The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould (free ebook novel .TXT) đź“–
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such a look of rage, that she had fled in terror. She described the
animal as resembling a wolf, but as being shorter and stouter; its
hair was red, its tail stumpy, and the head smaller than that of a
genuine wolf.
The statement of the child produced general consternation in the
parish. It was well known that several little girls had vanished in a
most mysterious way of late, and the parents of these little ones were
thrown into an agony of terror lest their children had become the prey
of the wretched boy accused by Marguerite Poirier. The case was now
taken up by the authorities and brought before the parliament of
Bordeaux.
The investigation which followed was as complete as could be desired.
Jean Grenier was the son of a poor labourer in the village of S.
Antoine do Pizon, and not the son of a priest, as he had asserted.
Three months before his seizure he had left home, and had been with
several masters doing odd work, or wandering about the country
begging. He had been engaged several times to take charge of the
flocks belonging to farmers, and had as often been discharged for
neglect of his duties. The lad exhibited no reluctance to communicate
all he knew about himself, and his statements were tested one by one,
and were often proved to be correct.
The story he related of himself before the court was as follows:—
“When I was ten or eleven years old, my neighbour, Duthillaire,
introduced me, in the depths of the forest, to a M. de la Forest, a
black man, who signed me with his nail, and then gave to me and
Duthillaire a salve and a wolfskin. From that time have I run about
the country as a wolf.
“The charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct. My intention was to have
killed and devoured her, but she kept me off with a stick. I have only
killed one dog, a white one, and I did not drink its blood.”
When questioned touching the children, whom he said he had killed and
eaten as a wolf, he allowed that he had once entered an empty house on
the way between S. Coutras and S. Anlaye, in a small village, the name
of which he did not remember, and had found a child asleep in its
cradle; and as no one was within to hinder him, he dragged the baby
out of its cradle, carried it into the garden, leaped the hedge, and
devoured as much of it as satisfied his hunger. What remained he had
given to a wolf. In the parish of S. Antoine do Pizon he had attacked
a little girl, as she was keeping sheep. She was dressed in a black
frock; he did not know her name. He tore her with his nails and teeth,
and ate her. Six weeks before his capture he had fallen upon another
child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had
assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the
beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand.
Jean said that he had the wolfskin in his possession, and that he
went out hunting for children, at the command of his master, the Lord
of the Forest. Before transformation he smeared himself with the
salve, which be preserved in a small pot, and hid his clothes in the
thicket.
He usually ran his courses from one to two hours in the day, when the
moon was at the wane, but very often he made his expeditions at night.
On one occasion he had accompanied Duthillaire, but they had killed no
one.
He accused his father of having assisted him, and of possessing a
wolfskin; he charged him also with having accompanied him on one
occasion, when he attacked and ate a girl in the village of Grilland,
whom he had found tending a flock of geese. He said that his
stepmother was separated from his father. He believed the reason to
be, because she had seen him once vomit the paws of a dog and the
fingers of a child. He added that the Lord of the Forest had strictly
forbidden him to bite the thumb-nail of his left hand, which nail was
thicker and longer than the others, and had warned him never to lose
sight of it, as long as he was in his werewolf disguise.
Duthillaire was apprehended, and the father of Jean Grenier himself
claimed to be heard by examination.
The account given by the father and stepmother of Jean coincided in
many particulars with the statements made by their son.
The localities where Grenier declared he had fallen on children were
identified, the times when he said the deeds had been done accorded
with the dates given by the parents of the missing little ones, when
their losses had occurred.
The wounds which Jean affirmed that he had made, and the manner in
which he had dealt them, coincided with the descriptions given by the
children he had assaulted.
He was confronted with Marguerite Poirier, and he singled her out from
among five other girls, pointed to the still open gashes in her body,
and stated that he had made them with his teeth, when he attacked her
in wolf-form, and she had beaten him off with a stick. He described an
attack he had made on a little boy whom he would have slain, had not a
man come to the rescue, and exclaimed, “I’ll have you presently.”
The man who saved the child was found, and proved to be the uncle of
the rescued lad, and he corroborated the statement of Grenier, that he
had used the words mentioned above.
Jean was then confronted with his father. He now began to falter in
his story, and to change his statements. The examination had lasted
long, and it was seen that the feeble intellect of the boy was wearied
out, so the case was adjourned. When next confronted with the elder
Grenier, Jean told his story as at first, without changing it in any
important particular.
