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

and when she was

anointed all over, she whispered many magic words to a lamp, as if she

were talking to it. Then she began to move her arms, first with

tremulous jerks, and afterwards by a gentle undulating motion, till a

glittering, downy surface by degrees overspread her body, feathers and

strong quills burst forth suddenly, her nose became a hard crooked

beak, her toes changed to curved talons, and Pamphile was no longer

Pamphile, but it was an owl I saw before me. And now, uttering a

harsh, querulous scream, leaping from the ground by little and little,

in order to try her powers, and presently poising herself aloft on her

pinions, she stretched forth her wings on either Side to their full

extent, and flew straight away.

 

“Having now been actually a witness of the performance of the magical

art, and of the metamorphosis of Pamphile, I remained for some time in

a stupefied state of astonishment… . At last, after I had rubbed

my eyes some time, had recovered a little from the amazement and

abstraction of mind, and begun to feel a consciousness of the reality

of things about me, I took hold of the hand of Fotis and said,—‘Sweet

damsel, bring me, I beseech thee, a portion of the ointment with which

thy mistress hath just now anointed, and when thou hast made me a

bird, I will be thy slave, and even wait upon thee like a winged

Cupid.’ Accordingly she crept gently into the apartment, quickly

returned with the box of ointment, hastily placed it in my hands, and

then immediately departed.

 

“Elated to an extraordinary degree at the sight of the precious

treasure, I kissed the box several times successively; and uttering

repeated aspirations in hopes of a prosperous flight, I stripped off

my clothes as quick as possible, dipped my fingers greedily into the

box, and having thence extracted a good large lump of ointment, rubbed

it all over my body and limbs. When I was thoroughly anointed, I swung

my arms up and down, in imitation of the movement of a bird’s pinions,

and continued to do so a little while, when instead of any perceptible

token of feathers or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin,

alas! grew into a hard leathern hide, covered with bristly hair, my

fingers and toes disappeared, the palms of my hands and the soles of

my feet became four solid hoofs, and from the end of my spine a long

tail projected. My face was enormous, my mouth wide, my nostrils

gaping, my lips pendulous, and I had a pair of immoderately long,

rough, hairy ears. In short, when I came to contemplate my

transformation to its full extent, I found that, instead of a bird, I

had become—an ASS.” [1]

 

[1. APULEIUS, Sir George Head’s translation, bk. iii.]

 

Of what these magical salves were composed we know. They were composed

of narcotics, to wit, Solanum somniferum, aconite, hyoscyamus,

belladonna, opium, acorus vulgaris, sium. These were boiled down

with oil, or the fat of little children who were murdered for the

purpose. The blood of a bat was added, but its effects could have been

nil. To these may have been added other foreign narcotics, the names

of which have not transpired.

 

Whatever may have been the cause of the hallucination, it is not

surprising that the lycanthropist should have imagined himself

transformed into a beast. The cases I have instanced are those of

shepherds, who were by nature of their employment, brought into

collision with wolves; and it is not surprising that these persons, in

a condition liable to hallucinations, should imagine themselves to be

transformed into wild beasts, and that their minds reverting to the

injuries sustained from these animals, they should, in their state of

temporary insanity, accuse themselves of the acts of rapacity

committed by the beasts into which they believed themselves to be

transformed. It is a well-known fact that men, whose minds are

unhinged, will deliver themselves up to justice, accusing themselves

of having committed crimes which have actually taken place, and it is

only on investigation that their self-accusation proves to be false;

and yet they will describe the circumstances with the greatest

minuteness, and be thoroughly convinced of their own criminality. I

need give but a single instance.

 

In the war of the French Revolution, the Hermione frigate was

commanded by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and a severe commander. His crew

mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy’s port, having murdered

the captain and several of the officers, under circumstances of

extreme barbarity. One midshipman escaped, by whom many of the

criminals, who were afterwards taken and delivered over to justice,

one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson, the Government actuary,

who at that time held an official situation in the Admiralty,

states:—“In my own experience I have known, on separate occasions,

more than six sailors who voluntarily confessed to having struck the

first blow at Capt. Pigot. These men detailed all the horrid

circumstances of the mutiny with extreme minuteness and perfect

accuracy; nevertheless, not one of them had ever been in the ship, nor

had so much as seen Capt. Pigot in their lives. They had obtained by

tradition, from their messmates, the particulars of the story. When

long on a foreign station, hungering and thirsting for home, their

minds became enfeebled; at length they actually believed themselves

guilty of the crime over which they had so long brooded, and submitted

with a gloomy pleasure to being sent to England in irons, for

judgment. At the Admiralty we were always able to detect and establish

their innocence, in defiance of their own solemn

asseverations.”—(_London Judicial Gazette_, January, 1803.)

 

CHAPTER X.

 

MYTHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE WEREWOLF MYTH.

