The Babylonian ghosts of unmarried men and women and of those without offspring were also disconsolate night wanderers.  Others who suffered similar fates were the ghosts of men who died in battle far from home and were left unburied, the ghosts of travellers who perished in the desert and were not covered over, the ghosts of drowned men which rose from the water, the ghosts of prisoners starved to death or executed, the ghosts of people who died violent deaths before their appointed time.  The dead required to be cared for, to have libations poured out, to be fed, so that they might not prowl through the streets or enter houses searching for scraps of food and pure water.  The duty of giving offerings to the dead was imposed apparently on near relatives.  As in India, it would appear that the eldest son performed the funeral ceremony:  a dreadful fate therefore awaited the spirit of the dead Babylonian man or woman without offspring.  In Sanskrit literature there is a reference to a priest who was not allowed to enter Paradise, although he had performed rigid penances, because he had no children.[96]

There were hags and giants of mountain and desert, of river and ocean.  Demons might possess the pig, the goat, the horse, the lion, or the ibis, the raven, or the hawk.  The seven spirits of tempest, fire, and destruction rose from the depths of ocean, and there were hosts of demons which could not be overcome or baffled by man without the assistance of the gods to whom they were hostile.  Many were sexless; having no offspring, they were devoid of mercy and compassion.  They penetrated everywhere: 

    The high enclosures, the broad enclosures, like a flood
      they pass through,
    From house to house they dash along. 
    No door can shut them out;
    No bolt can turn them back. 
    Through the door, like a snake, they glide,
    Through the hinge, like the wind, they storm,
    Tearing the wife from the embrace of the man,
    Driving the freedman from his family home.[97]

These furies did not confine their unwelcomed attentions to mankind alone: 

They hunt the doves from their cotes,
And drive the birds from their nests,
And chase the marten from its hole.... 
Through the gloomy street by night they roam,
Smiting sheepfold and cattle pen,
Shutting up the land as with door and bolt.

R.C.  Thompson’s Translation.

The Babylonian poet, like Burns, was filled with pity for the animals which suffered in the storm: 

List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I thought me o’ the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O’ winter war.... 
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing! 
That in the merry months o’ spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o’ thee? 
Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,
And close thy e’e?

According to Babylonian belief, “the great storms directed from heaven” were caused by demons.  Mankind heard them “loudly roaring above, gibbering below".[98] The south wind was raised by Shutu, a plumed storm demon resembling Hraesvelgur of the Icelandic Eddas: