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

is brought forth, and creeps through

it, naked, she will bear children without pain; but all the boys will

be werewolves, and all the girls maras. By day the werewolf has the

human form, though he may be known by the meeting of his eyebrows

above the nose. At a certain time of the night he has the form of a

dog on three legs. It is only when another person tells him that he is

a werewolf, or reproaches him with being such, that a man can be

freed from the ban.

 

According to a Danish popular song, a hero transformed by his

stepmother into a bear, fights with a knight:—

 

For ‘tis she who bath bewitched me,

A woman false and fell,

Bound an iron girdle round me,

If thou can’st not break this belt,

Knight, I’ll thee destroy!

The noble made the Christian sign,

The girdle snapped, the bear was changed,

And see! he was a lusty knight,

His father’s realm regained.

 

Kjæmpeviser, p. 147.

 

When an old bear in Ofodens Priestegjeld was killed, after it had

caused the death of six men und sixty horses, it was found to be

girded with a similar girdle.

 

In Schleswig and Holstein they say that if the werewolf be thrice

addressed by his baptismal name, he resumes his human form.

 

On a hot harvest day some reapers lay down in the field to take their

noontide sleep, when one who could not sleep observed that the fellow

next to him rose softly, and having girded himself with a strap,

became a werewolf.

 

A young man belonging to Jägerup returning late one night from

Billund, was attacked, when near Jägerup, by three werewolves, and

would probably have been torn to pieces, had he not saved himself by

leaping into a rye-field, for there they had no more power over him.

 

At Caseburg, on the isle of Usedom, a man and his wife were busy in

the field making hay, when after some time the woman said to the man

that she had no more peace, she could stay no longer, and went away.

But she had previously desired her husband to promise, that if

perchance a wild beast should come that way, he would cast his hat at

it and then run away, and it would do him no injury. She had been gone

but a short while, when a wolf came swimming across the Swine, and ran

directly towards the haymakers. The man threw his hat at it, which the

animal instantly tore to rags. But in the meantime a boy had run up

with a pitchfork, and he dabbed the wolf from behind: in the same

moment it became changed, and all saw that the boy had killed the

man’s wife.

 

Formerly there were individuals in the neighbourhood of Steina, who,

by putting on a certain girdle, could transform themselves into

werewolves. A man of the neighbourhood, who had such a girdle, forgot

one day when going out to lock it up, as was his wont. During his

absence, his little son chanced to find it; he buckled it round him.,

and was instantaneously turned into an animal, to all outward

appearance like a bundle of peat-straw, and he rolled about like an

unwieldy bear. When those who were in the room perceived this, they

hastened in search of the father, who was found in time to come and

unbuckle the belt, before the child had done any mischief. The boy

afterwards said, that when he had put on the girdle, he was seized

with such a raging hunger, that he was ready to tear in pieces and

devour all that came in his way.

 

The girdle is supposed to be made of human skin, and to be three

finger-breadths wide.

 

In East Friesland, it is believed, when seven girls succeed each other

in one family, that among them one is of necessity a werewolf, so

that youths are slow in seeking one of seven sisters in marriage.

 

According to a curious Lithuanian story related by Schleicher in his

Litauische Märchen, a person who is a werewolf or bear has to

remain kneeling in one spot for one hundred years before he can hope

to obtain release from his bestial form.

 

In the Netherlands they relate the following tale:—A man had once

gone out with his bow to attend a shooting match at Rousse, but when

about half way to the place, he saw on a sudden, a large wolf spring

from a thicket, and rush towards a young girl, who was sitting in a

meadow by the roadside watching cows. The man did not long hesitate,

but quickly drawing forth an arrow, took aim, and luckily hit the wolf

in the right side, so that the arrow remained sticking in the wound,

and the animal fled howling to the wood.

 

On the following day he heard that a serving-man of the burgomaster’s

household lay at the point of death, in consequence of having been

shot in the right side, on the preceding day. This so excited the

archer’s curiosity, that he went to the wounded man, and requested to

see the arrow. He recognized it immediately as one of his own. Then,

having desired all present to leave the room, he persuaded the man to

confess that he was a werewolf and that he had devoured little

children. On the following day he died.

 

Among the Bulgarians and Sloyakians the werewolf is called vrkolak,

a name resembling that given it by the modern Greeks {Greek

brúkolakas}. The Greek werewolf is closely related to the vampire.

The lycanthropist falls into a cataleptic trance, during which his

soul leaves his body, enters that of a wolf and ravens for blood. On

the return of the soul, the body is exhausted and aches as though it

had been put through violent exercise. After death lycanthropists

become vampires. They are believed to frequent battlefields in wolf or

hyæna shapes, and to suck the breath from dying soldiers, or to enter

houses and steal the infants from their cradles. Modern Greeks call

any savage-looking man, with dark complexion, and with distorted,

misshapen limbs, a {Greek brúkolakas}, and suppose him to be

invested with power of running in wolf-form.

