The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

inn and nightly

drinking the cider, till the publican shot a silver button over their

heads, when they were instantly transformed into two ill-favoured old

ladies of his acquaintance. On Heathfield, near Tavistock, the wild

huntsman rides by full moon with his “wush hounds;” and a white hare

which they pursued was once rescued by a goody returning from market,

and discovered to be a transformed young lady.

 

Gervaise of Tilbury says in his Otia Imperalia—

 

“Vidimus frequenter in Anglia, per lunationes, homines in lupos

mutari, quod hominum genus gerulfos Galli vocant, Angli vero

wer-wlf, dicunt: wer enim Anglice virum sonat, wlf, lupum.”

Gervaise may be right in his derivation of the name, and werewolf may

mean man-wolf, though I have elsewhere given a different derivation,

and one which I suspect is truer. But Gervaise has grounds for his

assertion that wér signifies man; it is so in Anglo-Saxon, vair in

Gothic, vir in Latin, verr, in Icelandic, vîra, Zend, wirs,

old Prussian, wirs, Lettish, vîra, Sanskrit, bîr, Bengalee.

 

There have been cases of cannibalism in Scotland, but no bestial

transformation is hinted at in connection with them.

 

Thus Bthius, in his history of Scotland, tells us of a robber and his

daughter who devoured children, and Lindsay of Pitscottie gives a full

account.

 

“About this time (1460) there was ane brigand ta’en with his haill

family, who haunted a place in Angus. This mischievous man had ane

execrable fashion to take all young men and children he could steal

away quietly, or tak’ away without knowledge, and eat them, and the

younger they were, esteemed them the mair tender and delicious. For

the whilk cause and damnable abuse, he with his wife and bairns were

all burnt, except ane young wench of a year old who was saved and

brought to Dandee, where she was brought up and fostered; and when she

came to a woman’s years, she was condemned and burnt quick for that

crime. It is said that when she was coming to the place of execution,

there gathered ane huge multitude of people, and specially of women,

cursing her that she was so unhappy to commit so damnable deeds. To

whom she turned about with an ireful countenance, saying:—‘Wherefore

chide ye with me, as if I had committed ane unworthy act? Give me

credence and trow me, if ye had experience of eating men and women’s

flesh, ye wold think it so delicious that ye wold never forbear it

again.’ So, but any sign of repentance, this unhappy traitor died in

the sight of the people.” [1]

 

[1. LINDSAY’S Chronicles of Scotland, 1814, p. 163.]

 

Wyntoun also has a passage in his metrical chronicle regarding a

cannibal who lived shortly before his own time, and he may easily have

heard about him from surviving contemporaries. It was about the year

1340, when a large portion of Scotland had been devastated by the arms

of Edward III.

 

About Perth thare was the countrie

Sae waste, that wonder wes to see;

 

For intill well-great space thereby,

Wes nother house left nor herb’ry.

Of deer thare wes then sic foison (profusion),

That they wold near come to the town,

Sae great default was near that stead,

That mony were in hunger dead.

A carle they said was near thereby,

That wold act settis (traps) commonly,

Children and women for to slay,

And swains that he might over-ta;

And ate them all that he get might;

Chwsten Cleek till name behight.

That sa’ry life continued he,

While waste but folk was the countrie. [1]

 

[1. WYNTOUN’S Chronicle, ii. 236.]

 

We have only to compare these two cases with those recorded in the

last two chapters, and we see at once how the popular mind in Great

Britain had lost the idea of connecting change of form with

cannibalism. A man guilty of the crimes committed by the Angus

brigand, or the carle of Perth, would have been regarded as a

werewolf in France or Germany, and would have been tried for

Lycanthropy.

 

S. Jerome, by the way, brought a sweeping charge against the Scots. He

visited Gaul in his youth, about 880, and he writes:—“When I was a

young man in Gaul, I may have seen the Attacotti, a British people who

live upon human flesh; and when they find herds of pigs, droves of

cattle, or flocks of sheep in the woods, they cut off the haunches of

the men and the breasts of the women, and these they regard as great

dainties;” in other words they prefer the shepherd to his flock.

Gibbon who quotes this passage says on it: “If in the neighbourhood of

the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has

really existed, we may contemplate, in the period of the Scottish

history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life. Such

reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to encourage

the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce in a future age, the

Hume of the Southern hemisphere.”

 

If traditions of werewolves are scanty in England, it is quite the

reverse if we cross the water.

 

In the south of France, it is still believed that fate has destined

certain men to be lycanthropists—that they are transformed into

wolves at full moon. The desire to run comes upon them at night. They

leave their beds, jump out of a window, and plunge into a fountain.

After the bath, they come out covered with dense fur, walking on all

fours, and commence a raid over fields and meadows, through woods and

villages, biting all beasts and human beings that come in their way.

