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

themselves, and then spread to rage with wondrous

ferocity against human beings, and those animals which are not wild,

that the natives of these regions suffer more detriment from these,

than they do from true and natural wolves; for when a human habitation

has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with

atrocity, striving to break in the doors, and in the event of their

doing so, they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is

found within. They burst into the beer-cellars, and there they empty

the tuns of beer or mead, and pile up the empty casks one above

another in the middle of the cellar, thus showing their difference

from natural and genuine wolves… . Between Lithuania, Livonia, and

Courland are the walls of a certain old ruined castle. At this spot

congregate thousands, on a fixed occasion, and try their agility in

jumping. Those who are unable to bound over the wall, as; is often the

case with the fattest, are fallen upon with scourges by the captains

and slain.” [1] Olaus relates also in c. xlvii. the story of a

certain nobleman who was travelling through a large forest with some

peasants in his retinue who dabbled in the black art. They found no

house where they could lodge for the night, and were well-nigh

famished. Then one of the peasants offered, if all the rest would hold

their tongues as to what he should do, that he would bring them a lamb

from a distant flock.

 

[1. OLAUS MAGNUS: Historia de Vent. Septent. Basil. 15, lib. xviii.

cap. 45.]

 

He thereupon retired into the depths of the forest and changed his

form into that of a wolf, fell upon the flock, and brought a lamb to

his companions in his mouth. They received it with gratitude. Then he

retired once more into the thicket, and transformed himself back again

into his human shape.

 

The wife of a nobleman in Livonia expressed her doubts to one of her

slaves whether it were possible for man or woman thus to change shape.

The servant at once volunteered to give her evidence of the

possibility. He left the room, and in another moment a wolf was

observed running over the country. The dogs followed him, and

notwithstanding his resistance, tore out one of his eyes. Next day the

slave appeared before his mistress blind of an eye.

 

Bp. Majolus [1] and Caspar Peucer [2] relate the following

circumstances of the Livonians:—

 

[1. MAJOLI Episc. Vulturoniensis Dier. Canicul. Helenopolis, 1612,

tom. ii. colloq. 3.]

 

[2. CASPAR PEUCER: Comment. de Præcipuis Divin. Generibus, 1591, p.

169.]

 

At Christmas a boy lame of a leg goes round the country summoning the

devil’s followers, who are countless, to a general conclave. Whoever

remains behind, or goes reluctantly, is scourged by another with an

iron whip till the blood flows, and his traces are left in blood. The

human form vanishes, and the whole multitude become wolves. Many

thousands assemble. Foremost goes the leader armed with an iron whip,

and the troop follow, “firmly convinced in their imaginations that

they are transformed into wolves.” They fall upon herds of cattle and

flocks of sheep, but they have no power to slay men. When they come to

a river, the leader smites the water with his scourge, and it divides,

leaving a dry path through the midst, by which the pack may go. The

transformation lasts during twelve days, at the expiration of which

period the wolfskin vanishes, and the human form reappears. This

superstition was expressly forbidden by the church. “Credidisti, quod

quidam credere solent, ut illæ quæ a vulgo Parcæ vocantur, ipsæ, vel

sint vel possint hoc facere quod creduntur, id est, dum aliquis homo

nascitur, et tunc valeant illum designare ad hoc quod velint, ut

quandocunque homo ille voluerit, in lupum transformari possit, quod

vulgaris stultitia, werwolf vocat, aut in aliam aliquam

figuram?”—Ap. Burchard. (d. 1024). In like manner did S. Boniface

preach against those who believed superstitiously in it strigas et

fictos lupos.” (_Serm_. apud Mart. et Durand. ix. 217.)

 

In a dissertation by Müller [1] we learn, on the authority of

Cluverius and Dannhaverus (_Acad. Homilet._ p. ii.), that a certain

Albertus Pericofcius in Muscovy was wont to tyrannize over and harass

his subjects in the most unscrupulous manner. One night when he was

absent from home, his whole herd of cattle, acquired by extortion,

perished. On his return he was informed of his loss, and the wicked

man broke out into the most horrible blasphemies, exclaiming, “Let him

who has slain, eat; if God chooses, let him devour me as well.”

 

[1. De {Greek Lukanðrwpía}. Lipsiæ, 1736.]

 

As he spoke, drops of blood fell to earth, and the nobleman,

transformed into a wild dog, rushed upon his dead cattle, tore and

mangled the carcasses and began to devour them; possibly he may be

devouring them still (_ac forsan hodie que pascitur_). His wife, then

near her confinement, died of fear. Of these circumstances there were

not only ear but also eye witnesses. (_Non ab auritis tantum, sed et

ocidatis accepi, quod narro_). Similarly it is related of a nobleman

in the neighbourhood of Prague, that he robbed his subjects of their

goods and reduced them to penury through his exactions. He took the

last cow from a poor widow with five children, but as a judgment, all

his own cattle died. He then broke into fearful oaths, and God

transformed him into a dog: his human head, however, remained.