 

The Serbs connect the vampire and the werewolf together, and call

them by one name vlkoslak. These rage chiefly in the depths of

winter: they hold their annual gatherings, and at them divest

themselves of their wolfskins, which they hang on the trees around

them. If any one succeeds in obtaining the skin and burning it, the

vlkoslak is thenceforth disenchanted.

 

The power to become a werewolf is obtained by drinking the water

which settles in a footprint left in clay by a wolf.

 

Among the White Russians the wawkalak is a man who has incurred the

wrath of the devil, and the evil one punishes him by transforming him

into a wolf and sending him among his relations, who recognize him and

feed him well. He is a most amiably disposed werewolf, for he does no

mischief, and testifies his affection for his kindred by licking their

hands. He cannot, however, remain long in any place, but is driven

from house to house, and from hamlet to hamlet, by an irresistible

passion for change of scene. This is an ugly superstition, for it sets

a premium on standing well with the evil one.

 

The Sloyakians merrily term a drunkard a vlkodlak, because, forsooth,

he makes a beast of himself. A Slovakian household werewolf tale

closes this chapter.

 

The Poles have their werewolves, which rage twice in the year—at

Christmas and at midsummer.

 

According to a Polish story, if a witch lays a girdle of human skin on

the threshold of a house in which a marriage is being celebrated, the

bride and bridegroom, and bridesmaids and groomsmen, should they step

across it, are transformed into wolves. After three years, however,

the witch will cover them with skins with the hair. turned outward;

immediately they will recover their natural form. On one occasion, a

witch cast a skin of too scanty dimensions over the bridegroom, so

that his tail was left uncovered: he resumed his human form, but

retained his lupine caudal appendage {_i.e. tail—jbh_}.

 

The Russians call the werewolf oborot, which signifies “one

transformed.” The following receipt is given by them for becoming one.

 

“He who desires to become an oborot, let him seek in the forest a

hewn-down tree; let him stab it with a small copper knife, and walk

round the tree, repeating the following incantation:—

 

On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,

On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashstock lying

In a green wood, in a gloomy vale.

Toward the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf.

Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;

But the wolf enters not the forest,

But the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale,

Moon, moon, gold-horned moon,

Cheek the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters’ knives,

Break the shepherds’ cudgels,

Cast wild fear upon all cattle,

On men, on all creeping things,

That they may not catch the grey wolf,

That they may not rend his warm skin

My word is binding, more binding than sleep,

More binding than the promise of a hero!

 

“Then he springs thrice over the tree and runs into the forest,

transformed into a wolf.” [1]

 

[1. SACHAROW: Inland, 1838, No. 17.]

 

In the ancient Bohemian Lexicon of Vacerad (A. D. 1202) the werewolf

is called vilkodlak, and is explained as faunus. Safarik says under

that head,-

 

“Incubi sepe improbi existunt mulieribus, et earum peragunt

concubitum, quos demones Galli dusios nuncupant.” And in another

place: “Vilkodlaci, incubi, sive invidi, ab inviando passim cum

animalibus, unde et incubi dicuntur ab incubando homines, i. e.

stuprando, quos Romani faunos ficarios dicunt.”

 

That the same belief in lycanthropy exists in Armenia is evident from

the following story told by Haxthausen, in his Trans-Caucasia

(Leipzig, i. 322):—“A man once saw a wolf, which had carried off a

child, dash past him. He pursued it hastily, but was unable to

overtake it. At last he came upon the hands and feet of a child, and a

little further on he found a cave, in which lay a wolfskin. This he

cast into a fire, and immediately a woman appeared, who howled and

tried to rescue the skin from the flames. The man, however, resisted,

and, as soon as the hide was consumed, the woman had vanished in the

smoke.”

 

In India, on account of the prevalence of the doctrine of

metempsychosis, the belief in transformation is widely diffused.

Traces of genuine lycanthropy are abundant in all regions whither

Buddism has reached. In Ceylon, in Thibet, and in China, we find it

still forming a portion of the national creed.

 

In the Pantschatantra is a story of an enchanted Brahmin’s son, who by

day was a serpent, by night a man.

 

Vikramâditya’s father, the son of Indra, was condemned to be an ass by

day and a man by night.

 

A modern Indian tale is to this effect:—A prince marries a female

ape, but his brothers wed handsome princesses. At a feast given by the

queen to her stepdaughters, there appears an exquisitely beautiful

lady in gorgeous robes. This is none other than the she-ape, who has

laid aside her skin for the occasion: the prince slips out of the room

and burns the skin, so that his wife is prevented from resuming her

favourite appearance.

 

Nathaniel Pierce [1] gives an account of an Abyssinian

superstition very similar to that prevalent in Europe.

 

[1. Life