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

Oriental sepulchres. He belonged to a bad breed,

and we are quite content to be freed from him and his kindred, the

vampire and the ghoul. Yet who knows! We may be a little too hasty in

concluding that he is extinct. He may still prowl in Abyssinian

forests, range still over Asiatic steppes, and be found howling

dismally in some padded room of a Hanwell or a Bedlam.

 

In the following pages I design to investigate the notices of

werewolves to be found in the ancient writers of classic antiquity,

those contained in the Northern Sagas, and, lastly, the numerous

details afforded by the mediæval authors. In connection with this I

shall give a sketch of modern folklore relating to Lycanthropy.

 

It will then be seen that under the veil of mythology lies a solid

reality, that a floating superstition holds in solution a positive

truth.

 

This I shall show to be an innate craving for blood implanted in

certain natures, restrained under ordinary circumstances, but breaking

forth occasionally, accompanied with hallucination, leading in most

cases to cannibalism. I shall then give instances of persons thus

afflicted, who were believed by others, and who believed themselves,

to be transformed into beasts, and who, in the paroxysms of their

madness, committed numerous murders, and devoured their victims.

 

I shall next give instances of persons suffering from the same passion

for blood, who murdered for the mere gratification of their natural

cruelty, but who were not subject to hallucinations, nor were addicted

to cannibalism.

 

I shall also give instances of persons filled with the same

propensities who murdered and ate their victims, but who were

perfectly free from hallucination.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

LYCANTHROPY AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

 

What is Lycanthropy? The change of manor woman into the form of a

wolf, either through magical means, so as to enable him or her to

gratify the taste for human flesh, or through judgment of the gods in

punishment for some great offence.

 

This is the popular definition. Truly it consists in a form of

madness, such as may be found in most asylums.

 

Among the ancients this kind of insanity went by the names of

Lycanthropy, Kuanthropy, or Boanthropy, because those afflicted with

it believed themselves to be turned into wolves, dogs, or cows. But in

the North of Europe, as we shall see, the shape of a bear, and in

 

Africa that of a hyæna, were often selected in preference. A mere

matter of taste! According to Marcellus Sidetes, of whose poem {Greek

perì lukanðrw’pou} a fragment exists, men are attacked with this

madness chiefly in the beginning of the year, and become most furious

in February; retiring for the night to lone cemeteries, and living

precisely in the manner of dogs and wolves.

 

Virgil writes in his eighth Eclogue:—

 

Has herbas, atque hæc Ponto mihi lecta venena

Ipse dedit Mris; nascuntur plurima Ponto.

His ego sæpe lupum fieri et se conducere sylvis

Mrim, sæpe animas imis excire sepulchris,

Atque satas alio, vidi traducere messes.

 

And Herodotus:—“It seems that the Neuri are sorcerers, if one is to

believe the Scythians and the Greeks established in Scythia; for each

Neurian changes himself, once in the year, into the form of a wolf,

and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes

his former shape.”—(Lib. iv. c. 105.)

 

See also Pomponius Mela (lib. ii. c. 1) “There is a fixed time for

each Neurian, at which they change, if they like, into wolves, and

back again into their former condition.”

 

But the most remarkable story among the ancients is that related by

Ovid in his “Metamorphoses,” of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, who,

entertaining Jupiter one day, set before him a hash of human flesh, to

prove his omniscience, whereupon the god transferred him into a

wolf:— [1]

 

[1. OVID. Met. i. 237; PAUSANIAS, viii. 2, § 1; TZETZE ad Lycoph.

481; ERATOSTH. Catas. i. 8.]

 

In vain he attempted to speak; from that very instant

His jaws were bespluttered with foam, and only he thirsted

For blood, as he raged amongst flocks and panted for slaughter.

His vesture was changed into hair, his limbs became crooked;

A wolf,—he retains yet large trace of his ancient expression,

Hoary he is as afore, his countenance rabid,

His eyes glitter savagely still, the picture of fury.

 

Pliny relates from Evanthes, that on the festival of Jupiter Lycæus,

one of the family of Antæus was selected by lot, and conducted to the

brink of the Arcadian lake. He then hung his clothes on a tree and

plunged into the water, whereupon he was transformed into a wolf. Nine

years after, if he had not tasted human flesh, he was at liberty to

swim back and resume his former shape, which had in the meantime

become aged, as though he had worn it for nine years.

 

Agriopas relates, that Demænetus, having assisted at an Arcadian human

sacrifice to Jupiter Lycæus, ate of the flesh, and was at once

transformed into a wolf, in which shape he prowled about for ten

years, after which he recovered his human form, and took part in the

Olympic games.