 

S. Patrick is said to have changed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a

wolf, and S. Natalis, the abbot, to have pronounced anathema upon an

illustrious family in Ireland; in consequence of which, every male and

female take the form of wolves for seven years and live in the forests

and career over the bogs, howling mournfully, and appeasing their

hunger upon the sheep of the peasants. [1] A duke of Prussia,

according to Majolus, had a countryman brought for sentence before

him, because he had devoured his neighbour’s cattle. The fellow was an

ill-favoured, deformed man, with great wounds in his face, which he

had received from dogs’ bites whilst he had been in his wolf’s form.

It was believed that he changed shape twice in the year, at Christmas

and at Midsummer. He was said to exhibit much uneasiness and

discomfort when the wolf-hair began to break out and his bodily shape

to change.

 

[1. PHIL. HARTUNG: Conciones Tergeminæ, pars ii. p. 367.]

 

He was kept long in prison and closely watched, lest he should become

a werewolf during his confinement and attempt to escape, but nothing

remarkable took place. If this is the same individual as that

mentioned by Olaus Magnus, as there seems to be a probability, the

poor fellow was burned alive.

 

John of Nüremberg relates the following curious story. [1] A

priest was once travelling in a strange country, and lost his way in a

forest. Seeing a fire, he made towards it, and beheld a wolf seated

over it. The wolf addressed him in human-voice, and bade him not fear,

as “he was of the Ossyrian race, of which a man and a woman were

doomed to spend a certain number of years in wolf’s form. Only after

seven years might they return home and resume their former shapes, if

they were still alive.” He begged the priest to visit and console his

sick wife, and to give her the last sacraments. This the priest

consented to do, after some hesitation, and only when convinced of the

beasts being human beings, by observing that the wolf used his front

paws as hands, and when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolfskin

from her head to her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.

 

[1. JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG de Miracul. in Europa, lib. ii. cap. 42.]

 

Marie de France says in the Lais du Bisclaveret:— [1]

 

Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan

Garwall Papelent li Norman.

Jadis le poet-hum oir

Et souvent suleit avenir,

Humes pluseirs Garwall deviendrent

E es boscages meisun tindrent

 

[1. An epitome of this curious werewolf tale will be found in Ellis’s

Early English Metrical Romances.]

 

There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland werewolves,

in the Breslauer Sammlung. [2] The author says,—“There are too

many examples derived not merely from hearsay, but received on

indisputable evidence, for us to dispute the fact, that Satan—if we

do not deny that such a being exists, and that he has his work in the

children of darkness—holds the Lycanthropists in his net in three

ways:—

 

[2. Supplement III. Curieuser und nutzbarer Anmerkungen von Natur

und Kunstgeschichten, gesammelt von Kanold. 1728.]

 

“1. They execute as wolves certain acts, such as seizing a sheep, or

destroying cattle, &c., not changed into wolves, which no scientific

man in Courland believes, but in their human frames, and with their

human limbs, yet in such a state of phantasy and hallucination, that

they believe themselves transformed into wolves, and are regarded as

such by others suffering under similar hallucination, and in this

manner run these people in packs as wolves, though not true wolves.

 

“2. They imagine, in deep sleep or dream, that they injure the cattle,

and this without leaving their conch; but it is their master who does,

in their stead, what their fancy points out, or suggests to him.

 

“3. The evil one drives natural wolves to do some act, and then

pictures it so well to the sleeper, immovable in his place, both in

dreams and at awaking, that he believes the act to have been committed

by himself.”

 

Rhanæus, under these heads, relates three stories, which he believes

be has on good authority. The first is of a gentleman starting on a

journey, who came upon a wolf engaged in the act of seizing a sheep in

his own flock; he fired at it, and wounded it, so that it fled howling

to the thicket. When the gentleman returned from his expedition he

found the whole neighbourhood impressed with the belief that he had,

on a given day and hour, shot at one of his tenants, a publican,

Mickel. On inquiry, the man’s Wife, called Lebba, related the

following circumstances, which were fully corroborated by numerous

witnesses:—When her husband had sown his rye he had consulted with

his wife how he was to get some meat, so as to have a good feast. The

woman urged him on no account to steal from his landlord’s flock,

because it was guarded by fierce dogs. He, however, rejected her

advice, and Mickel fell upon his landlord’s sheep, but he had suffered

and had come limping home, and in his rage at the ill success of his

attempt, had fallen upon his own horse and had bitten its throat

completely through. This took place in the year 1684.

 

In 1684, a man was about to fire upon a pack of wolves, when he heard

from among the troop a voice exclaiming—“Gossip! Gossip! don’t fire.

No good will come of it.”

 

The third story is as follows:—A lycanthropist was brought before a

judge and accused of witchcraft, but as nothing could be proved

against him, the judge ordered one of his peasants to visit the man in

his prison, and to worm the truth out of him, and to persuade the

prisoner to assist him in revenging himself upon another peasant who

had injured him; and this was to be effected by destroying one of the

man’s cows; but the peasant was to urge the prisoner to do it

secretly, and, if possible, in the disguise of a wolf. The fellow

undertook the task,