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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 IX
NATURAL CAUSES OF LYCANTHROPY
What I have related from the chronicles of antiquity, or from
the traditional lore of the people, is veiled under the form
of myth or legend; and it is only from Scandinavian descriptions
of those afflicted with the wolf-madness, and from the trials
of those charged with the crime of lycanthropy in the later Middle
Ages, that we can arrive at the truth respecting that form of
madness which was invested by the superstitious with so much
mystery.
It was not till the close of the Middle Ages that lycanthropy
was recognized as a disease; but it is one which has so much
that is ghastly and revolting in its form, and it is so remote
from all our ordinary experience, that it is not surprising that
the casual observer should leave the consideration of it, as
a subject isolated and perplexing, and be disposed to regard
as a myth that which the feared investigation might prove a reality.
In this chapter I purpose briefly examining the conditions
under which men have been regarded as werewolves.
Startling though the assertion may be, it is a matter of fact,
that man, naturally, in common with other carnivora, is actuated
by an impulse to kill, and by a love of destroying life.
It is positively true that there are many to whom the sight
of suffering causes genuine pleasure, and in whom the passion
to kill or torture is as strong as any other passion. Witness
the number of boys who assemble around a sheep or pig when it
is about to be killed, and who watch the struggle of the dying
brute with hearts beating fast with pleasure, and eyes sparkling
with delight. Often have I seen an eager crowd of children assembled
around the slaughterhouses of French towns, absorbed in the expiring
agonies of the sheep and cattle, and hushed into silence as they
watched the flow of blood.
The propensity, however, exists in different degrees. In some
it is manifest simply as indifference to suffering, in others
it appears as simple pleasure in seeing killed, and in others
again it is dominant as an irresistible desire to torture and
destroy.
This propensity is widely diffused; it exists in children
and adults, in the gross-minded and the refined., in the well-educated
and the ignorant, in those who have never had the opportunity
of gratifying it, and those who gratify it habitually, in spite
of morality, religion, laws, so that it can only depend on constitutional
causes.
The sportsman and the fisherman follow a natural instinct
to destroy, when they make wax on bird, beast, and fish: the
pretence that the spoil is sought for the table cannot be made
with justice, as the sportsman cares little for the game he has
obtained, when once it is consigned to his pouch. The motive
for his eager pursuit of bird or beast must be sought elsewhere;
it will be found in the natural craving to extinguish life, which
exists in his soul. Why does a child impulsively strike at a
butterfly as it flits past him? He cares nothing for the insect
when once it is beaten down at his feet, unless it be quivering
in its agony, when he will watch it with interest. The child
strikes at the fluttering creature because it has life
in it, and he has an instinct within him impelling him to destroy
life wherever he finds it.
Parents and nurses know well that children by nature are cruel,
and that humanity has to be acquired by education. A child will
gloat over the sufferings of a wounded animal till his mother
bids him "put it out of its misery." An unsophisticated
child would not dream of terminating the poor creature's agonies
abruptly, any more than he would swallow whole a bon-bon till
he had well sucked it. Inherent cruelty may be obscured by after
impressions, or may be kept under moral restraint; the person
who is constitutionally a Nero, may scarcely know his own nature,
till by some accident the master passion becomes dominant, and
sweeps all before it. A relaxation of the moral check, a shock
to the controlling intellect, an abnormal condition of body,
are sufficient to allow the passion to assert itself.
As I have already observed, this passion exists in different
persons in different degrees.
In some it is exhibited in simple want of feeling for other
people's sufferings. This temperament may lead to crime, for
the individual who is regardless of pain in another, will be
ready to destroy that other, if it suit his own purposes. Such
an one was the pauper Dumollard, who was the murderer of at least
six poor girls, and who attempted to kill several others. He
seems not to have felt much gratification in murdering them,
but to have been so utterly indifferent to their sufferings,
that he killed them solely for the sake of their clothes, which
were of the poorest description. He was sentenced to the guillotine,
and executed in 1862. [A full account of this man's trial is
given by one who was present, in All the Year Round,
No. 162.]
In others, the passion for blood is developed alongside with
indifference to suffering.
Thus Andreas Bichel enticed young women into his house, under
the pretence that he was possessed of a magic mirror, in which
he would show them their future husbands; when he had them in
his power he bound their hands behind their backs, and stunned
them with a blow. He then stabbed them and despoiled them of
their clothes, for the sake of which he committed the murders;
but as he killed the young women the passion of cruelty took
possession of him, and he hacked the poor girls to pieces whilst
they were still alive, in his anxiety to examine their insides.
