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The Book of Were-Wolves
by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
This full length classic werewolf reference
book is presented courtesy of MythologyWeb.
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CHAPTER V
THE WERE-WOLF IN THE MIDDLE-AGES
Olaus Magnus relates that:
"In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the inhabitants
suffer considerably from the rapacity of wolves throughout the
year in that these animals rend their cattle, which are scattered
in great numbers through the woods, whenever they stray in the
very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a serious
matter as what they endure from men turned into wolves.
"On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such
a multitude of wolves transformed from men gather together in
a certain spot, arranged among 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."
[OLAUS MAGNUS: Historia de Vent. Septent. Basil.
15, lib. xviii. cap. 45.]
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. 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. The next day the slave appeared before his mistress
blind of an eye.
Bp. Majolus [Episc. Vulturoniensis Dier. Canicul.
Helenopolis, 1612, tom. ii. colloq. 3.] and Caspar Peucer [Comment.
de Præcipuis Divin. Generibus, 1591, p. 169.] relate
the following circumstances of the Livonians:
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
wolf-skin 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 "strigas et fictos lupos."
(Serm. apud Mart. et Durand. ix. 217.)
In a dissertation by Müller 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." 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 careen over the bogs, howling mournfully,
and appeasing their hunger upon the sheep of the peasants. [PHIL.
HARTUNG: Conciones Tergeminæ, pars ii. p. 367.]
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. He was kept long in prison and closely watched, lest
he should become a were-wolf 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.
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 wolf-skin
from her head to her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged
woman. [JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG de Miracul.
in Europa, lib. ii. cap. 42.]
Marie de France says in the Lais du Bisclaveret:
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
[An epitome of this curious were-wolf tale will be found in
Ellis's Early English Metrical Romances.]
There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland
were-wolves, in the Breslauer Sammlung. 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:
"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."
[Supplement III. Curieuser und nutzbarer Anmerkungen
von Natur und Kunstgeschichten, gesammelt von Kanold. 1728.]
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, 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:
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.
[BRUCE WHYTE: Histoire des Langues Romaines, tom.
ii. p. 248.]
Job Fincelius [de Mirabilibus, lib. xi.] 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.
Fincelius relates also that, in 1542, there was such a multitude
of were-wolves 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 were-wolf 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 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.
[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 [De Medend. Human. Corp. lib.
i. cap. 9.] affirms that he saw a man in the streets of Naples,
surrounded by a ring of people, who in his were-wolf frenzy had
dug up a corpse and was carrying off the leg upon his shoulders.
This was in the middle of the sixteenth century.
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