The Book of Were-Wolves - Sabine Baring-Gould (red queen free ebook TXT) 📗

class="calibre1">its hind legs like a dog when it is begging, and had regarded her with

such a look of rage, that she had fled in terror. She described the

animal as resembling a wolf, but as being shorter and stouter; its

hair was red, its tail stumpy, and the head smaller than that of a

genuine wolf.

 

The statement of the child produced general consternation in the

parish. It was well known that several little girls had vanished in a

most mysterious way of late, and the parents of these little ones were

thrown into an agony of terror lest their children had become the prey

of the wretched boy accused by Marguerite Poirier. The case was now

taken up by the authorities and brought before the parliament of

Bordeaux.

 

The investigation which followed was as complete as could be desired.

 

Jean Grenier was the son of a poor labourer in the village of S.

Antoine do Pizon, and not the son of a priest, as he had asserted.

Three months before his seizure he had left home, and had been with

several masters doing odd work, or wandering about the country

begging. He had been engaged several times to take charge of the

flocks belonging to farmers, and had as often been discharged for

neglect of his duties. The lad exhibited no reluctance to communicate

all he knew about himself, and his statements were tested one by one,

and were often proved to be correct.

 

The story he related of himself before the court was as follows:—

 

“When I was ten or eleven years old, my neighbour, Duthillaire,

introduced me, in the depths of the forest, to a M. de la Forest, a

black man, who signed me with his nail, and then gave to me and

Duthillaire a salve and a wolfskin. From that time have I run about

the country as a wolf.

 

“The charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct. My intention was to have

killed and devoured her, but she kept me off with a stick. I have only

killed one dog, a white one, and I did not drink its blood.”

 

When questioned touching the children, whom he said he had killed and

eaten as a wolf, he allowed that he had once entered an empty house on

the way between S. Coutras and S. Anlaye, in a small village, the name

of which he did not remember, and had found a child asleep in its

cradle; and as no one was within to hinder him, he dragged the baby

out of its cradle, carried it into the garden, leaped the hedge, and

devoured as much of it as satisfied his hunger. What remained he had

given to a wolf. In the parish of S. Antoine do Pizon he had attacked

a little girl, as she was keeping sheep. She was dressed in a black

frock; he did not know her name. He tore her with his nails and teeth,

and ate her. Six weeks before his capture he had fallen upon another

child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had

assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the

beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand.

 

Jean said that he had the wolfskin in his possession, and that he

went out hunting for children, at the command of his master, the Lord

of the Forest. Before transformation he smeared himself with the

salve, which be preserved in a small pot, and hid his clothes in the

thicket.

 

He usually ran his courses from one to two hours in the day, when the

moon was at the wane, but very often he made his expeditions at night.

On one occasion he had accompanied Duthillaire, but they had killed no

one.

 

He accused his father of having assisted him, and of possessing a

wolfskin; he charged him also with having accompanied him on one

occasion, when he attacked and ate a girl in the village of Grilland,

whom he had found tending a flock of geese. He said that his

stepmother was separated from his father. He believed the reason to

be, because she had seen him once vomit the paws of a dog and the

fingers of a child. He added that the Lord of the Forest had strictly

forbidden him to bite the thumb-nail of his left hand, which nail was

thicker and longer than the others, and had warned him never to lose

sight of it, as long as he was in his werewolf disguise.

 

Duthillaire was apprehended, and the father of Jean Grenier himself

claimed to be heard by examination.

 

The account given by the father and stepmother of Jean coincided in

many particulars with the statements made by their son.

 

The localities where Grenier declared he had fallen on children were

identified, the times when he said the deeds had been done accorded

with the dates given by the parents of the missing little ones, when

their losses had occurred.

 

The wounds which Jean affirmed that he had made, and the manner in

which he had dealt them, coincided with the descriptions given by the

children he had assaulted.

 

He was confronted with Marguerite Poirier, and he singled her out from

among five other girls, pointed to the still open gashes in her body,

and stated that he had made them with his teeth, when he attacked her

in wolf-form, and she had beaten him off with a stick. He described an

attack he had made on a little boy whom he would have slain, had not a

man come to the rescue, and exclaimed, “I’ll have you presently.”

 

The man who saved the child was found, and proved to be the uncle of

the rescued lad, and he corroborated the statement of Grenier, that he

had used the words mentioned above.

 

Jean was then confronted with his father. He now began to falter in

his story, and to change his statements. The examination had lasted

long, and it was seen that the feeble intellect of the boy was wearied

out, so the case was adjourned. When next confronted with the elder

Grenier, Jean told his story as at first, without changing it in any

important particular.

