Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 3



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                                    III.
                        WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS.
 
      IT is related by Ovid that Lykaon, king of Arkadia, once invited
   Zeus to dinner, and served up for him a dish of human flesh, in order
   to test the god's omniscience. But the trick miserably failed, and the
   impious monarch received the punishment which his crime had merited.
   He was transformed into a wolf, that he might henceforth feed upon the
   viands with which he had dared to pollute the table of the king of
   Olympos. From that time forth, according to Pliny, a noble Arkadian
   was each year, on the festival of Zeus Lykaios, led to the margin of a
   certain lake. Hanging his clothes upon a tree, he then plunged into
   the water and became a wolf. For the space of nine years he roamed
   about the adjacent woods, and then, if he had not tasted human flesh
   during all this time, he was allowed to swim back to the place where
   his clothes were hanging, put them on, and return to his natural form.
   It is further related of a certain Demainetos, that, having once been
   present at a human sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and
   was transformed into a wolf for a term of ten years.1
   
      These and other similar mythical germs were developed by the
   mediæval imagination into the horrible superstition of werewolves.
   
      A werewolf, or loup-garou,2 was a person who had the
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   power of transforming himself into a wolf, being endowed, while in the
   lupine state, with the intelligence of a man, the ferocity of a wolf,
   and the irresistible strength of a demon. The ancients believed in the
   existence of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the metamorphosis
   was supposed to be a phenomenon of daily occurrence, and even at the
   present day, in secluded portions of Europe, the superstition is still
   cherished by peasants. The belief, moreover, is supported by a vast
   amount of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into
   insignificance. It is the business of the comparative mythologist to
   trace the pedigree of the ideas from which such a conception may have
   sprung; while to the critical historian belongs the task of
   ascertaining and classifying the actual facts which this particular
   conception was used to interpret.
   
      The mediæval belief in werewolves is especially adapted to
   illustrate the complicated manner in which divers mythical conceptions
   and misunderstood natural occurrences will combine to generate a
   long-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would have us believe
   that the whole notion arose from an unintentional play upon words; but
   the careful survey of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and
   Baring-Gould, leads to the conclusion that many other circumstances
   have been at work. The delusion, though doubtless purely mythical in
   its origin, nevertheless presents in its developed state a curious
   mixture of mythical and historical elements.
   
      With regard to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is
   probably right. The story seems to belong to that large class of myths
   which have been devised in order to explain the meaning of equivocal
   words whose true significance has been forgotten. The epithet Lykaios,
   as applied to Zeus, had originally no reference to wolves:
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   it means "the bright one," and gave rise to lycanthropic legends only
   because of the similarity in sound between the names for "wolf" and
   "brightness." Aryan mythology furnishes numerous other instances of
   this confusion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the
   "offspring of light"; but popular etymology made a kind of werewolf of
   him by interpreting his name as the "wolf-born." The name of the hero
   Autolykos means simply the "self-luminous"; but it was more frequently
   interpreted as meaning "a very wolf," in allusion to the supposed
   character of its possessor. Bazra, the name of the citadel of
   Carthage, was the Punic word for "fortress"; but the Greeks confounded
   it with byrsa, "a hide," and hence the story of the ox-hides cut into
   strips by Dido in order to measure the area of the place to be
   fortified. The old theory that the Irish were Phoenicians had a
   similar origin. The name Fena, used to designate the old Scoti or
   Irish, is the plural of Fion, "fair," seen in the name of the hero
   Fion Gall, or "Fingal"; but the monkish chroniclers identified Fena
   with Phoinix, whence arose the myth; and by a like misunderstanding of
   the epithet Miledh, or "warrior," applied to Fion by the Gaelic bards,
   there was generated a mythical hero, Milesius, and the soubriquet
   "Milesian," colloquially employed in speaking of the Irish.3 So the
   Franks explained the name of the town Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the
   story that the Emperor Justinian once addressed the chief magistrate
   with the exclamation, daras, "thou shalt give":4 the Greek chronicler,
   Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us with equal complacency
   that it was the place where Alexander overcame Codomannus with
   [dgr.gif] [ogr.gif] [rgr.gif] [ugr.gif] , "the spear." A certain
   passage in the Alps is called Scaletta,
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   from its resemblance to a staircase; but according to a local
   tradition it owes its name to the bleaching skeletons of a company of
   Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, while attempting
   to penetrate into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes the town
   built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemish handt
   werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend of the giant who cut
   of the hands of those who passed his castle without paying him
   black-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt."5 In the myth of Bishop
   Hatto, related in a previous paper, the Mäuse-thurm is a corruption of
   maut-thurm; it means "customs-tower," and has nothing to do with mice
   or rats. Doubtless this etymology was the cause of the floating myth
   getting fastened to this particular place; that it did not give rise
   to the myth itself is shown by the existence of the same tale in other
   places. Somewhere in England there is a place called Chateau Vert; the
   peasantry have corrupted it into Shot-over, and say that it has borne
   that name ever since Little John shot over a high hill in the
   neighbourhood.6 Latium means "the flat land"; but, according to
   Virgil, it is the place where Saturn once hid (latuisset) from the
   wrath of his usurping son Jupiter.7
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      It was in this way that the constellation of the Great Bear received
   its name. The Greek word arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant
   originally any bright object, and was applied to the bear -- for what
   reason it would not be easy to state -- and to that constellation which
   was most conspicuous in the latitude of the early home of the Aryans.
   When the Greeks had long forgotten why these stars were called arktoi,
   they symbolized them as a Great Bear fixed in the sky. So that, as Max
   Müller observes, "the name of the Arctic regions rests on a
   misunderstanding of a name framed thousands of years ago in Central
   Asia, and the surprise with which many a thoughtful observer has looked
   at these seven bright stars, wondering why they were ever called the
   Bear, is removed by a reference to the early annals of human speech."
   Among the Algonquins the sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his
   name being compounded of michi, "great," and wabos, "a hare"; yet wabos
   also meant "white," so that the god was doubtless originally called
   simply "the Great White One." The same naïve process has made bears of
   the Arkadians, whose name, like that of the Lykians, merely signified
   that they were "children of light"; and the metamorphosis of Kallisto,
   mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, rests
   apparently upon no other foundation than an erroneous etymology.
   Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but another form of
   Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his
   legend is but a variation of that of Tantalos, who in time of drought
   offers to Zeus the flesh of his own offspring, the withered fruits,
   and is punished for his impiety.
   
