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

but he had great difficulty in persuading the

prisoner to fall in with his wishes: eventually, however, he

succeeded. Next morning the cow was found in its stall frightfully

mangled, but the prisoner had not left his cell: for the watch, who

had been placed to observe him, declared that he had spent the night

in profound sleep, and that he had only at one time made a slight

motion with his head and hands and feet.

 

Wierius and Forestus quote Gulielmus Brabantinus as an authority for

the fact, that a man of high position had been so possessed by the

evil one, that often during the year he fell into a condition in which

he believed himself to be turned into a wolf, and at that time he

roved in the woods and tried to seize and devour little children, but

that at last, by God’s mercy, he recovered his senses.

 

Certainly the famous Pierre Vidal, the Don Quixote of Provençal

troubadours, must have had a touch of this madness, when, after having

fallen in love with a lady of Carcassone, named Loba, or the Wolfess,

the excess of his passion drove him over the country, howling like a

wolf, and demeaning himself more like an irrational beast than a

rational man.

 

He commemorates his lupine madness in the poem A tal Donna:—

[1]

 

[1. BRUCE WHYTE: Histoire des Langues Romaines, tom. ii. p. 248.]

 

Crowned with immortal joys I mount

The proudest emperors above,

For I am honoured with the love

Of the fair daughter of a count.

A lace from Na Raymbauda’s hand

I value more than all the land

Of Richard, with his Poïctou,

His rich Touraine and famed Anjou.

When loup-garou the rabble call me,

When vagrant shepherds hoot,

Pursue, and buffet me to boot,

It doth not for a moment gall me;

I seek not palaces or halls,

Or refuge when the winter falls;

Exposed to winds and frosts at night,

My soul is ravished with delight.

Me claims my she-wolf (_Loba_) so divine:

And justly she that claim prefers,

For, by my troth, my life is hers

More than another’s, more than mine.

 

Job Fincelius [1] relates the sad story of a farmer of Pavia, who,

as a wolf, fell upon many men in the open country and tore them to

pieces. After much trouble the maniac was caught, and he then assured

his captors that the only difference which existed between himself and

a natural wolf, was that in a true wolf the hair grew outward, whilst

in him it struck inward. In order to put this assertion to the proof,

the magistrates, themselves most certainly cruel and bloodthirsty

wolves, cut off his arms and legs; the poor wretch died of the

mutilation. This took place in 1541. The idea of the skin being

reversed is a very ancient one: versipellis occurs as a name of

reproach in Petronius, Lucilius, and Plautus, and resembles the Norse

hamrammr.

 

[1. FINCELIUS de Mirabilibus, lib. xi.]

 

Fincelius relates also that, in 1542, there was such a multitude of

werewolves about Constantinople that the Emperor, accompanied by his

guard, left the city to give them a severe correction, and slew one

hundred and fifty of them.

 

Spranger speaks of three young ladies who attacked a labourer, under

the form of cats, and were wounded by him. They were found bleeding in

their beds next morning.

 

Majolus relates that a man afflicted with lycanthropy was brought to

Pomponatius. The poor fellow had been found buried in hay, and when

people approached, he called to them to flee, as he was a were wolf,

and would rend them. The country-folk wanted to flay him, to discover

whether the hair grew inwards, but Pomponatius rescued the man and

cured him.

 

Bodin tells some werewolf stories on good authority; it is a pity

that the good authorities of Bodin were such liars, but that, by the

way. He says that the Royal Procurator-General Bourdin had assured him

that he had shot a wolf, and that the arrow had stuck in the beast’s

thigh. A few hours after, the arrow was found in the thigh of a man in

bed. In Vernon, about the year 1566, the witches and warlocks gathered

in great multitudes, under the shape of cats. Four or five men were

attacked in a lone place by a number of these beasts. The men stood

their ground with the utmost heroism, succeeded in slaying one puss,

and in wounding many others. Next day a number of wounded women were

found in the town, and they gave the judge an accurate account of all

the circumstances connected with their wounding.

 

Bodin quotes Pierre Marner, the author of a treatise on sorcerers, as

having witnessed in Savoy the transformation of men into wolves.

Nynauld [1] relates that in a village of Switzerland, near

Lucerne, a peasant was attacked by a wolf, whilst he was hewing

timber; he defended himself, and smote off a fore-leg of the beast.

The moment that the blood began to flow the wolf’s form changed, and

he recognized a woman without her arm. She was burnt alive.

 

[1. NYNAULD, De la Lycanthropie. Paris, 1615, p. 52.]

 

An evidence that beasts are transformed witches is to be found in

their having no tails. When the devil takes human form, however, he

keeps his club-foot of the Satyr, as a token by which he may be

recognized. So animals deficient in caudal appendages are to be

avoided, as they are witches in disguise. The Thingwald should

consider the case of the Manx cats in its next session.