 

Transformation into beasts forms an integral portion of all

mythological systems. The gods of Greece were wont to change

themselves into animals in order to carry out their designs with

greater speed, security, and secrecy, than in human forms. In

Scandinavian mythology, Odin changed himself into the shape of an

eagle, Loki into that of a salmon. Eastern religions abound in stories

of transformation.

 

The line of demarcation between this and the translation of a beast’s

soul into man, or a man’s soul into a beast’s (metempsychosis) is very

narrow.

 

The doctrine of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness of

gradation between beasts and men. The belief in a soul-endowed animal

world was present among the ancients, and the laws of intelligence and

instinct were misconstrued, or were regarded as a puzzle, which no man

might solve.

 

The human soul with its consciousness seemed to be something already

perfected in a pre-existing state, and, in the myth of metempsychosis,

we trace the yearnings and gropings of the soul after the source

whence its own consciousness was derived, counting its dreams and

hallucinations as gleams of memory, recording acts which had taken

place in a former state of existence.

 

Modern philosophy has resumed the same thread of conjecture, and

thinks to see in man the perfected development of lower organisms.

 

After death the translation of the soul was supposed to continue. It

became either absorbed into the nous, into Brahma, into the deity,

or it sank in the scale of creation, and was degraded to animate a

brute. Thus the doctrine of metempsychosis was emphatically one of

rewards and punishments, for the condition of the soul after death

depended on its training during life. A savage and bloodthirsty man

was exiled, as in the case of Lycaon, into the body of a wild beast:

the soul of a timorous man entered a hare, and drunkards or gluttons

became swine.

 

The intelligence which was manifest in the beasts bore such a close

resemblance to that of man, in the childhood and youth of the world,

that it is not to be wondered at, if our forefathers failed to detect

the line of demarcation drawn between instinct and reason. And failing

to distinguish this, they naturally fell into the belief in

metempsychosis.

 

It was not merely a fancied external resemblance between the beast and

man, but it was the perception of skill, pursuits, desires,

sufferings, and griefs like his own, in the animal creation, which led

man to detect within the beast something analogous to the soul within

himself; and this, notwithstanding the points of contrast existing

between them, elicited in his mind so strong a sympathy that, without

a great stretch of imagination, he invested the beast with his own

attributes, and with the full powers of his own understanding. He

regarded it as actuated by the same motives, as subject to the same

laws of honour, as moved by the same prejudices, and the higher the

beast was in the scale, the more he regarded it as an equal. A

singular illustration of this will be found in the Finnboga Saga, c.

xi.

 

“Now we must relate about Finnbog. Afterward in the evening, when men

slept, he rose, took his weapons, and went forth, following the tracks

which led to the dairy farm. As was his wont, he stepped out briskly

along the spoor till he came to the dairy. There he found the bear

lying down, and he had slain the sheep, and he was lying on them

lapping their blood. Then said Finnbog: ‘Stand up, Brain! make ready

against me; that becomes you more than crouching over those sheep’s

carcases.’

 

“The bear sat up, looked at him, and lay down again. Finnbog said, ‘If

you think that I am too fully armed to match with you, I will do

this,’ and he took of his helmet and laid aside his shield. Then he

said, Stand up now, if you dare! ‘

 

“The bear sat up, shook his head, and then cast himself down again.

“Finnbog exclaimed, ‘I see, you want us both to be boune alike!’ so

he flung aside his sword and said, ‘Be it as you will; now stand up if

you have the heart that I believe you have, rather than one such as

was possessed by these rent sheep.’

 

“Then Bruin stood up and prepared to fight.”

 

The following story taken from the mouth of an Osage Indian by J. A.

Jones, and published in his _Traditions of the North American

Indians_, shows how thoroughly the savage mind misses the line of

demarcation between instinct and reason, and how the man of the woods

looks upon beasts as standing on an equality with himself.

 

An Osage warrior is in search of a wife: he admires the tidy and

shrewd habits of the beaver. He accordingly goes to a beaver-hut to

obtain one of that race for a bride. “In one corner of the room sat a

beaver-woman combing the heads of some little beavers, whose ears she

boxed very soundly when they would not lie still. The warrior, i. e.

the beaver-chief, whispered the Osage that she was his second wife,

and was very apt to be cross when there was work to be done, which

prevented her from going to see her neighbours. Those whose heads she

was combing were her children, he said, and she who had made them rub

their noses against each other and be friends, was his eldest

daughter. Then calling aloud, ‘Wife,’ said he, ‘what have you to eat?

The stranger is undoubtedly hungry; see, he is pale, his eye has no

fire, and his step is like that of a moose.’

 

“Without replying to him, for it was a sulky day with her, she called

aloud, and a dirty-looking beaver entered. ‘Go,’ said she, ‘and fetch

the stranger something to eat.’ With that the beaver girl passed

through a small door into another room, from which she soon returned,