 

The fact of Jean Grenier having killed and eaten several children, and

of his having attacked and wounded others, with intent to take their

life, were fully established; but there was no proof whatever of the

father having had the least hand in any of the murders, so that he was

dismissed the court without a shadow of guilt upon him.

 

The only witness who corroborated the assertion of Jean that he

changed his shape into that of a wolf was Marguerite Poirier.

 

Before the court gave judgment, the first president of assize, in an

eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft and

diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly stated that

the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility of the

child, who was so dull and idiotic—that children of seven or eight

years old have usually a larger amount of reason than he. The

president went on to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy were mere

hallucinations, and that the change of shape existed only in the

disorganized brain of the insane, consequently it was not a crime

which could be punished. The tender age of the boy must be taken into

consideration, and the utter neglect of his education and moral

development. The court sentenced Grenier to perpetual imprisonment

within the walls of a monastery at Bordeaux, where he might be

instructed in his Christian and moral obligations; but any attempt to

escape would be punished with death.

 

A pleasant companion for the monks! a promising pupil for them to

instruct! No sooner was he admitted into the precincts of the

religious house, than he ran frantically about the cloister and

gardens upon all fours, and finding a heap of bloody and raw offal,

fell upon it and devoured it in an incredibly short space of time.

 

Delancre visited him seven years after, and found him diminutive in

stature, very shy, and unwilling to look any one in the face. His eyes

were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails

black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he

seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things. He related his story

to Delancre, and told him how he had run about formerly in the woods

as a wolf, and he said that he still felt a craving for raw flesh,

especially for that of little girls, which he said was delicious, and

he added that but for his confinement it would not be long before he

tasted it again. He said that the Lord of the Forest had visited him

twice in the prison, but that he had driven him off with the sign of

the cross. The account be then gave of his murders coincided exactly

with what had come out in his trial; and beside this, his story of the

compact he had made with the Black One, and the manner in which his

transformation was effected, also coincided with his former

statements.

 

He died at the age of twenty, after an imprisonment of seven years,

shortly after Delancre’s visit. [1]

 

[1. DELANCRE: Tableau de l’Iinconstance, p 305.]

 

In the two cases of Roulet and Grenier the courts referred the whole

matter of Lycanthropy, or animal transformation, to its true and

legitimate cause, an aberration of the brain. From this time medical

men seem to have regarded it as a form of mental malady to be brought

under their treatment, rather than as a crime to be punished by law.

But it is very fearful to contemplate that there may still exist

persons in the world filled with a morbid craving for human blood,

which is ready to impel them to commit the most horrible atrocities,

should they escape the vigilante of their guards, or break the bars of

the madhouse which restrains them.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

FOLKLORE RELATING TO WEREWOLVES.

 

Barrenness of English Folklore—Devonshire Traditions—Derivation of

Werewolf—Cannibalism in Scotland—The Angus Robber—The Carle of

Perth—French Superstitions—Norwegian Traditions—Danish Tales of

Werewolves—Holstein Stories—The Werewolf in the Netherlands—Among

the Greeks; the Serbs; the White Russians; the Poles; the Russians—A

Russian Receipt for becoming a Werewolf—The Bohemian

Vlkodlak—Armenian Story—Indian Tales—Abyssinian Budas—American

Transformation Tales—A Slovakian Household Tale—Similar Greek,

Béarnais, and Icelandic Tales.

 

ENGLISH folklore is singularly barren of werewolf stories, the

reason being that wolves had been extirpated from England under the

Anglo-Saxon kings, and therefore ceased to be objects of dread to the

people. The traditional belief in werewolfism must, however, have

remained long in the popular mind, though at present it has

disappeared, for the word occurs in old ballads and romances. Thus in

Kempion—

 

O was it war-wolf in the wood?

Or was it mermaid in the sea?

Or was it man, or vile woman,

My ain true love, that misshaped thee?

 

There is also the romance of William and the Werewolf in Hartshorn;

[1] but this professes to be a translation from the French:—

 

[1. HARTSHORN: Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 256. See also “The Witch

Cake,” in CRUMEK’S Remains of Nithsdale Song.]

 

For he of Frenche this fayre tale ferst dede translate,

In ese of Englysch men in Englysch speche.

 

In the popular mind the cat or the hare have taken the place of the

wolf for witches’ transformation, and we hear often of the hags

attending the devil’s Sabbath in these forms.

 

In Devonshire they range the moors in the shape of black dogs, and I

know a story of two such creatures appearing in an