The Lilith Midrash -- A.K.A., "We are equals so don't get on top of me, dude"=killer of babies"

I found this midrash in several different sources, including Professor Judith Baskin's book, Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature. I am currently writing a paper on a short essay by Judith Plaskow, and am planning on using her book The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics for my final "Women and Religion" class assignment...though the David M. Carr book I am currently reading frequently cites Plaskow's book Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective in his interpretations of Genesis Chapters 1, 2,3, as well as Hosea, Isaiah, and Song of Songs. So I guess I will have to read that Plaskow book as well. Maybe I will read both and then decided which to use for my final project.

depictions of Lilith throughout the last 2000 years, in art, plays, novels, poems, myth etc: http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Garden/4240/apndx.html

my feelings and interpretations of the story TBD....

Anyway, the famous story of Lilith, approximate 800 AD:

Alphabet of Ben Sira 78: Lilith
When God created the first man Adam alone, God said, “It is not good for man to be
alone.” [So] God created a woman for him, from the earth like him, and called her Lilith. They
[Adam and Lilith] promptly began to argue with each other: She said, “I will not lie below,” and he
said, “I will not lie below, but above, since you are fit for being below and I for being above.” She
said to him, “The two of us are equal, since we are both from the earth.” And they would not
listen to each other. Since Lilith saw [how it was], she uttered God’s ineffable name and flew
away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Maker and said, “Master of the Universe, the
woman you gave me fled from me!”
The Holy Blessed one immediately dispatched the three angels Sanoy, Sansenoy, and
Samangelof after her, to bring her back. God said, “If she wants to return, well and good. And if
not, she must accept that a hundred of her children will die every day.” The angels pursued her
and overtook her in the sea, in raging waters, (the same waters in which the Egyptians would one
day drown), and told her God’s orders. And yet she did not want to return. They told her they
would drown her in the sea, and she replied. “Leave me alone! I was only created in order to
sicken babies: if they are boys, from birth to day eight I will have power over them; if they are
girls, from birth to day twenty.” When they heard her reply, they pleaded with her to come back.
She swore to them in the name of the living God that whenever she would see them or their
names or their images on an amulet, she would not overpower that baby, and she accepted that
a hundred of her children would die every day. Therefore, a hundred of the demons die every
day, and therefore, we write the names [of the three angels] on amulets of young children. When
Lilith sees them, she remembers her oath and the child is [protected and] healed.