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

and

that it is quite possible for a human being to be possessed of a

depraved appetite for rending corpses, is proved by an extraordinary

case brought before a court-martial in Paris, so late as July 10th,

1849.

 

The details are given with fulness in the _Annales

Medico-psychologiques_ for that month and year. They are too revolting

for reproduction. I will, however, give an outline of this remarkable

case.

 

In the autumn of 1848, several of the cemeteries in the neighbourhood

of Paris were found to have been entered during the night, and graves

to have been rifled. The deeds were not those of medical students, for

the bodies had not been carried of, but were found lying about the

tombs in fragments. It was at first supposed that the perpetration of

these outrages must have been a wild beast, but footprints in the soft

earth left no doubt that it was a man. Close watch was kept at Père la

Chaise; but after a few corpses had been mangled there, the outrages

ceased.

 

In the winter, another cemetery was ravaged, and it was not till March

in 1849, that a spring gun which had been set in the cemetery of S.

Parnasse, went off during the night, and warned the guardians of the

place that the mysterious visitor had fallen into their trap. They

rushed to the spot, only to see a dark figure in a military mantle

leap the wall, and disappear in the gloom. Marks of blood, however,

gave evidence that he had been hit by the gun when it had discharged.

At the same time, a fragment of blue cloth, torn from the mantle, was

obtained, and afforded a clue towards the identification of the

ravisher of the tombs.

 

On the following day, the police went from barrack to barrack,

inquiring whether officer or man were suffering from a gun-shot wound.

By this means they discovered the person. He was a junior officer in

the 1st Infantry regiment, of the name of Bertrand.

 

He was taken to the hospital to be cured of his wound, and on his

recovery, he was tried by court-martial.

 

His history was this.

 

He had been educated in the theological seminary of Langres, till, at

the age of twenty, he entered the army. He was a young man of retiring

habits, frank and cheerful to his comrades, so as to be greatly

beloved by them, of feminine delicacy and refinement, and subject to

fits of depression and melancholy. In February, 1847, as he was

walking with a friend in the country, he came to a churchyard, the

gate of which stood open. The day before a woman had been buried, but

the sexton had not completed filling in the grave, and he had been

engaged upon it on the present occasion, when a storm of rain had

driven him to shelter. Bertrand noticed the spade and pick lying

beside the grave, and—to use his own words:—“A cette vue des idées

noires me vinrent, j’eus comme un violent mal de tête, mon cur battait

avec force, je no me possédais plus.” He managed by some excuse to get

rid of his companion, and then returning to the churchyard, he caught

up a spade and began to dig into the grave. “Soon I dragged the corpse

out of the earth, and I began to hash it with the spade, without well

knowing what I was about. A labourer saw me, and I laid myself flat on

the ground till he was out of sight, and then I cast the body back

into the grave. I then went away, bathed in a cold sweat, to a little

grove, where I reposed for several hours, notwithstanding the cold

rain which fell, in a condition of complete exhaustion. When I rose,

my limbs were as if broken, and my head weak. The same prostration and

sensation followed each attack.

 

Two days after, I returned to the cemetery, and opened the grave with

my hands. My hands bled, but I did not feel the pain; I tore the

corpse to shreds, and flung it back into the pit.”

 

He had no further attack for four months, till his regiment came to

Paris. As he was one day walking in the gloomy, shadowy, alleys of

Père la Chaise, the same feeling came over him like a flood. In the

night he climbed the wall, and dug up a little girl of seven years

old. He tore her in half. A few days later, he opened the grave of a

woman who had died in childbirth, and had lain in the grave for

thirteen days. On the 16th November, he dug up an old woman of fifty,

and, ripping her to pieces, rolled among the fragments. He did the

same to another corpse on the 12th December. These are only a few of

the numerous cases of violation of tombs to which he owned. It was on

the night of the 15th March that the spring-gun shot him.

 

Bertrand declared at his trial, that whilst he was in the hospital he

had not felt any desire to renew his attempts, and that he considered

himself cured of his horrible propensities, for he had seen men dying

in the beds around him, and now: “Je suis guéri, car aujourd’hui j’ai

peur d’un mort.”

 

The fits of exhaustion which followed his accesses are very

remarkable, as they precisely resemble those which followed the

berserkir rages of the Northmen, and the expeditions of the

Lycanthropists.

 

The case of M. Bertrand is indubitably most singular and anomalous; it

scarcely bears the character of insanity, but seems to point rather to

a species of diabolical possession. At first the accesses chiefly

followed upon his drinking wine, but after a while they came upon him

without exciting cause. The manner in which he mutilated the dead was

different. Some he chopped with the spade, others he tore and ripped

with his teeth and nails. Sometimes he tore the mouth open and rent

the face back to the ears, he opened the stomachs, and pulled off the

limbs. Although he dug up the bodies of several men he felt no

inclination to mutilate them, whereas he delighted in rending female

corpses. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.