      It seems to me, however, that this explanation, though valid as far
   as it goes, is inadequate to explain all the
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   features of the werewolf superstition, or to account for its presence
   in all Aryan countries and among many peoples who are not of Aryan
   origin. There can be no doubt that the myth-makers transformed Lykaon
   into a wolf because of his unlucky name; because what really meant
   "bright man" seemed to them to mean "wolf-man"; but it has by no means
   been proved that a similar equivocation occurred in the case of all
   the primitive Aryan werewolves, nor has it been shown to be probable
   that among each people the being with the uncanny name got thus
   accidentally confounded with the particular beast most dreaded by that
   people. Etymology alone does not explain the fact that while Gaul has
   been the favourite haunt of the man-wolf, Scandinavia has been
   preferred by the man-bear, and Hindustan by the man-tiger. To account
   for such a widespread phenomenon we must seek a more general cause.
   
      Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking
   than the close community of nature which it assumes between man and
   brute. The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or
   other all over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the
   two; the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow,
   and will on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but
   it may he his own grandmother? The recent researches of Mr. M'Lennan
   and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the
   primeval worship of ancestors and with the savage customs of
   totemism.8
   
      The worship of ancestors seems to have been every
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   where the oldest systematized form of fetichistic religion. The
   reverence paid to the chieftain of the tribe while living was
   continued and exaggerated after his death The uncivilized man is
   everywhere incapable of grasping the idea of death as it is
   apprehended by civilized people. He cannot understand that a man
   should pass away so as to be no longer capable of communicating with
   his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade remains in his
   mind, and the savage's philosophic realism far surpasses that of the
   most extravagant mediæval schoolmen; to him the persistence of the
   idea implies the persistence of the reality. The dead man,
   accordingly, is not really dead; he has thrown off his body like a
   husk, yet still retains his old appearance, and often shows himself to
   his old friends, especially after nightfall. He is no doubt possessed
   of more extensive powers than before his transformation,9 and may very
   likely have a share in regulating the weather, granting or withholding
   rain. Therefore, argues the uncivilized mind, he is to be cajoled and
   propitiated more sedulously now than before his strange
   transformation.
   
      This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as the
   state religion of China, and it still exists as a
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   portion of Brahmanism; but in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in
   all its vigour and in all its naïve simplicity. According to the
   ancient Aryan, the Pitris, or "Fathers" (Lat. patres), live in the sky
   along with Yama, the great original Pitri of mankind. This first man
   came down from heaven in the lightning, and back to heaven both
   himself and all his offspring must have gone. There they distribute
   light unto men below, and they shine themselves as stars; and hence
   the Christianized German peasant, fifty centuries later, tells his
   children that the stars are angels' eyes, and the English cottager
   impresses it on the youthful mind that it is wicked to point at the
   stars, though why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are not stars only,
   nor do they content themselves with idly looking down on the affairs
   of men, after the fashion of the laissez-faire divinities of
   Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, very busy with the weather; they
   send rain, thunder, and lightning; and they especially delight in
   rushing over the housetops in a great gale of wind, led on by their
   chief, the mysterious huntsman, Hermes or Odin.
   
      It has been elsewhere shown that the howling dog, or wish-hound of
   Hermes, whose appearance under the windows of a sick person is such an
   alarming portent, is merely the tempest personified. Throughout all
   Aryan mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the
   night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the
   souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses.10 Sometimes
   the whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a single
   dog, the messenger of the god of shades, who comes to summon the
   departing
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   soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great ravening wolf who
   comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, as
   that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured little Red Riding-Hood
   with her robe of scarlet twilight.11 Thus we arrive at a true werewolf
   myth. The storm-wind, or howling Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore, is "a
   great misshapen giant with red beard and red hair, with pointed
   protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human flesh; his body
   is covered with coarse, bristling hair, his huge mouth is open, he
   looks from side to side as he walks, lusting after the flesh and blood
   of men, to satisfy his raging hunger and quench his consuming thirst.
   Towards nightfall his strength increases manifold; he can change his
   shape at will; he haunts the woods, and roams howling through the
   jungle."12
   
      Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri who
   appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves or
   wish-hounds, or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference is obvious
   to the mythopoeic mind that men
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   may become wolves, at least after death. And to the uncivilized
   thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by
   evidence registered on his own tribal totem or heraldic emblem. The
   bears and lions and leopards of heraldry are the degenerate
   descendants of the totem of savagery which designated the tribe by a
   beast-symbol. To the untutored mind there is everything in a name; and
   the descendant of Brown Bear or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyæna cannot be
   pronounced unfaithful to his own style of philosophizing, if he
   regards his ancestors, who career about his hut in the darkness of
   night, as belonging to whatever order of beasts his totem associations
   may suggest.
   
      Thus we not only see a ray of light thrown on the subject of
   metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the curious process by which
   the intensely realistic mind of antiquity arrived at the notion that
   men could be transformed into beasts. For the belief that the soul can
   temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been universally
   entertained; and from the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a
   short step to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle
   Ages the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the
   theory that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it.
   Hence it was very difficult for a person accused of witchcraft to
   prove an alibi; for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was
   innocently reposing at home and in bed, the rejoinder was obvious that
   the soul may nevertheless have been in attendance at the witches'
   Sabbath or busied in maiming a neighbour's cattle. According to one
   mediæval notion, the soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which
   remained in a trance until its return.13
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      The mythological basis of the werewolf superstition is now, I
   believe, sufficiently indicated. The belief, however, did not reach
   its complete development, or acquire its most horrible features, until
   the pagan habits of thought which had originated it were modified by
   contact with Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing
   necessarily diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast.
   But Christianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions
   under such strange disguises, which degraded the "All-father" Odin
   into the ogre of the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk,
   and which blended the beneficent lightning-god Thor and the
   mischievous Hermes and the faun-like Pan into the grotesque Teutonic
   Devil, did not fail to impart a new and fearful character to the
   belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy became regarded as a species of
   witchcraft; the werewolf was supposed to have obtained his peculiar
   powers through the favour or connivance of the Devil; and hundreds of
   persons were burned alive or broken on the wheel for having availed
   themselves of the privilege of beast-metamorphosis. The superstition,
   thus widely extended and greatly intensified, was confirmed by many
   singular phenomena which cannot be omitted from any thorough
   discussion of the nature and causes of lycanthropy.
   