 

Forestus, in his chapter on maladies of the brain, relates a

circumstance which came under his own observation, in the middle of

the sixteenth century, at Alcmaar in the Netherlands. A peasant there

was attacked every spring with a fit of insanity; under the influence

of this he rushed about the churchyard, ran into the church, jumped

over the benches, danced, was filled with fury, climbed up, descended,

and never remained quiet. He carried a long staff in his hand, with

which he drove away the dogs, which flew at him and wounded him, so

that his thighs were covered with scars. His face was pale, his eyes

deep sunk in their sockets. Forestus pronounces the man to be a

lycanthropist, but he does not say that the poor fellow believed

himself to be transformed into a wolf. In reference to this case,

however, he mentions that of a Spanish nobleman who believed himself

to be changed into a bear, and who wandered filled with fury among the

woods.

 

Donatus of Altomare [1] affirms that he saw a man in the streets

of Naples, surrounded by a ring of people, who in his werewolf frenzy

had dug up a corpse and was carrying off the leg upon his shoulders.

This was in the middle of the sixteenth century.

 

[1. De Medend. Human. Corp. lib. i. cap. 9.]

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

A CHAMBER OF HORRORS.

 

Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdung—‘Me Hermit of S. Bonnot—The

Gandillon Family—Thievenne Paget—The Tailor of Châlons—Roulet.

 

IN December, 1521, the Inquisitor-General for the diocese of Besançon,

Boin by name, heard a case of a sufficiently terrible nature to

produce a profound sensation of alarm in the neighbourhood. Two men

were under accusation of witchcraft and cannibalism. Their names were

Pierre Bourgot, or Peter the Great, as the people had nicknamed him

from his stature, and Michel Verdung. Peter had not been long under

trial, before he volunteered a full confession of his crimes. It

amounted to this:—

 

About nineteen years before, on the occasion of a New Year’s market at

Poligny, a terrible storm had broken over the country, and among other

mischiefs done by it, was the scattering of Pierre’s flock. “In vain,”

said the prisoner, “did I labour, in company with other peasants, to

find the sheep and bring them together. I went everywhere in search of

them.

 

“Then there rode up three black horsemen, and the last said to me:

‘Whither away? you seem to be in trouble?’

 

“I related to him my misfortune with my flock. He bade me pluck up my

spirits, and promised that his master would henceforth take charge of

and protect my flock., if I would only rely upon him. He told me, as

well, that I should find my strayed sheep very shortly, and he

promised to provide me with money. We agreed to meet again in four or

five days. My flock I soon found collected together. At my second

meeting I learned of the stranger that he was a servant of the devil.

I forswore God and our Lady and all saints and dwellers in Paradise. I

renounced Christianity, kissed his left hand, which was black and

ice-cold as that of a corpse. Then I fell on my knees and gave in my

allegiance to Satan. I remained in the service of the devil for two

years, and never entered a church before the end of mass, or at all

events till the holy water had been sprinkled, according to the desire

of my master, whose name I afterwards learned was Moyset.

 

“All anxiety about my flock was removed, for the devil had undertaken

to protect it and to keep off the wolves.

 

“This freedom from care, however, made me begin to tire of the devil’s

service, and I recommenced my attendance at church, till I was brought

back into obedience to the evil one by Michel Verdung, when I renewed

my compact on the understanding that I should be supplied with money.

 

“In a wood near Chastel Charnon we met with many others whom I did not

recognize; we danced, and each had in his or her hand a green taper

with a blue flame. Still under the delusion that I should obtain

money, Michel persuaded me to move with the greatest celerity, and in

order to do this, after I had stripped myself, he smeared me with a

salve, and I believed myself then to be transformed into a wolf. I was

at first somewhat horrified at my four wolf’s feet, and the fur with

which I was covered all at once, but I found that I could now travel

with the speed of the wind. This could not have taken place without

the help of our powerful master, who was present during our excursion,

though I did not perceive him till I had recovered my human form.

Michel did the same as myself.

 

“When we had been one or two hours in this condition of metamorphosis,

Michel smeared us again, and quick as thought we resumed our human

forms. The salve was given us by our masters; to me it was given by

Moyset, to Michel by his own master, Guillemin.”

 

Pierre declared that he felt no exhaustion after his excursions,

though the judge inquired particularly whether he felt that

prostration after his unusual exertion, of which witches usually

complained. Indeed the exhaustion consequent on a werewolf raid was

so great that the lycanthropist was often confined to his bed for

days, and could hardly move hand or foot, much in the same way as the

berserkir and ham rammir in the North were utterly prostrated after

their fit had left them.

 

In one of his werewolf runs, Pierre fell upon a boy of six or seven

years old, with his teeth, intending to rend and devour him, but the

lad screamed so loud that he was obliged to beat a retreat to his

clothes, and smear himself again, in order to recover his form and

escape detection. He and Michel, however, one day tore to pieces a

woman as she was gathering peas; and a