The Sleepy Tailor and the Zmore

Once there was a tailor who was sewing for the peasants at Christmastime. Since he still had a great deal to do, and it was Christmas eve, he planned to work all night. At midnight he grew terribly sleepy. He knew at once that a zmore was trying to put him to sleep so that she could suck milk from his breast. He decided to stay awake at all costs.

When the zmore saw that he refused to fall asleep, she got into his thread and knotted it so that he couldn’t work. This made the tailor very angry, and he grabbed his scissors and cut the thread in two. In the morning the severed body of an old hag was found outside the tailor’s window.

From that time on, the zmore never bothered the tailor again.

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Glossary

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Annotations

TELLER/COLLECTOR: Anon., from Lodz, Poland, (no date recorded)
SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 101, pp. 181–82.
COMMENTS: The collector notes that “the *zmore* is an ancient creature in human form that goes at night to suck milk from the breast of its victim. Since it is female, its chosen victims are men.”