      The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity,
   characteristic of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other countries. In
   times when killing one's enemies often formed a part of the necessary
   business of life, persons were frequently found who killed for the
   mere love of the thing; with whom slaughter was an end desirable in
   itself, not merely a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an
   age which worships mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the
   current idea of heaven
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   was that of a place where people could hack each other to pieces
   through all eternity, and when the man who refused a challenge was
   punished with confiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the
   ninth century, the chief business and amusement in life was to set
   sail for some pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the
   coasts and navigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre. When at
   home, in the intervals between their freebooting expeditions, they
   were liable to become possessed by a strange homicidal madness, during
   which they would array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears, and
   sally forth by night to crack the backbones, smash the skulls, and
   sometimes to drink with fiendish glee the blood of unwary travellers
   or loiterers. These fits of madness were usually followed by periods
   of utter exhaustion and nervous depression.14
   
      Such, according to the unanimous testimony of historians, was the
   celebrated "Berserker rage," not peculiar to the Northland, although
   there most conspicuously manifested. Taking now a step in advance, we
   find that in comparatively civilized countries there have been many
   cases of monstrous homicidal insanity. The two most celebrated cases,
   among those collected by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Maréchal
   de Retz, in 1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the
   seventeenth century. The Countess Elizabeth enticed young girls into
   her palace on divers pretexts, and then coolly murdered them, for the
   purpose of bathing in their blood. The spectacle of human suffering
   became at last such
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   a delight to her, that she would apply with her own hands the most
   excruciating tortures, relishing the shrieks of her victims as the
   epicure relishes each sip of his old Château Margaux. In this way she
   is said to have murdered six hundred and fifty persons before her evil
   career was brought to an end; though, when one recollects the famous
   men in buckram and the notorious trio of crows, one is inclined to
   strike off a cipher, and regard sixty-five as a sufficiently imposing
   and far less improbable number. But the case of the Maréchal de Retz
   is still more frightful. A marshal of France, a scholarly man, a
   patriot, and a man of holy life, he became suddenly possessed by an
   uncontrollable desire to murder children. During seven years he
   continued to inveigle little boys and girls into his castle, at the
   rate of about two each week, (?) and then put them to death in various
   ways, that he might witness their agonies and bathe in their blood;
   experiencing after each occasion the most dreadful remorse, but led on
   by an irresistible craving to repeat the crime. When this unparalleled
   iniquity was finally brought to light, the castle was found to contain
   bins full of children's bones. The horrible details of the trial are
   to be found in the histories of France by Michelet and Martin.
   
      Going a step further, we find cases in which the propensity to
   murder has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a tailor of
   Châlons was sentenced by the parliament of Paris to be burned alive
   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 a great relish. The number of little innocents whom he
   destroyed is unknown.
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   A whole caskful of bones was discovered in his house."15 About 1850 a
   beggar in the village of Polomyia, in Galicia, was proved to have
   killed and eaten fourteen children. A house had one day caught fire
   and burnt to the ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable
   to escape. The beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering
   from excessive hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a
   meal off the charred body. From that moment he was tormented by a
   craving for human flesh. He met a little orphan girl, about nine years
   old, and giving her a pinchbeck ring told her to seek for others like
   it under a tree in the neighbouring wood. She was slain, carried to
   the beggar's hovel, and eaten. In the course of three years thirteen
   other children mysteriously disappeared, but no one knew whom to
   suspect. At last an innkeeper missed a pair of ducks, and having no
   good opinion of this beggar's honesty, went unexpectedly to his cabin,
   burst suddenly in at the door, and to his horror found him in the act
   of hiding under his cloak a severed head; a bowl of fresh blood stood
   under the oven, and pieces of a thigh were cooking over the fire.16
   
      This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal, though
   ruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been subject to any
   mental delusion. But there have been a great many similar cases, in
   which the homicidal or cannibal craving has been accompanied by
   genuine hallucination. Forms of insanity in which the afflicted
   persons imagine themselves to be brute animals are not perhaps very
   common, but they are not unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man
   who believed himself to be a horse, and would stand by the hour
   together before a manger, nibbling hay, or deluding
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   himself with the presence of so doing. Many of the cannibals whose
   cases are related by Mr. Baring-Gould, in his chapter of horrors,
   actually believed themselves to have been transformed into wolves or
   other wild animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of thirteen, partially
   idiotic, and of strongly marked canine physiognomy; his jaws were
   large and projected forward, and his canine teeth were unnaturally
   long, so as to protrude beyond the lower lip. He believed himself to
   be a werewolf. One evening, meeting half a dozen young girls, he
   scared them out of their wits by telling them that as soon as the sun
   had set he would turn into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few days
   later, one little girl, having gone out at nightfall to look after the
   sheep, was attacked by some creature which in her terror she mistook
   for a wolf, but which afterwards proved to be none other than Jean
   Grenier. She beat him off with her sheep-staff, and fled home. As
   several children had mysteriously disappeared from the neighbourhood,
   Grenier was at once suspected. Being brought before the parliament of
   Bordeaux, he stated that two years ago he had met the Devil one night
   in the woods and had signed a compact with him and received from him a
   wolf-skin. Since then he had roamed about as a wolf after dark,
   resuming his human shape by daylight. He had killed and eaten several
   children whom he had found alone in the fields, and on one occasion he
   had entered a house while the family were out and taken the baby from
   its cradle. A careful investigation proved the truth of these
   statements, so far as the cannibalism was concerned. There is no doubt
   that the missing children were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no
   doubt that in his own mind the half-witted boy was firmly convinced
   that he was a wolf. Here the lycanthropy was complete.
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      In the year 1598, "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."17
   
      This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature under
   the dominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to
   pieces the corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether
   there were any wolves in the case, except what the excited
   imaginations of the men may have conjured up, I will not presume to
   determine; but it is certain that Roulet supposed himself to be a
   wolf, and killed and ate several persons under the influence of the
   delusion. He was sentenced to death, but the parliament of Paris
   reversed the sentence, and charitably shut him up in a madhouse.
   