Catherine Seidel he opened with a hammer and a wedge, from her
breast downwards, whilst still breathing. "I may say,"
he remarked at his trial, "that during the operation I was
so eager, that I trembled all over, and I longed to rive off
a piece and eat it."
Andreas Bichel was executed in 1809. [The case of Andreas
Bichel is given in Lady Duff Gordon's Remarkable Criminal
Trials.]
Again, a third class of persons are cruel and bloodthirsty,
because in them bloodthirstiness is a raging insatiable passion.
In a civilized country those possessed by this passion are forced
to control it through fear of the consequences, or to gratify
it upon the brute creation. But in earlier days, when feudal
lords were supreme in their domains, there have been frightful
instances of their excesses, and the extent to which some of
the Roman emperors indulged their passion for blood is matter
of history.
Gall gives several authentic instances of bloodthirstiness.
[Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, tom. iv.] A Dutch priest
had such a desire to kill and to see killed, that he became chaplain
to a regiment that he might have the satisfaction of seeing deaths
occurring wholesale in engagements. The same man kept a large
collection of various kinds of domestic animals, that he might
be able to torture their young. He killed the animals for his
kitchen, and was acquainted with all the hangmen in the country,
who sent him notice of executions, and he would walk for days
that he might have the gratification of seeing a man executed.
In the field of battle the passion is variously developed;
some feel positive delight in slaying, others are indifferent.
An old soldier, who had been in Waterloo, informed me that to
his mind there was no pleasure equal to running a man through
the body, and that he could lie awake at night musing on the
pleasurable sensations afforded him by that act.
Highwaymen are frequently not content with robbery, but manifest
a bloody inclination to torment and kill. John Rosbeck, for instance,
is well known to have invented and exercised the most atrocious
cruelties, merely that he might witness the sufferings of his
victims, who were especially women and children. Neither fear
nor torture could break him of the dreadful passion till he was
executed.
Gall tells of a violin-player, who, being arrested, confessed
to thirty-four murders, all of which he had committed, not from
enmity or intent to rob, but solely because it afforded him an
intense pleasure to kill.
Spurzheim tells of a priest at Strasbourg, who, though rich,
and uninfluenced by envy or revenge, from exactly the same motive,
killed three persons. [Doctrine of the Mind, p. 158.]
Gall relates the case of a brother of the Duke of Bourbon,
Condé, Count of Charlois, who, from infancy, had an inveterate
pleasure in torturing animals: growing older, he lived to shed
the blood of human beings, and to exercise various kinds of cruelty.
He also murdered many from no other motive, and shot at slaters
for the pleasure of seeing them fall from the roofs of houses.
Louis XI. of France caused the death of 4,000 people during
his reign; he used to watch their executions from a neighbouring
lattice. He had gibbets placed outside his own palace, and himself
conducted the executions.
It must not be supposed that cruelty exists merely in the
coarse and rude; it is quite as frequently observed in the refined
and educated. Among the former it is manifest chiefly in insensibility
to the sufferings of others; in the latter it appears as a passion,
the indulgence of which causes intense pleasure.
Those bloody tyrants, Nero and Caligula, Alexander Borgia,
and Robespierre, whose highest enjoyment consisted in witnessing
the agonies of their fellow-men, were full of delicate sensibilities
and great refinement of taste and manner.
I have seen an accomplished young woman of considerable refinement
and of a highly strung nervous temperament, string flies with
her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently their
flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident.
it is aroused, and then it will break forth in a devouring flame.
It is the same with the passion for blood as with the passions
of love and hate; we have no conception of the violence with
which they can rage till circumstances occur which call them
into action. Love or hate will be dominant in a breast which
has been in serenity, till suddenly the spark falls, passion
blazes forth, and the serenity of the quiet breast is shattered
for ever. A word, a glance, a touch, are sufficient to fire the
magazine of passion in the heart, and to desolate for ever an
existence. It is the same with bloodthirstiness. It may lurk
in the deeps of some heart very dear to us. It may smoulder in
the bosom which is most cherished by us, and we may be perfectly
unconscious of its existence there. Perhaps circumstances will
not cause its development; perhaps moral principle may have bound
it down with fetters it can never break.
