who are enamoured of men or women." What is indeed remarkable in these Tuscan names is that there has been on the whole so little change in them. It is of little matter that the Impusa does not appear in the modern account with one foot of brass or like that of an ass (alterum verò habeat æneum aut asininum--Suidas), since during the Middle Ages the word was often used as a synonym for Lamia, Lemur, or witch of any kind. If Italian writers could describe the Empusa as being the same with Lemures and Incubi, it is not remarkable that mere peasants should have applied the name quite as loosely.