      The annals of the Middle Ages furnish many cases similar to these
   of Grenier and Roulet. Their share in maintaining the werewolf
   superstition is undeniable; but modern science finds in them nothing
   that cannot be readily explained. That stupendous process of breeding,
   which we call civilization, has been for long ages strengthening those
   kindly social feelings by the possession of which we are chiefly
   distinguished from the brutes, leaving our primitive bestial impulses
   to die for want of exercise, or checking in every possible way their
   further
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   expansion by legislative enactments. But this process, which is
   transforming us from savages into civilized men, is a very slow one;
   and now and then there occur cases of what physiologists call atavism,
   or reversion to an ancestral type of character. Now and then persons
   are born, in civilized countries, whose intellectual powers are on a
   level with those of the most degraded Australian savage, and these we
   call idiots. And now and then persons are born possessed of the
   bestial appetites and cravings of primitive man, his fiendish cruelty
   and his liking for human flesh. Modern physiology knows how to
   classify and explain these abnormal cases, but to the unscientific
   mediæval mind they were explicable only on the hypothesis of a
   diabolical metamorphosis. And there is nothing strange in the fact
   that, in an age when the prevailing habits of thought rendered the
   transformation of men into beasts an easily admissible notion, these
   monsters of cruelty and depraved appetite should have been regarded as
   capable of taking on bestial forms. Nor is it strange that the
   hallucination under which these unfortunate wretches laboured should
   have taken such a shape as to account to their feeble intelligence for
   the existence of the appetites which they were conscious of not
   sharing with their neighbours and contemporaries. If a myth is a piece
   of unscientific philosophizing, it must sometimes be applied to the
   explanation of obscure psychological as well as of physical phenomena.
   Where the modern calmly taps his forehead and says, "Arrested
   development," the terrified ancient made the sign of the cross and
   cried, "Werewolf."
   
      We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for a
   moment to examine the wild superstitions about "changelings," which
   contributed, along with so many others, to make the lives of our
   ancestors anxious
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   and miserable. These superstitions were for the most part attempts to
   explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and other obscure nervous
   diseases. A man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, and whose
   actions have been consistent and rational, suddenly loses all
   self-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself. Modern
   science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it
   was explicable only on the hypothesis that a demon had entered the
   body of the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man
   and substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in
   stature and features. Hence the numerous legends of changelings, some
   of which are very curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one
   Rickard, surnamed the Rake, from his worthless character. A
   good-natured, idle fellow, he spent all his evenings in dancing, -- an
   accomplishment in which no one in the village could rival him. One
   night, in the midst of a lively reel, he fell down in a fit. "He 's
   struck with a fairy-dart," exclaimed all the friends, and they carried
   him home and nursed him; but his face grew so thin and his manner so
   morose that by and by all began to suspect that the true Rickard was
   gone and a changeling put in his place. Rickard, with all his
   accomplishments, was no musician; and so, in order to put the matter
   to a crucial test, a bagpipe was left in the room by the side of his
   bed. The trick succeeded. One hot summer's day, when all were supposed
   to be in the field making hay, some members of the family secreted in
   a clothes-press saw the bedroom door open a little way, and a lean,
   foxy face, with a pair of deep-sunken eyes, peer anxiously about the
   premises. Having satisfied itself that the coast was clear, the face
   withdrew, the door was closed, and presently such ravishing strains of
   music were heard as never proceeded from
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -87-
 
   a bagpipe before or since that day. Soon was heard the rustle of
   innumerable fairies, come to dance to the changeling's music. Then the
   "fairy-man" of the village, who was keeping watch with the family,
   heated a pair of tongs red-hot, and with deafening shouts all burst at
   once into the sick-chamber. The music had ceased and the room was
   empty, but in at the window glared a fiendish face, with such fearful
   looks of hatred, that for a moment all stood motionless with terror.
   But when the fairy-man, recovering himself, advanced with the hot
   tongs to pinch its nose, it vanished with an unearthly yell, and there
   on the bed was Rickard, safe and sound, and cured of his epilepsy.18
   
      Comparing this legend with numerous others relating to changelings,
   and stripping off the fantastic garb of fairy-lore with which popular
   imagination has invested them, it seems impossible to doubt that they
   have arisen from myths devised for the purpose of explaining the
   obscure phenomena of mental disease. If this be so, they afford an
   excellent collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The
   same mental habits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic
   person as a changeling, and which allowed them to explain catalepsy as
   the temporary departure of a witch's soul from its body, would enable
   them to attribute a wolf's nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal
   appetites. And when the myth-forming process had got thus far, it
   would not stop short of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible
   lupine body; for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such
   a transformation.
   
      It remains for us to sum up, -- to tie into a bunch the keys which
   have helped us to penetrate into the secret causes of the werewolf
   superstition. In a previous
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -88-
 
   paper we saw what a host of myths, fairy-tales, and superstitious
   observances have sprung from attempts to interpret one simple natural
   phenomenon, -- the descent of fire from the clouds. Here, on the other
   hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude of mythical elements may
   combine to build up in course of time a single enormous superstition,
   and we see how curiously fact and fancy have co-operated in keeping
   the superstition from falling. In the first place the worship of dead
   ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion of the transformation
   of men into divine or superhuman wolves; and this notion was confirmed
   by the ambiguous explanation of the storm-wind as the rushing of a
   troop of dead men's souls or as the howling of wolf-like monsters.
   Mediæval Christianity retained these conceptions, merely changing the
   superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally the occurrence of
   cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by lycanthropic
   hallucinations, being interpreted as due to such demoniacal
   metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle
   Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently
   ascribe the origin of the entire superstition, seemed to me to have
   played a very subordinate part in the matter. To suppose that Jean
   Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf
   sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a
   light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible. Yet as
   far as such verbal equivocations may have prevailed, they doubtless
   helped to sustain the delusion.
   
