The Book of Were-Wolves - Sabine Baring-Gould (red queen free ebook TXT) 📗
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sprang up and called to the people on board to wake up, for there was
danger in the wind. So Hallvard and his men sprang to arms. Then came
Kveldulf over the bridge and Skallagrim with him into the ship.
Kveldulf had in his hand a cleaver, and he bade his men go through the
vessel and hack away the awning. But he pressed on to the
quarter-deck. It is said the werewolf fit came over him and many of
his companions. They slow all the men who were before them. Skallagrim
did the same as he went round the vessel. He and his father paused not
till they had cleared it. Now when Kveldulf came upon the quarter-deck
he raised his cleaver, and smote Hallvard through helm and head, so
that the haft was buried in the flesh; but he dragged it to him so
violently that he whisked Hallvard into the air., and flung him
overboard. Skallagrim cleared the forecastle and slew Sigtrygg. Many
men flung themselves overboard, but Skallagrim’s men took to the boat
and rowed about, killing all they found. Thus perished Hallvard with
fifty men. Skallagrim and his party took the ship and all the goods
which had belonged to Hallvard … and flitted it and the wares to
their own vessel, and then exchanged ships, lading their capture, but
quitting their own. After which they filled their old ship with
stones, brake it up and sank it. A good breeze sprang up, and they
stood out to sea.
It is said of these men in the engagement who were werewolves, or
those on whom came the berserkr rage, that as long as the fit was on
them no one could oppose them, they were so strong; but when it had
passed off they were feebler than usual. It was the same with Kveldulf
when the werewolf fit went off him—he then felt the exhaustion
consequent on the fight, and he was so completely ‘done up,’ that he
was obliged to take to his bed.”
In like manner Skallagrim had his fits of frenzy, taking after his
amiable father.
“Thord and his companion were opposed to Skallagrim in the game, and
they were too much for him, he wearied, and the game went better with
them. But at dusk, after sunset, it went worse with Egill and Thord,
for Skallagrim became so strong that he caught up Thord and cast him
down, so that he broke his bones, and that was the death of him. Then
he caught at Egill. Thorgerd Brák was the name of a servant of
Skallagrim, who had been foster-mother to Egill. She was a woman of
great stature, strong as a man and a bit of a witch. Brák
exclaimed,—‘Skallagrim! are you now falling upon your son?’ (hamaz þú
at syni þínum). Then Skallagrim let go his hold of Egill and clutched
at her. She started aside and fled. Skallagrim. followed. They ran out
upon Digraness, and she sprang off the headland into the water.
Skallagrim cast after her a huge stone which struck her between the
shoulders, and she never rose after it. The place is now called Brak’s
Sound.”—(c. 40.)
Let it be observed that in these passages from the Aigla, the words
að hamaz, hamrammr, &c. are used without any intention of conveying
the idea of a change of bodily shape, though the words taken literally
assert it. For they are derived from hamr, a skin or habit; a word
which has its representatives in other Aryan languages, and is
therefore a primitive word expressive of the skin of a beast.
The Sanskrit ### carmma; the Hindustanee ### cam, hide or skin;
and ### camra, leather; the Persian ### game, clothing, disguise;
the Gothic ham or hams, skin; and even the Italian camicia, and
the French chemise, are cognate words. [1]
[1. I shall have more to say on this subject in the chapter on the
Mythology of Lycanthropy.]
It seems probable accordingly that the verb að hamaz was first
applied to those who wore the skins of savage animals, and went about
the country as freebooters; but that popular superstition soon
invested them with supernatural powers, and they were supposed to
assume the forms of the beasts in whose skins they were disguised. The
verb then acquired the significance “to become a werewolf, to change
shape.” It did not stop there, but went through another change of
meaning, and was finally applied to those who were afflicted with
paroxysms of madness or demoniacal possession.
This was not the only word connected with werewolves which helped on
the superstition. The word vargr, a wolf, had a double significance,
which would be the means of originating many a werewolf story.
Vargr is the same as u-argr, restless; argr being the same as
the Anglo-Saxon earg. Vargr had its double signification in Norse.
It signified a wolf, and also a godless man. This vargr is the
English were, in the word werewolf, and the garou or varou in
French. The Danish word for werewolf is var-ulf, the Gothic
vaira-ulf. In the Romans de Garin, it is “Leu warou, sanglante
beste.” In the Vie de S. Hildefons by Gauthier de Coinsi,—
Cil lon desve, cil lou garol,
Ce sunt deable, que saul
Ne puent estre de nos mordre.
Here the loup-garou is a devil. The Anglo-Saxons regarded him as an
evil man: wearg, a scoundrel; Gothic varys, a fiend. But very
often the word meant no more than an outlaw. Pluquet in his _Contes
Populaires_ tells us that the ancient Norman laws said of the
criminals condemned to outlawry for certain offences, Wargus esto:
be an outlaw!