Michael Wagener relates a horrible story which occurred in
Hungary, suppressing the name of the person, as it was that of
a still powerful family in the country. It illustrates what I
have been saying, and shows how trifling a matter may develop
the passion in its most hideous proportions.
"Elizabeth ------ was wont to dress well in order to
please her husband, and she spent half the day over her toilet.
On one occasion, a lady's-maid saw something wrong in her head-dress,
and as a recompence for observing it, received such a severe
box on the ears that the blood gushed from her nose, and spirted
on to her mistress's face. When the blood drops were washed off
her face, her skin appeared much more beautiful--whiter and more
transparent on the spots where the blood had been.
"Elizabeth formed the resolution to bathe her face and
her whole body in human blood so as to enhance her beauty. Two
old women and a certain Fitzko assisted her in her undertaking.
This monster used to kill the luckless victim, and the old women
caught the blood, in which Elizabeth was wont to bathe at the
hour of four in the morning. After the bath she appeared more
beautiful than before.
"She continued this habit after the death of her husband
(1604) in the hopes of gaining new suitors. The unhappy girls
who were allured to the castle, under the plea that they were
to be taken into service there, were locked up in a cellar. Here
they were beaten till their bodies were swollen. Elizabeth not
unfrequently tortured the victims herself; often she changed
their clothes which dripped with blood, and then renewed her
cruelties. The swollen bodies were then cut up with razors.
"Occasionally she had the girls burned, and then cut
up, but the great majority were beaten to death.
"At last her cruelty became so great, that she would
stick needles into those who sat with her in a carriage, especially
if they were of her own sex. One of her servant-girls she stripped
naked, smeared her with honey, and so drove her out of the house.
"When she was ill, and could not indulge her cruelty,
she bit a person who came near her sick bed as though she were
a wild beast.
"She caused, in all, the death of 650 girls, some in
Tscheita, on the neutral ground, where she had a cellar constructed
for the purpose; others in different localities; for murder and
bloodshed became with her a necessity.
"When at last the parents of the lost children could
no longer be cajoled, the castle was seized, and the traces of
the murders were discovered. Her accomplices were executed, and
she was imprisoned for life."
[Beitrage zur philosophischen Anthropologie, Wien,
1796.]
An equally remarkable example will be found in the account
of the Mareschal de Retz given at some length in the sequel.
He vas an accomplished man, a scholar, an able general, and a
courtier; but suddenly the impulse to murder and destroy came
upon him whilst sitting in the library reading Suetonius; he
yielded to the impulse, and became one of the greatest monsters
of cruelty the world has produced.
The case of Sviatek, the Gallician cannibal, is also to the
purpose. This man was a harmless pauper, till one day accident
brought him to the scene of a conflagration. Hunger impelled
him to taste of the roast fragments of a human being who had
perished in the fire, and from that moment he ravened for man's
flesh.
M. Bertrand was a French gentleman of taste and education.
He one day lounged over the churchyard wall in a quiet country
village and watched a funeral. Instantly an overwhelming desire
to dig up and rend the corpse which he had seen committed to
the ground came upon him, and for years he lived as a human hyæna,
preying upon the dead. His story is given in detail in the fifteenth
chapter.
An abnormal condition of body sometimes produces this desire
for blood. It is manifest in certain cases of pregnancy, when
the constitution loses its balance, and the appetite becomes
diseased. Schenk gives instances. [Observationes Medic.
lib. iv. De Gravidis.]
A pregnant woman saw a baker carrying loaves on his bare shoulder.
She was at once filled with such a craving for his flesh that
she refused to taste any food till her husband persuaded the
baker, by the offer of a large sum, to allow his wife to bite
him. The man yielded, and the woman fleshed her teeth in his
shoulder twice; but he held out no longer. The wife bore twins
on three occasions, twice living, the third time dead.
A woman in an interesting condition, near Andernach on the
Rhine, murdered her husband, to whom she was warmly attached,
ate half his body, and salted the rest. When the passion left
her she became conscious of the horrible nature of her act, and
she gave herself up to justice.
In 1553, a wife cut her husband's throat, and gnawed the nose
and the left arm, whilst the body was yet warm. She then gutted
the corpse, and salted it for future consumption. Shortly after,
she gave birth to three children, and she only became conscious
of what she had done when her neighbours asked after the father,
that they might announce to him the arrival of the little ones.