      Thus we need no longer regard our werewolf as an inexplicable
   creature of undetermined pedigree. But any account of him would be
   quite imperfect which should omit all consideration of the methods by
   which his
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -89-
 
   change of form was accomplished. By the ancient Romans the werewolf
   was commonly called a "skin-changer" or "turn-coat" (versipellis), and
   similar epithets were applied to him in the Middle Ages The mediæval
   theory was that, while the werewolf kept his human form, his hair grew
   inwards; when he wished to become a wolf, he simply turned himself
   inside out. In many trials on record, the prisoners were closely
   interrogated as to how this inversion might be accomplished; but I am
   not aware that any one of them ever gave a satisfactory answer. At the
   moment of change their memories seem to have become temporarily
   befogged. Now and then a poor wretch had his arms and legs cut off, or
   was partially flayed, in order that the ingrowing hair might be
   detected.19 Another theory was, that the possessed person had merely
   to put on a wolf's skin, in order to assume instantly the lupine form
   and character; and in this may perhaps be seen a vague reminiscence of
   the alleged fact that Berserkers were in the habit of haunting the
   woods by night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears.20 Such
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -90-
 
   a wolfskin was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand,
   confessed to using a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of
   becoming a werewolf was to obtain a girdle, usually made of human
   skin. Several cases are related in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology." One
   hot day in harvest-time some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade;
   when one of them, who could not sleep, saw the man next him arise
   quietly and gird him with a strap, whereupon he instantly vanished,
   and a wolf jumped up from among the sleepers and ran off across the
   fields. Another man, who possessed such a girdle, once went away from
   home without remembering to lock it up. His little son climbed up to
   the cupboard and got it, and as he proceeded to buckle it around his
   waist, he became instantly transformed into a strange-looking beast.
   Just then his father came in, and seizing the girdle restored the
   child to his natural shape. The boy said that no sooner had he buckled
   it on than he was tormented with a raging hunger.
   
      Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. At
   Caseburg, as a man and his wife were making hay, the woman threw down
   her pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beast
   should come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it.
   Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him. The man threw his hat at it,
   but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the
   animal with his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's dead
   body lay at his feet.
   
      A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -91-
 
   have the hat thrown at her, in order that she might be henceforth free
   from her liability to become a werewolf. A man was one night returning
   with his wife from a merry-making when he felt the change coming on.
   Giving his wife the reins, he jumped from the wagon, telling her to
   strike with her apron at any animal which might come to her. In a few
   moments a wolf ran up to the side of the vehicle, and, as the woman
   struck out with her apron, it bit off a piece and ran away. Presently
   the man returned with the piece of apron in his mouth and consoled his
   terrified wife with the information that the enchantment had left him
   forever.
   
      A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into the
   annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked
   by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the
   beast made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle
   luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off
   one of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made
   the best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend,
   to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a
   woman's hand, upon which was a wedding-ring. His wife's ring was at
   once recognized by the other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately
   went in search of his wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the
   kitchen, her arm hidden beneath her apron, when the husband, seizing
   her by the arm, found his terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding
   stump was there, evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given
   into custody, and in the event was burned at Riom, in presence of
   thousands of spectators."21
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -92-
 
      Sometimes a werewolf was cured merely by recognizing him while in
   his brute shape. A Swedish legend tells of a cottager who, on entering
   the forest one day without recollecting to say his Pater Noster,
   got into the power of a Troll, who changed him into a wolf. For many
   years his wife mourned him as dead. But one Christmas eve the old
   Troll, disguised as a beggar-woman, came to the house for alms; and
   being taken in and kindly treated, told the woman that her husband
   might very likely appear to her in wolf-shape. Going at night to the
   pantry to lay aside a joint of meat for tomorrow's dinner, she saw a
   wolf standing with its paws on the window-sill, looking wistfully in
   at her. "Ah, dearest," said she, "if I knew that thou wert really my
   husband, I would give thee a bone." Whereupon the wolf-skin fell off,
   and her husband stood before her in the same old clothes which he had
   on the day that the Troll got hold of him.
   
      In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to creep through a
   colt's placental membrane stretched between four sticks, she would for
   the rest of her life bring forth children without pain or illness; but
   all the boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls
   Maras, or nightmares. In this grotesque superstition appears that
   curious kinship between the werewolf and the wife or maiden of
   supernatural race, which serves admirably to illustrate the nature of
   both conceptions, and the elucidation of which shall occupy us
   throughout the remainder of this paper.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -93-
 
      It is, perhaps, needless to state that in the personality of the
   nightmare, or Mara, there was nothing equine. The Mara was a female
   demon,22 who would come at night and torment men or women by crouching
   on their chests or stomachs and stopping their respiration. The scene
   is well enough represented in Fuseli's picture, though the
   frenzied-looking horse which there accompanies the demon has no place
   in the original superstition. A Netherlandish story illustrates the
   character of the Mara. Two young men were in love with the same
   damsel. One of them, being tormented every night by a Mara, sought
   advice from his rival, and it was a treacherous counsel that he got.
   "Hold a sharp knife with the point towards your breast, and you 'll
   never see the Mara again," said this false friend. The lad thanked
   him, but when he lay down to rest he thought it as well to be on the
   safe side, and so held the knife handle downward. So when the Mara
   came, instead of forcing the blade into his breast, she cut herself
   badly, and fled howling; and let us hope, though the legend here
   leaves us in the dark, that this poor youth, who is said to have been
   the comelier of the two, revenged himself on his malicious rival by
   marrying the young lady.
   
