| |
 |
The Book of Were-Wolves
by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
This full length classic werewolf reference
book is presented courtesy of MythologyWeb.
|
CHAPTER VI
A CHAMBER OF HORRORS
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 'til 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,
'til 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 were-wolf 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 were-wolf 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 M. de Chusnée, who came to her rescue, was attacked
by them and killed.
On another occasion they fell upon a little girl of four years
old and ate her up, with the exception of one arm. Michel thought
the flesh most delicious. Another girl was strangled by them,
and her blood lapped up. Of a third they ate merely a portion
of the stomach. One evening at dusk, Pierre leaped over a garden
wall, and came upon a little maiden of nine years old, engaged
upon the weeding of the garden beds. She fell on her knees and
entreated Pierre to spare her; but he snapped the neck, and left
her a corpse, lying among her flowers. On this occasion he does
not seem to have been in his wolf's shape. He fell upon a goat
which he found in the field of Pierre Lerugen, and bit it in
the throat, but he killed it with a knife.
Michel was transformed in his clothes into a wolf, but Pierre
was obliged to strip, and the metamorphosis could not take place
with him unless he were stark naked.
He was unable to account for the manner in which the hair
vanished when he recovered his natural condition.
The statements of Pierre Bourgot were fully corroborated by
Michel Verdung.
Towards the close of the autumn of 1573, the peasants of the
neighbourhood of Dôle, in Franche Comté, were authorized
by the Court of Parliament at Dôle to hunt down the were-wolves
which infested the country. The authorization was as follows:
"According to the advertisement made to the sovereign Court
of Parliament at Dôle, that, in the territories of Espagny,
Salvange, Courchapon, and the neighbouring villages, has often
been seen and met, for some time past, a were-wolf, who, it is
said, has already seized and carried off several little children,
so that they have not been seen since, and since he has attacked
and done injury in the country to some horsemen, who kept him
of only with great difficulty and danger to their persons: the
said Court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has permitted,
and does permit, those who are abiding or dwelling in the said
places and others, notwithstanding all edicts concerning the
chase, to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks,
to chase and to pursue the said were-wolf in every place where
they may find or seize him; to tie and to kill, without incurring
any pains or penalties .... Given at the meeting of the said
Court, on the thirteenth day of the month September, 1573."
It was some time, however, before the loup-garou was caught.
In a retired spot near Amanges, half shrouded in trees, stood
a small hovel of the rudest construction; its roof was of turf,
and its walls were blotched with lichen. The garden to this cot
was run to waste, and the fence round it broken through. As the
hovel was far from any road, and was only reached by a path over
moorland and through forest, it was seldom visited, and the couple
who lived in it were not such as would make many friends. The
man, Gilles Garnier, was a sombre, ill-looking fellow, who walked
in a stooping attitude, and whose pale face, livid complexion,
and deep-set eyes under a pair of coarse and bushy brows, which
met across the forehead, were sufficient to repel any one from
seeking his acquaintance. Gilles seldom spoke, and when he did
it was in the broadest patois of his country. His long grey beard
and retiring habits procured for him the name of the Hermit of
St. Bonnot, though no one for a moment attributed to him any
extraordinary amount of sanctity.
The hermit does not seem to have been suspected for some time,
but one day, as some of the peasants of Chastenoy were returning
home from their work, through the forest, the screams of a child
and the deep baying of a wolf, attracted their notice, and on
running in the direction whence the cries sounded, they found
a little girl defending herself against a monstrous creature,
which was attacking her tooth and nail, and had already wounded
her severely in five places. As the peasants came up, the creature
fled on all fours into the gloom of the thicket; it was so dark
that it could not be identified with certainty, and whilst some
affirmed that it was a wolf, others thought they had recognized
the features of the hermit. This took place on the 8th November.
On the 14th a little boy of ten years old was missing, who
had been last seen at a short distance from the gates of Dôle.
The hermit of S. Bonnot was now seized and brought to trial
at Dôle, when the following evidence was extracted from
him and his wife, and substantiated in many particulars by witnesses.
