The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould (best way to read books .txt) 📖

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 were-wolf 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 were-wolves, 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 were-wolf 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 were-wolf, 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 were-wolves which helped on the superstition. The word _vargr_, a wolf, had a double significance, which would be the means of originating many a were-wolf 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 were-wolf, and the _garou_ or _varou_ in French. The Danish word for were-wolf 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 out-laws 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 were-wolves 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 were-wolf 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 WERE-WOLF 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 themselves, and then spread to rage with wondrous ferocity against human beings, and those animals which are not wild, that the natives of these regions suffer more detriment from these, than they do from true and natural wolves; for when a human habitation has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity, striving to break in the doors,