 

CHAPTER XVI.

 

A SERMON ON WEREWOLVES.

 

THE following curious specimen of a late mediæval sermon is taken from

the old German edition of the discourses of Dr. Johann Geiler von

Keysersperg, a famous preacher in Strasbourg. The volume is entitled:

“Die Emeis. Dis ist das Büch von der Omeissen, und durch Herr der

Künnig ich diente gern. Und sagt von Eigenschafft der Omeissen, und

gibt underweisung von der Unholden oder Hexen, und von Gespenst, der

Geist, und von dem Wütenden Heer Wunderbarlich.”

 

This strange series of sermons was preached at Strasbourg in the year

1508, and was taken down and written out by a barefooted friar, Johann

Pauli, and by him published in 1517. The doctor died on Mid-Lent

Sunday, 1510. There is a Latin edition of his sermons, but whether of

the same series or not I cannot tell, as I have been unable to obtain

a sight of the volume. The German edition is illustrated with bold and

clever woodcuts. Among other, there are representations of the

Witches’ Sabbath, the Wild Huntsman, and a Werewolf attacking a Man.

 

The sermon was preached on the third Sunday in Lent. No text is given,

but there is a general reference to the gospel for the day. This is

the discourse:— [1]

 

[1. Headed thus:—“Am drittë sontag à fastê, occuli, predigt dé doctor

vô dê Werwölffenn.”]

 

“What shall we say about werewolves? for there are werewolves which

run about the villages devouring men and children. As men say about

them, they run about full gallop, injuring men, and are called

ber-wölff, or wer-wölff. Do you ask me if I know aught about them? I

answer, Yes. They are apparently wolves which cat men and children,

and that happens on seven accounts:—

 

1. Esuriem Hunger.

2. Rabiem Savageness.

3. Senectutem Old age.

4. Experientiam Experience.

5. Insaniem Madness.

6. Diabolum The Devil.

7. Deum God.

 

The first happens through hunger; when the wolves find nothing to eat

in the woods, they must come to people and eat men when hunger drives

them to it. You see well, when it is very cold, that the stags come in

search of food up to the villages, and the birds actually into the

dining-room in search of victuals.

 

“Under the second head, wolves eat children through their innate

savageness, because they are savage, and that is (propter locum coitum

ferum). Their savageness arises first from their condition. Wolves

which live in cold places are smaller on that account, and more savage

than other wolves. Secondly, their savageness depends on the season;

they are more savage about Candlemas than at any other time of the

year, and men must be more on their guard against them then than at

other times. It is a proverb, ‘He who seeks a wolf at Candlemas, a

peasant on Shrove Tuesday, and a parson in Lent, is a man of pluck.’ .

. . Thirdly, their savageness depends on their having young. When the

wolves have young, they are more savage than when they have not. You

see it so in all beasts. A wild duck, when it has young poults, you

see what an uproar it makes. A cat fights for its young kittens; the

wolves do ditto.

 

“Under the third head, the wolves do injury on account of their age.

When a wolf is old, it is weak and feeble in its leas, so it can’t ran

fast enough to catch stags, and therefore it rends a man, whom it can

catch easier than a wild animal. It also tears children and men easier

than wild animals, because of its teeth, for its teeth break off when

it is very old; you see it well in old women: how the last teeth

wobble, and they have scarcely a tooth left in their heads, and they

open their mouths for men to feed them with mash and stewed

substances.

 

“Under the fourth head, the injury the werewolves do arises from

experience. It is said that human flesh is far sweeter than other

flesh; so when a wolf has once tasted human flesh, he desires to taste

it again. So he acts like old topers, who, when they know the best

wine, will not be put off with inferior quality.

 

“Under the fifth head, the injury arises from ignorance. A dog when it

is mad is also inconsiderate, and it bites any man; it does not

recognize its own lord: and what is a wolf but a wild dog which is mad

and inconsiderate, so that it regards no man.

 

“Under the sixth head, the injury comes of the Devil, who transforms

himself, and takes on him the form of a wolf So writes Vincentius in

his Speculum Historiale. And he has taken it from Valerius Maximus

in the Punic war. When the Romans fought against the men of Africa,

when the captain lay asleep, there came a wolf and drew his sword, and

carried it off. That was the Devil in a, wolf’s form. The like writes

William of Paris,—that a wolf will kill and devour children, and do

the greatest mischief. There was a man who had the phantasy that he

himself was a wolf. And afterwards he was found lying in the wood, and

he was dead out of sheer hunger.

 

“Under the seventh head, the injury comes of God’s ordinance. For God

will sometimes punish certain lands and villages with wolves. So we

read of Elisha,—that when Elisha wanted to go up a mountain out