On the last day of Michaelmas, under the form of a wolf, at
a mile from Dôle, in the farm of Gorge, a vineyard belonging
to Chastenoy, near the wood of La Serre, Gilles Gamier had attacked
a little maiden of ten or twelve years old, and had slain her
with his teeth and claws; he had then drawn her into the wood,
stripped her, gnawed the flesh from her legs and arms, and had
enjoyed his meal so much, that, inspired with conjugal affection,
he had brought some of the flesh home for his wife Apolline.
Eight days after the feast of All Saints, again in the form
of a were-wolf, he had seized another girl, near the meadow land
of La Pouppe, on the territory of Athume and Chastenoy, and was
on the point of slaying and devouring her, when three persons
came up, and he was compelled to escape. On the fourteenth day
after All Saints, also as a wolf, he had attacked a boy of ten
years old, a mile from Dôle, between Gredisans and Menoté,
and had strangled him. On that occasion he had eaten all the
flesh off his legs and arms, and had also devoured a great part
of the belly; one of the legs he had rent completely from the
trunk with his fangs.
On the Friday before the last feast of S. Bartholomew, he
had seized a boy of twelve or thirteen, under a large pear-trees
near the wood of the village Perrouze, and had drawn him into
the thicket and killed him, intending to eat him as he had eaten
the other children, but the approach of men hindered him from
fulfilling his intention. The boy was, however, quite dead, and
the men who came up declared that Gilles appeared as a man and
not as a wolf. The hermit of S. Bonnot was sentenced to be dragged
to the place of public execution, and there to be burned alive,
a sentence which was rigorously carried out.
In this instance the poor maniac fully believed that actual
transformation into a wolf took place; he was apparently perfectly
reasonable on other points and quite conscious of the acts he
had committed.
We come now to a more remarkable circumstance, the affliction
of a whole family with the same form of insanity. Our information
is derived from Boguet's Discours de Sorciers, 1603-1610.
Pernette Gandillon was a poor girl in the Jura, who in 1598
ran about the country on all fours, in the belief that she was
a wolf. One day as she was ranging the country in a fit of lycanthropic
madness, she came upon two children who were plucking wild strawberries.
Filled with a sudden passion for blood, she flew at the little
girl and would have brought her down, had not her brother, a
lad of four years old, defended her lustily with a knife. Pernette,
however, wrenched the weapon from his tiny hand, flung him down
and gashed his throat, so that he died of the wound. Pernette
was tom to pieces by the people in their rage and horror.
Directly after, Pierre, the brother of Pernette Gandillon,
was accused of witchcraft. He was charged with having led children
to the sabbath, having made hail, and having run about the country
in the form of a wolf. The transformation was effected by means
of a salve which he had received from the devil. He had on one
occasion assumed the form of a hare, but usually he appeared
as a wolf, and his skin became covered with shaggy grey hair.
He readily acknowledged that the charges brought against him
were well founded, and he allowed that he had, during the period
of his transformation, fallen on, and devoured, both beasts and
human beings. When he desired to recover his true form, he rolled
himself in the dewy grass. His son Georges asserted that he had
also been anointed with the salve, and had gone to the sabbath
in the shape of a wolf. According to his own testimony, he had
fallen upon two goats in one of his expeditions.
One Maundy-Thursday night he had lain for three hours in his
bed in a cataleptic state, and at the end of that time had sprung
out of bed. During this period he had been in the form of a wolf
to the witches' sabbath.
His sister Antoinnette confessed that she had made hail, and
that she had sold herself to the devil, who had appeared to her
in the shape of a black he-goat. She had been to the sabbath
on several occasions.
Pierre and Georges in prison behaved as maniacs, running on
all fours about their cells and howling dismally. Their faces,
arms, and legs were frightfully scarred with the wounds they
had received from dogs when they had been on their raids. Boguet
accounts for the transformation not taking place, by the fact
of their not having the necessary salves by them.
All three, Pierre, Georges, and Antoinnette, were hung and
burned.