In the summer of 1845, the Greek papers contained an account
of a pregnant woman murdering her husband for the purpose of
roasting and eating his liver.
That the passion to destroy is prevalent in certain maniacs
is well known; this is sometimes accompanied by cannibalism.
Gruner gives an account of a shepherd who was evidently deranged,
who killed and ate two men. [De Anthropophago Bucano.
Jen. 1792.]
Marc relates that a woman of Unterelsas, during the absence
of her husband, a poor labourer, murdered her son, a lad fifteen
months old. She chopped of his legs and stewed them with cabbage.
She ate a portion, and offered the rest to her husband. It is
true that the family were very poor, but there was food in the
house at the time. In prison the woman gave evident signs of
derangement. [Die Geistes Krankheiten. Berlin, 1844.]
The cases in which bloodthirstiness and cannibalism are united
with insanity are those which properly fall under the head of
Lycanthropy. The instances recorded in the preceding chapter
point unmistakably to hallucination accompanying the lust for
blood. Jean Grenier, Roulet, and others, were firmly convinced
that they had undergone transformation. A disordered condition
of mind or body may produce hallucination in a form depending
on the character and instincts of the individual. Thus, an ambitious
man labouring under monomania will imagine himself to be a king;
a covetous man will be plunged in despair, believing himself
to be penniless, or exult at the vastness of the treasure which
he imagines that he has discovered.
The old man suffering from rheumatism or gout conceives himself
to be formed of china or glass, and the foxhunter tallyhos! at
each new moon, as though he were following a pack. In like manner,
the naturally cruel man, if the least affected in his brain,
will suppose himself to be transformed into the most cruel and
bloodthirsty animal with which he is acquainted.
The hallucinations under which lycanthropists suffered may
have arisen from various causes. The older writers, as Forestus
and Burton, regard the were-wolf mania as a species of melancholy
madness, and some do not deem it necessary for the patient to
believe in his transformation for them to regard him as a lycanthropist.
In the present state of medical knowledge, we know that very
different conditions may give rise to hallucinations.
In fever cases the sensibility is so disturbed that the patient
is often deceived as to the space occupied by his limbs, and
he supposes them to be preternaturally distended or contracted.
In the case of typhus, it is not uncommon for the sick person,
with deranged nervous system, to believe himself to be double
in the bed, or to be severed in half, or to have lost his limbs.
He may regard his members as composed of foreign and often fragile
materials, as glass, or he may so lose his personality as to
suppose himself to have become a woman.
A monomaniac who believes himself to be some one else, seeks
to enter into the feelings, thoughts, and habits of the assumed
personality, and from the facility with which this is effected,
he draws an argument, conclusive to himself, of the reality of
the change. He thenceforth speaks of himself under the assumed
character, and experiences all its needs, wishes, passions, and
the like. The closer the identification becomes, the more confirmed
is the monomaniac in his madness, the character of which varies
with the temperament of the individual. If the person's mind
be weak, or rude and uncultivated, the tenacity with which he
clings to his metamorphosis is feebler, and it becomes more difficult
to draw the line between his lucid and insane utterances. Thus
Jean Grenier, who laboured under this form of mania, said in
his trial much that was true, but it was mixed with the ramblings
of insanity.
Hallucination may also be produced by artificial means, and
there are evidences afforded by the confessions of those tried
for lycanthropy, that these artificial means were employed by
them. I refer to the salve so frequently mentioned in witch and
were-wolf trials. The following passage is from the charming
Golden Ass of Apuleius; it proves that salves were extensively
used by witches for the purpose of transformation, even in his
day:
"Fotis showed me a crack in the door, and bade me look
through it, upon which I looked and saw Pamphile first divest
herself of all her garments, and then, having unlocked a chest,
take from it several little boxes, and open one of the latter,
which contained a certain ointment. Rubbing this ointment a good
while previously between the palms of her hands, she anointed
her whole body, from the very nails of her toes to the hair on
the crown of her head, and when she was anointed all over, she
whispered many magic words to a lamp, as if she were talking
to it. Then she began to move her arms, first with tremulous
jerks, and afterwards by a gentle undulating motion, till a glittering,
downy surface by degrees overspread her body, feathers and strong
quills burst forth suddenly, her nose became a hard crooked beak,
her toes changed to curved talons, and Pamphile was no longer
Pamphile, but it was an owl I saw before me. And now, uttering
a harsh, querulous scream, leaping from the ground by little
and little, in order to try her powers, and presently poising
herself aloft on her pinions, she stretched forth her wings on
either Side to their full extent, and flew straight away.