      But the Mara sometimes appeared in less revolting shape, and became
   the mistress or even the wife of some mortal man to whom she happened
   to take a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on being recognized.
   There is a well-told monkish tale of a pious knight who, journeying
   one day through the forest, found a beautiful lady stripped naked and
   tied to a tree, her back all covered with deep gashes streaming with
   blood, from a flogging
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -94-
 
   which some bandits had given her. Of course he took her home to his
   castle and married her, and for a while they lived very happily
   together, and the fame of the lady's beauty was so great that kings
   and emperors held tournaments in honor of her. But this pious knight
   used to go to mass every Sunday, and greatly was he scandalized when
   he found that his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but
   would always get up and walk out of church just as the choir struck
   up. All her husband's coaxing was of no use; threats and entreaties
   were alike powerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange
   conduct. At last the good man determined to use force; and so one
   Sunday, as the lady got up to go out, according to custom, he seized
   her by the arm and sternly commanded her to remain. Her whole frame
   was suddenly convulsed, and her dark eyes gleamed with weird,
   unearthly brilliancy. The services paused for a moment, and all eyes
   were turned toward the knight and his lady. "In God's name, tell me
   what thou art," shouted the knight; and instantly, says the
   chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady melted away, and was seen no
   more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror, an evil spirit of
   monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel roof asunder,
   and disappeared in the air."
   
      In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, or
   Swan-maidens. A peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in the
   habit of coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until
   he discovered her creeping into the room through a small knot-hole in
   the door. Next day he made a peg, and after she had come to him, drove
   in the peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and
   lived together many years; but one night it happened that the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -95-
 
   man, joking with his wife about the way in which he had secured her,
   drew the peg from the knot-hole, that she might see how she had
   entered his room. As she peeped through, she became suddenly quite
   small, passed out, and was never seen again.
   
      The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient
   to account for the mediæval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's
   bosom and hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legends
   relating to the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is
   needed to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may interfere
   with our breathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through
   keyholes, nor does it bring wives from the spirit-world. The Mara
   belongs to an ancient family, and in passing from the regions of
   monkish superstition to those of pure mythology we find that, like her
   kinsman the werewolf, she had once seen better days. Christianity made
   a demon of the Mara, and adopted the theory that Satan employed these
   seductive creatures as agents for ruining human souls. Such is the
   character of the knight's wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But
   in the Danish tale the Mara appears as one of that large family of
   supernatural wives who are permitted to live with mortal men under
   certain conditions, but who are compelled to flee away when these
   conditions are broken, as is always sure to be the case. The eldest
   and one of the loveliest of this family is the Hindu nymph Urvasi,
   whose love adventures with Purûravas are narrated in the Puranas, and
   form the subject of the well-known and exquisite Sanskrit drama by
   Kalidasa. Urvasi is allowed to live with Purûravas so long as she does
   not see him undressed. But one night her kinsmen, the Gandharvas, or
   cloud-demons, vexed at her long absence from heaven, resolved to get
   her away from her mortal companion,
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -96-
 
   They stole a pet lamb which had been tied at the foot of her couch,
   whereat she bitterly upbraided her husband. In rage and mortification,
   Purûravas sprang up without throwing on his tunic, and grasping his
   sword sought the robber. Then the wicked Gandharvas sent a flash of
   lightning, and Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly vanished.
   
      The different versions of this legend, which have been elaborately
   analyzed by comparative mythologists, leave no doubt that Urvasi is
   one of the dawn-nymphs or bright fleecy clouds of early morning, which
   vanish as the splendour of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the
   preceding paper, that the ancient Aryans regarded the sky as a sea or
   great lake, and that the clouds were explained variously as Phaiakian
   ships with bird-like beaks sailing over this lake, or as bright birds
   of divers shapes and hues. The light fleecy cirrhi were regarded as
   mermaids, or as swans, or as maidens with swan's plumage. In Sanskrit
   they are called Apsaras, or "those who move in the water," and the
   Elves and Maras of Teutonic mythology have the same significance.
   Urvasi appears in one legend as a bird; and a South German prescription
   for getting rid of the Mara asserts that if she be wrapped up in the
   bedclothes and firmly held, a white dove will forthwith fly from the
   room, leaving the bedclothes empty.23
   
      In the story of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as a kind of
   mermaid, but in other respects the legend resembles that of Urvasi.
   Raymond, Count de la Forêt, of Poitou, having by an accident killed
   his patron and benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in terror
   and
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -97-
 
   despair into the deep recesses of the forest. All the afternoon and
   evening he wandered through the thick dark woods, until at midnight he
   came upon a strange scene. All at once "the boughs of the trees became
   less interlaced, and the trunks fewer; next moment his horse, crashing
   through the shrubs, brought him out on a pleasant glade, white with
   rime, and illumined by the new moon; in the midst bubbled up a limpid
   fountain, and flowed away over a pebbly-floor with a soothing murmur.
   Near the fountain-head sat three maidens in glimmering white dresses,
   with long waving golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty."24
   One of them advanced to meet Raymond, and according to all
   mythological precedent, they were betrothed before daybreak. In due
   time the fountain-nymph25 became Countess de la Forêt, but her husband
   was given to understand that all her Saturdays would be passed in
   strictest seclusion, upon which he must never dare to intrude, under
   penalty of losing her forever. For many years all went well, save that
   the fair Melusina's children were, without exception, misshapen or
   disfigured. But after a while this strange weekly seclusion got
   bruited about all over the neighbourhood, and people shook their heads
   and looked grave about it. So many gossiping tales came to the Count's
   ears, that he began to grow anxious and suspicious, and at last he
   determined to know the worst. He went one Saturday to Melusina's
   private apartments, and going through one empty room after another, at
   last came to a locked door which opened into a bath; looking through a
   keyhole, there he saw the Countess transformed from the waist
   downwards into a fish, disporting herself
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -98-
 
   like a mermaid in the water. Of course he could not keep the secret,
   but when some time afterwards they quarrelled, must needs address her
   as "a vile serpent, contaminator of his honourable race." So she
   disappeared through the window, but ever afterward hovered about her
   husband's castle of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one of its
   lords was about to die.
   