At the approach of dawn, they return to the spring, plunge into it,

lose their furry skins, and regain their deserted beds. Sometimes the

loup-garou is said to appear under the form of a white dog, or to be

loaded with chains; but there is probably a confusion of ideas between

the werewolf and the church-dog, bar-ghest, pad-foit, wush-hound, or

by whatever name the animal supposed to haunt a churchyard is

designated.

 

In the Périgord, the werewolf is called louléerou. Certain men,

especially bastards, are obliged at each full moon to transform

themselves into these diabolic beasts.

 

It is always at night that the fit comes on. The lycanthropist dashes

out of a window, springs into a well, and, after having struggled in

the water for a few moments, rises from it, dripping, and invested

with a goatskin which the devil has given him. In this condition, the

louléerous run upon four legs, pass the night in ranging over the

country, and in biting and devouring all the dogs they meet. At break

of day they lay aside their goatskins and return home. Often they are

ill in consequence of having eaten tough old hounds, and they vomit up

their undigested paws. One great nuisance to them is the fact that

they may be wounded or killed in their louléerou state. With the first

effusion of blood their diabolic covering vanishes, and they are

recognized, to the disgrace of their families.

 

A werewolf may easily be detected, even when devoid of his skin; for

his hands are broad, and his fingers short, and there are always some

hairs in the hollow of his hand.

 

In Normandy, those who are doomed to be loups-garoux, clothe

themselves every evening with a skin called their hère or hure,

which is a loan from the devil. When they run in their transformed

state, the evil one accompanies them and scourges them at the foot of

every cross they pass. The only way in which a werewolf can be

liberated from this cruel bondage, is by stabbing him three times in

the forehead with a knife. However, some people less addicted to

allopathic treatment, consider that three drops of blood drawn by a

needle, will be sufficient to procure release.

 

According to an opinion of the vulgar in the same province, the

loup-garou is sometimes a metamorphosis forced upon the body of a

damned person, who, after having been tormented in his grave, has torn

his way out of it. The first stage in the process consists in his

devouring the cerecloth which enveloped his face; then his moans and

muffled howls ring from the tomb, through the gloom of night, the

earth of the grave begins to heave, and at last, with a scream,

surrounded by a phosphorescent glare, and exhaling a ftid odour, he

bursts away as a wolf.

 

In Le Bessin, they attribute to sorcerers the power of metamorphosing

certain men into beasts, but the form of a dog is that principally

affected by them.

 

In Norway it is believed that there are persons who can assume the

form of a wolf or a bear (Huse-björn), and again resume their own;

this property is either imparted to them by the Trollmen, or those

possessing it are themselves Trolls.

 

In a hamlet in the midst of a forest, there dwelt a cottager named

Lasse, and his wife. One day he went out in the forest to fell a tree,

but had forgot to cross himself and say his paternoster, so that some

troll or wolf-witch (varga mor) obtained power over him and

transformed him into a wolf. His wife mourned him for many years, but,

one Christmas-eve, there came a beggar-woman, very poor and ragged, to

the door, and the good woman of the house took her in, fed her well,

and entreated her kindly. At her departure the beggar-woman said that

the wife would probably see her husband again, as he was not dead, but

was wandering in the forest as a wolf. Towards nightfall the wife

went to her pantry to place in it a piece of meat for the morrow,

when, on turning to go out, she perceived a wolf standing before her,

raising itself with its paws on the pantry steps, regarding her with

sorrowful and hungry looks. Seeing this she exclaimed, “If I were sure

that thou wert my own Lasse, I would give thee a bit of meat.” At that

instant the wolfskin fell off, and her husband stood before her in

the clothes he wore on the unlucky morning when she had last beheld

him.

 

Finns, Lapps, and Russians are held in particular aversion, because

the Swedes believe that they have power to change people into wild

beasts. During the last year of the war with Russia, when Calmar was

overrun with an unusual number of wolves, it was generally said that

the Russians had transformed their Swedish prisoners into wolves, and

sent them home to invest the country.

 

In Denmark the following stories are told:—

 

A man, who from his childhood had been a werewolf, when returning one

night with his wife from a merrymaking, observed that the hour was at

hand when the evil usually came upon him; giving therefore the reins

to his wife, he descended from the vehicle, saying to her, “If

anything comes to thee, only strike at it with thine apron.” He then

withdrew, but immediately after, the woman, as she was sitting in the

vehicle, was attached by a werewolf. She did as the man had enjoined

her, and struck it with her apron, from which it rived a portion, and

then ran away. After some time the man returned, holding in his mouth

the rent portion of his wife’s apron, on seeing which, she cried out

in terror,—“Good Lord, man, why, thou art a werewolf!” “Thank thee,

wife,” said he, “now I am free.” And from that time he was no more

afflicted.

 

If a female at midnight stretches between four sticks the membrane

which envelopes the foal when it