In like manner the Lex Ripuaria, tit. 87, “Wargus sit, hoe est
expulsus.” In the laws of Canute, he is called verevulf. (_Leges
Canuti_, Schmid, i. 148.) And the Salic Law (tit. 57) orders: “Si quis
corpus jam sepultum effoderit, aut expoliaverit, wargus sit.” “If
any one shall have dug up or despoiled an already buried corpse, let
him be a varg.”
Sidonius Apollinaris. says, “Unam feminam quam forte vargorum, hoc
enim nomine indigenas latrunculos nuncupant,” as though the common
name by which those who lived a freebooter life were designated, was
varg.
In like manner Palgrave assures us in his _Rise and Progress of the
English Commonwealth_, that among the Anglo, Saxons an utlagh, or
out-law, was said to have the head of a wolf. If then the term vargr
was applied at one time to a wolf, at another to an outlaw who lived
the life of a wild beast, away from the haunts of men “he shall be
driven away as a wolf, and chased so far as men chase wolves
farthest,” was the legal form of sentence—it is certainly no matter
of wonder that stories of outlaws should have become surrounded with
mythical accounts of their transformation into wolves.
But the very idiom of the Norse was calculated to foster this
superstition. The Icelanders had curious expressions which are
sufficiently likely to have produced misconceptions.
[1. SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS: Opera, lib. vi. ep. 4.]
Snorri not only relates that Odin changed himself into another form,
but he adds that by his spells he turned his enemies into boars. In
precisely the same manner does a hag, Ljot, in the Vatnsdæla Saga, say
that she could have turned Thorsteinn and Jökull into boars to run
about with the wild beasts (c. xxvi.); and the expression _verða at
gjalti_, or at gjöltum, to become a boar, is frequently met with in
the Sagas.
“Thereupon came Thorarinn and his men upon them, and Nagli led the
way; but when he saw weapons drawn he was frightened, and ran away up
the mountain, and became a boar… . And Thorarinn and his men took
to run, so as to help Nagli, lest he should tumble off the cliffs into
the sea” (Eyrbyggja Saga, c. xviii.) A similar expression occurs in
the Gisla Saga Surssonar, p. 50. In the Hrolfs Saga Kraka, we meet
with a troll in boar’s shape, to whom divine honours are paid; and in
the Kjalnessinga Saga, c. xv., men are likened to boars—“Then it
began to fare with them as it fares with boars when they fight each
other, for in the same manner dropped their foam.” The true
signification of verða at gjalti is to be in such a state of fear as
to lose the senses; but it is sufficiently peculiar to have given rise
to superstitious stories.
I have dwelt at some length on the Northern myths relative to
werewolves and animal transformations, because I have considered the
investigation of these all-important towards the elucidation of the
truth which lies at the bottom of mediæval superstition, and which is
nowhere so obtainable as through the Norse literature. As may be seen
from the passages quoted above at length, and from an examination of
those merely referred to, the result arrived at is pretty conclusive,
and may be summed up in very few words.
The whole superstructure of fable and romance relative to
transformation into wild beasts, reposes simply on this basis of
truth—that among the Scandinavian nations there existed a form of
madness or possession, under the influence of which men acted as
though they were changed into wild and savage brutes, howling, foaming
at the mouth, ravening for blood and slaughter, ready to commit any
act of atrocity, and as irresponsible for their actions as the wolves
and bears, in whose skins they often equipped themselves.
The manner in which this fact became invested with supernatural
adjuncts I have also pointed out, to wit, the change in the
significance of the word designating the madness, the double meaning
of the word vargr, and above all, the habits and appearance of the
maniacs. We shall see instances of berserkr rage reappearing in the
middle ages, and late down into our own times, not exclusively in the
North, but throughout France, Germany, and England, and instead of
rejecting the accounts given by chroniclers as fabulous, because there
is much connected with them which seems to be fabulous, we shall be
able to refer them to their true origin.
It may be accepted as an axiom, that no superstition of general
acceptance is destitute of a foundation of truth; and if we discover
the myth of the werewolf to be widely spread, not only throughout
Europe, but through the whole world, we may rest assured that there is
a solid core of fact, round which popular superstition has
crystallized; and that fact is the existence of a species of madness,
during the accesses of which the person afflicted believes himself to
be a wild beast, and acts like a wild beast.
In some cases this madness amounts apparently to positive possession,
and the diabolical acts into which the possessed is impelled are so
horrible, that the blood curdles in reading them, and it is impossible
to recall them without a shudder.
CHAPTER V.
THE WEREWOLF 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
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