      The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save
   that the naiad's desire to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign
   to the spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which
   Christianity had inflicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of
   Dasent's tales the water-maiden is replaced by a kind of werewolf. A
   white bear marries a young girl, but assumes the human shape at night.
   She is never to look upon him in his human shape, but how could a
   young bride be expected to obey such an injunction as that? She lights
   a candle while he is sleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in
   the world; unluckily she drops tallow on his shirt, and that tells the
   story. But she is more fortunate than poor Raymond, for after a
   tiresome journey to the "land east of the sun and west of the moon,"
   and an arduous washing-match with a parcel of ugly Trolls, she washes
   out the spots, and ends her husband's enchantment.26
   
      In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or
   cloud-maiden, has a shirt of swan's feathers which plays the same part
   as the wolfskin cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get hold
   of a werewolf's sack and burn it, a permanent cure was effected. No
   danger of a relapse, unless the Devil furnished him with a new
   wolfskin. So the swan-maiden kept her human form, as
                      --------------------------------
   
                                    -99-
 
   long as she was deprived of her tunic of feathers. Indo-European
   folk-lore teems with stories of swan-maidens forcibly wooed and won by
   mortals who had stolen their clothes. A man travelling along the road
   passes by a lake where several lovely girls are bathing; their
   dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintily woven, lie on the
   shore. He approaches the place cautiously and steals one of these
   dresses.27 When the girls have finished their bathing, they all come
   and get their dresses and swim away as swans; but the one whose dress
   is stolen must needs stay on shore and marry the thief. It is needless
   to add that they live happily together for many years, or that finally
   the good man accidentally leaves the cupboard door unlocked, whereupon
   his wife gets back her swan-shirt and flies away from him, never to
   return. But it is not always a shirt of feathers. In one German story,
   a nobleman hunting deer finds a maiden bathing in a clear pool in the
   forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes her necklace, at which
   she loses the power to flee. They are married, and she bears seven
   sons at once, all of whom have gold chains about their necks, and are
   able to transform themselves into swans whenever they like. A Flemish
   legend tells of three Nixies, or water-sprites, who came out of the
   Meuse one autumn evening, and helped the villagers celebrate the end
   of the vintage. Such graceful dancers had never been seen in Flanders,
   and they could sing as well as they could dance. As the night was
   warm, one of them took off her gloves and gave them to her partner to
   hold for her. When the clock struck twelve the other two
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -100-
 
   started off in hot haste, and then there was a hue and cry for gloves.
   The lad would keep them as love-tokens, and so the poor Nixie had to
   go home without them; but she must have died on the way, for next
   morning the waters of the Meuse were blood-red, and those damsels
   never returned.
   
      In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals cast off their skins
   every ninth night, assume human forms, and sing and dance like men and
   women until daybreak, when they resume their skins and their seal
   natures. Of course a man once found and hid one of these sealskins,
   and so got a mermaid for a wife; and of course she recovered the skin
   and escaped.28 On the coasts of Ireland it is supposed to be quite an
   ordinary thing for young sea-fairies to get human husbands in this
   way; the brazen things even come to shore on purpose, and leave their
   red caps lying around for young men to pick up; but it behooves the
   husband to keep a strict watch over the red cap, if he would not see
   his children left motherless.
   
      This mermaid's cap has contributed its quota to the superstitions
   of witchcraft. An Irish story tells how Red James was aroused from
   sleep one night by noises in the kitchen. Going down to the door, he
   saw a lot of old women drinking punch around the fireplace, and
   laughing and joking with his housekeeper. When the punch-bowl was
   empty, they all put on red caps, and singing
   "By yarrow and rue,
   And my red cap too,
   Hie me over to England,"
   
      they flew up chimney. So Jimmy burst into the room, and seized the
   housekeeper's cap, and went along with
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -101-
 
   them. They flew across the sea to a castle in England, passed through
   the keyholes from room to room and into the cellar, where they had a
   famous carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, being unused to such good cheer, got
   drunk, and forgot to put on his cap when the others did. So next
   morning the lord's butler found him dead-drunk on the cellar floor,
   surrounded by empty casks. He was sentenced to be hung without any
   trial worth speaking of; but as he was carted to the gallows an old
   woman cried out, "Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would you be afther dyin' in a
   strange land without your red birredh?" The lord made no objections,
   and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Accordingly when Jimmy
   had got to the gallows and was making his last speech for the
   edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat
   irrelevantly exclaimed, "By yarrow and rue," etc., and was off like a
   rocket, shooting through the blue air en route for old Ireland.29
   
      In another Irish legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of
   a great house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins,
   so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their
   exuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feel
   inclined to ask. He desires only "an ould coat, to keep the chill off
   of him these could nights"; but as soon as he gets into the coat he
   resumes his human form and bids them good by, and thenceforth they may
   wash their own dishes and scour their own tins, for all him.
   
      But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maidens, and are in
   danger of losing ourselves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which
   is more intricate than any that Daidalos ever planned. The
   significance of all these sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid
   caps and werewolf-girdles
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -102-
 
   may best be sought in the etymology of words like the German leichnam,
   in which the body is described as a garment of flesh for the soul.30
   In the naïve philosophy of primitive thinkers, the soul, in passing
   from one visible shape to another, had only to put on the outward
   integument of the creature in which it wished to incarnate itself.
   With respect to the mode of metamorphosis, there is little difference
   between the werewolf and the swan-maiden; and the similarity is no
   less striking between the genesis of the two conceptions. The original
   werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a man-like deity and now
   as a howling lupine fiend; and the original swan-maiden is the light
   fleecy cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess or as a bird
   swimming in the sky sea. The one conception has been productive of
   little else but horrors; the other has given rise to a great variety
   of fanciful creations, from the treacherous mermaid and the fiendish
   nightmare to the gentle Undine, the charming Nausikaa, and the stately
   Muse of classic antiquity.
   
      We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry
   blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the
   wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a
   sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also
   been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land.
   The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered over
   Scandinavian battle-fields to receive the souls of falling heroes,
   were identical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of the Mussulman
   belong to the same family. Even for the angels, -- women with large
   wings, who are seen in popular pictures bearing mortals on high
   towards heaven, -- we can hardly
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -103-
 
   claim a different kinship. Melusina, when she leaves the castle of
   Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a common superstition
   among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with her comb and
   looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all on board.
   
   [1] Compare Plato, Republic, VIII. 15.
   
   [2] Were-wolf = man-wolf, wer meaning "man." Garou is a Gallic
   corruption of werewolf, so that loup-garou is a tautological expression.
   
   [3] Meyer, in Bunsen's Philosophy of Universal History, Vol. I. p. 151.
   
   [4] Aimoin, De Gestis Francorum, II. 5.
   [5] Taylor, Words and Places, p. 393.
   