 

The following story is from Petronius:—

 

“My master had gone to Capua to sell some old clothes. I seized the

opportunity, and persuaded our guest to bear me company about five

miles out of town; for he was a soldier, and as bold as death. We set

out about cockcrow, and the moon shone bright as day, when, coming

among some monuments. my man began to converse with the stars, whilst

I jogged along singing and counting them. Presently I looked back

after him, and saw him strip and lay his clothes by the side of the

road. My heart was in my mouth in an instant, I stood like a corpse;

when, in a crack, he was turned into a wolf. Don’t think I’m joking: I

would not tell you a lie for the finest fortune in the world.

 

“But to continue: after he was turned into a wolf, he set up a howl

and made straight for the woods. At first I did not know whether I was

on my head or my heels; but at last going to take up his clothes, I

found them turned into stone. The sweat streamed from me, and I never

expected to get over it. Melissa began to wonder why I walked so late.

‘Had you come a little sooner,’ she said, ‘you might at least have

lent us a hand; for a wolf broke into the farm and has butchered all

our cattle; but though be got off, it was no laughing matter for him,

for a servant of ours ran him through with a pike. Hearing this I

could not close an eye; but as soon as it was daylight, I ran home

like a pedlar that has been eased of his pack. Coming to the place

where the clothes had been turned into stone, I saw nothing but a pool

of blood; and when I got home, I found my soldier lying in bed, like

an ox in a stall, and a surgeon dressing his neck. I saw at once that

he was a fellow who could change his skin (versipellis), and never

after could I eat bread with him, no, not if you would have killed me.

Those who would have taken a different view of the case are welcome to

their opinion; if I tell you a lie, may your genii confound me!”

 

As every one knows, Jupiter changed himself into a bull; Hecuba became

a bitch; Actæon a stag; the comrades of Ulysses were transformed into

swine; and the daughters of Prtus fled through the fields believing

themselves to be cows, and would not allow any one to come near them,

lest they should be caught and yoked.

 

S. Augustine declared, in his De Civitate Dei, that he knew an old

woman who was said to turn men into asses by her enchantments.

 

Apuleius has left us his charming romance of the Golden Ass, in

which the hero, through injudicious use of a magical salve, is

transformed into that long-eared animal.

 

It is to be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia,

and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he

traced to the following circumstance:—The natives were a pastoral

people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks

and depredations of wolves. They would naturally institute a sacrifice

to obtain deliverance from this pest, and security for their flocks.

This sacrifice consisted in the offering of a child, and it was

instituted by Lycaon. From the circumstance of the sacrifice being

human, and from the peculiarity of the name of its originator, rose

the myth.

 

But, on the other hand, the story is far too widely spread for us to

attribute it to an accidental origin, or to trace it to a local

source.

 

Half the world believes, or believed in, werewolves, and they were

supposed to haunt the Norwegian forests by those who had never

remotely been connected with Arcadia: and the superstition had

probably struck deep its roots into the Scandinavian and Teutonic

minds, ages before Lycaon existed; and we have only to glance at

Oriental literature, to see it as firmly engrafted in the imagination

of the Easterns.

 

CHAPTER III.

 

THE WEREWOLF IN THE NORTH.

 

In Norway and Iceland certain men were said to be eigi einhamir, not

of one skin, an idea which had its roots in paganism. The full form of

this strange superstition was, that men could take upon them other

bodies, and the natures of those beings whose bodies they assumed. The

second adopted shape was called by the same name as the original

shape, hamr, and the expression made use of to designate the

transition from one body to another, was at skipta hömum, or _at

hamaz_; whilst the expedition made in the second form, was the hamför.

By this transfiguration extraordinary powers were acquired; the

natural strength of the individual was doubled, or quadrupled; he

acquired the strength of the beast in whose body he travelled, in

addition to his own, and a man thus invigorated was called hamrammr.

 

The manner in which the change was effected, varied. At times, a dress

of skin was cast over the body, and at once the transformation was

complete; at others, the human body was deserted, and the soul entered

the second form, leaving the first body in a cataleptic state, to all

appearance dead. The second hamr was either borrowed or created for

the purpose. There was yet a third manner of producing this effect-it

was by incantation; but then the form of the individual remained

unaltered, though the eyes of all beholders were charmed so that they

could only perceive him under the selected form.

 

Having assumed some bestial shape, the man who is eigi einhammr is

only to be recognized by his eyes, which by no power can be changed.

He then pursues his course, follows the instincts of the beast whose

body he has taken, yet without quenching his own intelligence. He is

able to do what the body of the animal can do, and do what he, as man,

can do as well. He may fly or swim, if be is in the shape of bird or

fish; if he has taken the form of a wolf, or if he goes on a

gandreið, or wolf’s-ride, he is fall of the rage and malignity of

the creatures whose powers and passions he has assumed.

 

I will give a few instances of each of the three methods of changing

bodies mentioned above.