Brewer's: Lemures

(3 syl.). The spirits of the dead. Good lemures were called Lares, but bad ones Larvae, spectres who wandered about at night-time to terrify the living. (Ovid. Fasti, v.)

“The lars and lemures moan with midnight plaint.” Milton: Ode on the Nativity.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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