"Having now been actually a witness of the performance
of the magical art, and of the metamorphosis of Pamphile, I remained
for some time in a stupefied state of astonishment .... At last,
after I had rubbed my eyes some time, had recovered a little
from the amazement and abstraction of mind, and begun to feel
a consciousness of the reality of things about me, I took hold
of the hand of Fotis and said, 'Sweet damsel, bring me, I beseech
thee, a portion of the ointment with which thy mistress hath
just now anointed, and when thou hast made me a bird, I will
be thy slave, and even wait upon thee like a winged Cupid.' Accordingly
she crept gently into the apartment, quickly returned with the
box of ointment, hastily placed it in my hands, and then immediately
departed.
"Elated to an extraordinary degree at the sight of the
precious treasure, I kissed the box several times successively;
and uttering repeated aspirations in hopes of a prosperous flight,
I stripped off my clothes as quick as possible, dipped my fingers
greedily into the box, and having thence extracted a good large
lump of ointment, rubbed it all over my body and limbs. When
I was thoroughly anointed, I swung my arms up and down, in imitation
of the movement of a bird's pinions, and continued to do so a
little while, when instead of any perceptible token of feathers
or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin, alas! grew
into a hard leathern hide, covered with bristly hair, my fingers
and toes disappeared, the palms of my hands and the soles of
my feet became four solid hoofs, and from the end of my spine
a long tail projected. My face was enormous, my mouth wide, my
nostrils gaping, my lips pendulous, and I had a pair of immoderately
long, rough, hairy ears. In short, when I came to contemplate
my transformation to its full extent, I found that, instead of
a bird, I had become--an ASS."
[APULEIUS, Sir George Head's translation, bk. iii.]
Of what these magical salves were composed we know. They were
composed of narcotics, to wit, Solanum somniferum, aconite,
hyoscyamus, belladonna, opium, acorus vulgaris, sium.
These were boiled down with oil, or the fat of little children
who were murdered for the purpose. The blood of a bat was added,
but its effects could have been nil. To these may have
been added other foreign narcotics, the names of which have not
transpired.
Whatever may have been the cause of the hallucination, it
is not surprising that the lycanthropist should have imagined
himself transformed into a beast. The cases I have instanced
are those of shepherds, who were by nature of their employment,
brought into collision with wolves; and it is not surprising
that these persons, in a condition liable to hallucinations,
should imagine themselves to be transformed into wild beasts,
and that their minds reverting to the injuries sustained from
these animals, they should, in their state of temporary insanity,
accuse themselves of the acts of rapacity committed by the beasts
into which they believed themselves to be transformed. It is
a well-known fact that men, whose minds are unhinged, will deliver
themselves up to justice, accusing themselves of having committed
crimes which have actually taken place, and it is only on investigation
that their self-accusation proves to be false; and yet they will
describe the circumstances with the greatest minuteness, and
be thoroughly convinced of their own criminality. I need give
but a single instance.
In the war of the French Revolution, the Hermione
frigate was commanded by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and a severe
commander. His crew mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy's
port, having murdered the captain and several of the officers,
under circumstances of extreme barbarity. One midshipman escaped,
by whom many of the criminals, who were afterwards taken and
delivered over to justice, one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson,
the Government actuary, who at that time held an official situation
in the Admiralty, states: "In my own experience I have known,
on separate occasions, more than six sailors who voluntarily
confessed to having struck the first blow at Capt. Pigot. These
men detailed all the horrid circumstances of the mutiny with
extreme minuteness and perfect accuracy; nevertheless, not one
of them had ever been in the ship, nor had so much as seen Capt.
Pigot in their lives. They had obtained by tradition, from their
messmates, the particulars of the story. When long on a foreign
station, hungering and thirsting for home, their minds became
enfeebled; at length they actually believed themselves guilty
of the crime over which they had so long brooded, and submitted
with a gloomy pleasure to being sent to England in irons, for
judgment. At the Admiralty we were always able to detect and
establish their innocence, in defiance of their own solemn asseverations."
(London Judicial Gazette, January, 1803.)
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