   [6] Very similar to this is the etymological confusion upon which is
   based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh chapter
   of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of God";
   but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root
   balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation, --
   that Babel was a place where human speech became confused. See
   Rawlinson, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I. p. 149; Renan,
   Histoire des Langues Sémitiques, Vol. I. p. 32; Donaldson, New
   Cratylus, p. 74, note; Colenso on the Pentateuch, Vol. IV. p. 268.
   
   [7] Vilg. Æn. VIII. 322. With Latium compare, Skr. prath (to spread
   out), Eng. flat. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar of Greek, Latin, and
   Sanskrit, Vol. I. p. 31.
   
   [8] M'Lennan, "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnightly Review,
   N. S. Vol. VI. pp. 407-427, 562-582, Vol. VII. pp 194-216; Spencer,
   "The Origin of Animal Worship," Id. Vol. VII. pp. 535-550, reprinted
   in his Recent Discussions in Science, etc., pp. 31-56.
   
   [9] Thus is explained, the singular conduct of the Hindu, who slays
   himself before his enemy's door, in order to acquire greater power of
   injuring him. "A certain Brahman, on whose lands a Kshatriya raja had
   built a house, ripped himself up in revenge, and became a demon of the
   kind called Brahmadasyu, who has been ever since the terror of the
   whole country, and is the most common village-deity in Kharakpur.
   Toward the close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of
   whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty rupees;
   whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his own mother's
   head, with the professed view, entertained by both mother and son,
   that her spirit, excited by the beating of a large drum during forty
   days might haunt, torment, and pursue to death the taker of their
   money and those concerned with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol.
   II. p. 103.
   
   [10] Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still customary to open the
   windows when a person dies, in order that the soul may not be hindered
   in joining the mystic cavalcade.
   
   [11] The story of little Red Riding-Hood is "mutilated in the English
   version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can
   tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was
   swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, till they both came out
   safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." Tylor,
   Primitive Culture, I. 307, where also see the kindred Russian story of
   Vasilissa the Beautiful. Compare the case of Tom Thumb, who "was
   swallowed by the cow and came out unhurt"; the story of Saktideva
   swallowed by the fish and cut out again, in Somadeva Bhatta, II.
   118-184; and the story of Jonah swallowed by the whale, in the Old
   Testament. All these are different versions of the same myth, and
   refer to the alternate swallowing up and casting forth of Day by
   Night, which is commonly personified as a wolf, and now and then as a
   great fish. Compare Grimm's story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor,
   loc. cit., and see Early History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of
   Budhism, p. 501.
   
   [12] Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, II.
   435.
   
   [13] In those days even an after-dinner nap seems to have been thought
   uncanny. See Dasent, Burnt Njal, I. xxi.
   
   [14] See Dasent, Burnt Njai, Vol. I. p. xxii.; Grettis Saga, by
   Magnússon and Morris, chap. xix.; Viga Glum's Saga, by Sir Edmund
   Head, p. 13, note, where the Berserkers are said to have maddened
   themselves with drugs. Dasent compares them with the Malays, who work
   themselves into a frenzy by means of arrack, or hasheesh, and run
   amuck.
   
   [15] Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.
   
   [16] Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.
   
   [17] Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 82.
   
   [18] Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 90.
   
   [19] "En 1541, à Padoue, dit Wier, un homme qui se croyait changé en
   loup courait la campagne, attaquant et mettant à mort ceux qu'il
   rencontrait. Après bien des difficultés, on parvint s'emparer de lui.
   Il dit en confidence à ceux qui l'arrêtèrent: Je suis vraiment un
   loup, et si ma peau ne parait pas être celle d'un loup, c'est parce
   qu'elle est retournée et que les poils sont en dedans. -- Pour
   s'assurer du fait, on coupa le malheureux aux différentes parties du
   corps, on lui emporta les bras et les jambes." -- Taine, De
   l'Intelligence, Tom. II. p. 203.
   See the account of Slavonic werewolves in Ralston, Songs of the
   Russian People, pp. 404-418.
   
   [20] Mr. Cox, whose scepticism on obscure points in history rather
   surpasses that of Sir G. C. Lewis, dismisses with a sneer the subject
   of the Berserker madness, observing that "the unanimous testimony of
   the Norse historians is worth as much and as little as the convictions
   of Glanvil and Hale on the reality of witchcraft." I have not the
   special knowledge requisite for pronouncing an opinion on this point,
   but Mr. Cox's ordinary methods of disposing of such questions are not
   such as to make one feel obliged to accept his bare assertion,
   unaccompanied by critical arguments. The madness of the bearsarks may,
   no doubt, be the same thing us the frenzy of Herakles; but something
   more than mere dogmatism is needed to prove it.
   
   [21] Williams, Superstitions of Witchcraft, p. 179. See a parallel
   case of a cat-woman, in Thorpe's Northern Mythology, II. 26. "Certain
   witches at Thurso for a long time tormented an honest fellow under the
   usual form of cats, till one night he put them to flight with his
   broadsword, and cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest;
   taking it up, to his amazement he found it to be a woman's leg, and
   next morning he discovered the old hag its owner with but one leg
   left." -- Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 283.
   
   [22] "The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; compare
   Anglo-Saxon wudurmære (wood-mare) = echo." -- Tylor, Primitive Culture,
   Vol. II. p. 173.
   
   [23] See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 91; Weber, Indische Studien.
   I. 197; Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, II. 233-281 Müller,
   Chips, II. 114-128.
   
   [24] Baring-Gould, Curious Myths, II. 207.
   
   [25] The word nymph itself means "cloud-maiden," as is illustrated by
   the kinship between the Greek and the Latin nubes.
   
   [26] This is substantially identical with the stories of Beauty and
   the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.
   
   [27] The feather-dress reappears in the Arabianstory of Hasssn of
   El-Basrah, who by stealing it secures possession of the Jinniya. See
   Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 380. Ralston, Songs of the Russian
   People, p. 179.
   
   [28] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III. 173; Kennedy, Fictions of the
   Irish Celts, p. 123.
   
   [29] Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 168.
   
   [30] Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 133.
   October, 1870.