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What this episode is about
The finale of my four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of The Witcher leaves the Slavic world for Portugal, Spain and Galicia. In the game, the Bruxa is a beautiful, deadly vampire. In folk belief, she is a nightmare hovering over the cradle.
Vereena
In Sapkowski’s 1989 story “A Grain of Truth,” Geralt meets the Bruxa Vereena, who loves the cursed Nivellen. She kills with a scream, as the Striga did before her. In 2016 the Blood and Wine expansion turned the Bruxa into an elegant higher vampire. The scream, the tragic love and the noble status are all invented.
The real Bruxa
Portuguese folk belief separates the feiticeira, the sorceress who works for pay, from the bruxa, the woman who slips into houses through cracks at night in the form of a bird and sucks the blood of infants. Oswald Crawfurd described this belief in 1880, and José Leite de Vasconcelos documented it from 1882 on. People protected themselves with open scissors laid in the shape of a cross, bread, salt, garlic and a red woolen thread.
The strix
Where the word bruxa comes from is disputed. The creature itself is old, though: it is the Roman strix, which already in Ovid drinks the blood of children in their cradles. From it came the Italian strega, the Romanian strigoi and the Polish strzyga. The Striga from part 3 and the Bruxa are the same creature in two languages. In Asturias there is even a relative, the guaxa, whose name Aurelio de Llano traced back to the strix in 1922.
Zugarramurdi
The Basque witch trials of 1609 to 1614 show how belief turns into persecution. Six people were burned alive in Logroño in 1610, until the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías examined the confessions and found no evidence. Portugal itself, by the way, never had a major witch hunt.
What lies behind it
Three things: high infant mortality; sleep paralysis, in which you lie awake and unable to move and feel a weight on your chest; and the scapegoat, usually old, poor women living alone, healers and midwives. At the end I look back on the whole series: three female monsters of the field, the cradle and the bed, one male monster in the forest, and the same ancient ancestor behind all of them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a bruxa?
In Portuguese and Galician folk belief, a witch who enters houses at night as a bird and attacks infants. In The Witcher, she is a vampire.
Are the Bruxa and the Striga related?
Yes. Both go back to the Roman strix, the night bird that drinks children’s blood.
More in the lexicon: Bruxa.
About this episode
The grand finale of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of “The Witcher” takes us away from the Slavic forests – south, to Portugal, Spain and Galicia. There the bruxa waits: in the games a beautiful, deadly vampire; in real folk belief a child-killing night-witch who turns into a bird and comes through any crack.
We follow her trail all the way back to ancient Rome – to the strix in Ovid – and with that we close the circle to the striga from Part 2: because the bruxa and the strzyga are, in truth, the same ancient creature. We visit the Basque witch trials of Zugarramurdi, meet the inquisitor Salazar Frías, who ended the Spanish witch-burnings – and ask, one last time: who tells a story, and why?
📖 Further reading & sources:
• Andrzej Sapkowski: “A Grain of Truth” (Ziarno prawdy, 1989; in “The Last Wish”)
• Oswald Crawfurd: Portugal, Old and New (1880) – Northern Portuguese bruxa folklore
• José Leite de Vasconcelos: Tradições Populares de Portugal (1882 ff.)
• Ovid: Fasti, Book 6 (c. 8 AD) – the strix
• Daniel Ogden: The Strix-Witch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
• Carmelo Lisón Tolosana: Brujería, estructura social y simbolismo en Galicia (1979) •
Julio Caro Baroja: The World of the Witches (Las brujas y su mundo, 1961)
• Gustav Henningsen: The Witches’ Advocate – Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1980)
• Carlo Ginzburg: The Night Battles (1966) & Ecstasies (1989)
• José Miguel de Barandiarán: Diccionario de mitología vasca
• Aurelio de Llano: Del folklore asturiano (1922) – the guaxa
#Bruxa #TheWitcher #Witcher3 #BloodAndWine #Vampire #Witch #IberianMythology #Folklore #Zugarramurdi #strix #GreyTales
A note: this episode touches on historical witch persecution, infant death, and violence against women. Take good care of yourself.