Thievenne Paget, who was a witch of the most unmistakable
character, was also frequently changed into a she-wolf, according
to her own confession, in which state she had often accompanied
the devil over hill and dale, slaying cattle, and falling on
and devouring children. The same thing may be said of Clauda
Isan Prost, a lame woman, Clauda Isan Guillaume, and Isan Roquet,
who owned to the murder of five children.
On the 14th of December, in the same year as the execution
of the Gandillon family (1598), a tailor of Châlons was
sentenced to the flames by the Parliament of Paris for lycanthropy.
This wretched man had decoyed children into his shop, or attacked
them in the gloaming when they strayed in the woods, had torn
them with his teeth, and killed them, after which he seems calmly
to have dressed their flesh as ordinary meat, and to have eaten
it with great relish. The number of little innocents whom he
destroyed is unknown. A whole cask full of bones was discovered
in his house. The man was perfectly hardened, and the details
of his trial were so full of horrors and abominations of all
kinds, that the judges ordered the documents to be burned.
Again in 1598, a year memorable in the annals of lycanthropy,
a trial took place in Angers, the details of which are very terrible.
In a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some countrymen
came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated
and bespattered with blood. As the men approached two wolves,
which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket.
The men gave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks
till they lost them; when suddenly crouching among the bushes,
his teeth chattering with fear, they found a man half naked,
with long hair and beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His
nails were long as claws, and were clotted with fresh gore, and
shreds of human flesh.
This is one of the most puzzling and peculiar cases which
come under our notice.
The wretched man, whose name was Roulet, of his own accord
stated that he had fallen upon the lad and had killed him by
smothering him, and that he had been prevented from devouring
the body completely by the arrival of men on the spot.
Roulet proved on investigation to be a beggar from house to
house, in the most abject state of poverty. His companions in
mendicity were his brother John and his cousin Julien. He had
been given lodging out of charity in a neighbouring village,
but before his apprehension he had been absent for eight days.
Before the judges, Roulet acknowledged that he was able to
transform himself into a wolf by means of a salve which his parents
had given him. When questioned about the two wolves which had
been seen leaving the corpse, he said that he knew perfectly
well who they were, for they were his companions, Jean and Julian,
who possessed the same secret as himself. He was shown the clothes
he had worn on the day of his seizure, and he recognized them
immediately; he described the boy whom he had murdered, gave
the date correctly, indicated the precise spot where the deed
had been done, and recognized the father of the boy as the man
who had first run up when the screams of the lad had been heard.
In prison, Roulet behaved like an idiot. When seized, his belly
was distended and hard; in prison he drank one evening a whole
pailful of water, and from that moment refused to eat or drink.
His parents, on inquiry, proved to be respectable and pious
people, and they proved that his brother John and his cousin
Julien had been engaged at a distance on the day of Roulet's
apprehension.
"What is your name, and what your estate?" asked
the judge, Pierre Hérault.
"My name is Jacques Roulet, my age thirty-five; I am
poor, and a mendicant."
"What are you accused of having done?"
"Of being a thief -- of having offended God. My parents
gave me an ointment; I do not know its composition."
"When rubbed with this ointment do you become a wolf?"
"No; but for all that, I killed and ate the child Cornier:
I was a wolf."
"Were you dressed as a wolf?"
"I was dressed as I am now. I had my hands and my face
bloody, because I had been eating the flesh of the said child."
"Do your hands and feet become paws of a wolf?"
"Yes, they do."
"Does your head become like that of a wolf -- your mouth
become larger?"
"I do not know how my head was at the time; I used my
teeth; my head was as it is to-day. I have wounded and eaten
many other little children; I have also been to the sabbath."
The lieutenant criminel sentenced Roulet to death.
He, however, appealed to the Parliament at Paris; and this decided
that as there was more folly in the poor idiot than malice and
witchcraft, his sentence of death should be commuted to two years'
imprisonment in a madhouse, that he might be instructed in the
knowledge of God, whom he had forgotten in his utter poverty.
Related products:
The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould.
Buy it new at Amazon.com or search for used copies at Abebooks
Werewolf
masks, makeup kits and prosthetics for Halloween and
other uses at Clownin'
Around.
Wolf and werewolf art prints
and posters in affiliation with AllPosters.com.
|