The fact of Jean Grenier having killed and eaten several children, and
of his having attacked and wounded others, with intent to take their
life, were fully established; but there was no proof whatever of the
father having had the least hand in any of the murders, so that he was
dismissed the court without a shadow of guilt upon him.
The only witness who corroborated the assertion of Jean that he
changed his shape into that of a wolf was Marguerite Poirier.
Before the court gave judgment, the first president of assize, in an
eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft and
diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly stated that
the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility of the
child, who was so dull and idiotic—that children of seven or eight
years old have usually a larger amount of reason than he. The
president went on to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy were mere
hallucinations, and that the change of shape existed only in the
disorganized brain of the insane, consequently it was not a crime
which could be punished. The tender age of the boy must be taken into
consideration, and the utter neglect of his education and moral
development. The court sentenced Grenier to perpetual imprisonment
within the walls of a monastery at Bordeaux, where he might be
instructed in his Christian and moral obligations; but any attempt to
escape would be punished with death.
A pleasant companion for the monks! a promising pupil for them to
instruct! No sooner was he admitted into the precincts of the
religious house, than he ran frantically about the cloister and
gardens upon all fours, and finding a heap of bloody and raw offal,
fell upon it and devoured it in an incredibly short space of time.
Delancre visited him seven years after, and found him diminutive in
stature, very shy, and unwilling to look any one in the face. His eyes
were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails
black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he
seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things. He related his story
to Delancre, and told him how he had run about formerly in the woods
as a wolf, and he said that he still felt a craving for raw flesh,
especially for that of little girls, which he said was delicious, and
he added that but for his confinement it would not be long before he
tasted it again. He said that the Lord of the Forest had visited him
twice in the prison, but that he had driven him off with the sign of
the cross. The account be then gave of his murders coincided exactly
with what had come out in his trial; and beside this, his story of the
compact he had made with the Black One, and the manner in which his
transformation was effected, also coincided with his former
statements.
He died at the age of twenty, after an imprisonment of seven years,
shortly after Delancre’s visit. [1]
[1. DELANCRE: Tableau de l’Iinconstance, p 305.]
In the two cases of Roulet and Grenier the courts referred the whole
matter of Lycanthropy, or animal transformation, to its true and
legitimate cause, an aberration of the brain. From this time medical
men seem to have regarded it as a form of mental malady to be brought
under their treatment, rather than as a crime to be punished by law.
But it is very fearful to contemplate that there may still exist
persons in the world filled with a morbid craving for human blood,
which is ready to impel them to commit the most horrible atrocities,
should they escape the vigilante of their guards, or break the bars of
the madhouse which restrains them.
CHAPTER VIII.
FOLKLORE RELATING TO WEREWOLVES.
Barrenness of English Folklore—Devonshire Traditions—Derivation of
Werewolf—Cannibalism in Scotland—The Angus Robber—The Carle of
Perth—French Superstitions—Norwegian Traditions—Danish Tales of
Werewolves—Holstein Stories—The Werewolf in the Netherlands—Among
the Greeks; the Serbs; the White Russians; the Poles; the Russians—A
Russian Receipt for becoming a Werewolf—The Bohemian
Vlkodlak—Armenian Story—Indian Tales—Abyssinian Budas—American
Transformation Tales—A Slovakian Household Tale—Similar Greek,
BĂ©arnais, and Icelandic Tales.
ENGLISH folklore is singularly barren of werewolf stories, the
reason being that wolves had been extirpated from England under the
Anglo-Saxon kings, and therefore ceased to be objects of dread to the
people. The traditional belief in werewolfism must, however, have
remained long in the popular mind, though at present it has
disappeared, for the word occurs in old ballads and romances. Thus in
Kempion—
O was it war-wolf in the wood?
Or was it mermaid in the sea?
Or was it man, or vile woman,
My ain true love, that misshaped thee?
There is also the romance of William and the Werewolf in Hartshorn;
[1] but this professes to be a translation from the French:—
[1. HARTSHORN: Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 256. See also “The Witch
Cake,” in CRUMEK’S Remains of Nithsdale Song.]
For he of Frenche this fayre tale ferst dede translate,
In ese of Englysch men in Englysch speche.
In the popular mind the cat or the hare have taken the place of the
wolf for witches’ transformation, and we hear often of the hags
attending the devil’s Sabbath in these forms.
In Devonshire they range the moors in the shape of black dogs, and I
know a story of two such creatures appearing in an
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