The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould (free ebook novel .TXT) 📖
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anointed all over, she whispered many magic words to a lamp, as if she
were talking to it. Then she began to move her arms, first with
tremulous jerks, and afterwards by a gentle undulating motion, till a
glittering, downy surface by degrees overspread her body, feathers and
strong quills burst forth suddenly, her nose became a hard crooked
beak, her toes changed to curved talons, and Pamphile was no longer
Pamphile, but it was an owl I saw before me. And now, uttering a
harsh, querulous scream, leaping from the ground by little and little,
in order to try her powers, and presently poising herself aloft on her
pinions, she stretched forth her wings on either Side to their full
extent, and flew straight away.
“Having now been actually a witness of the performance of the magical
art, and of the metamorphosis of Pamphile, I remained for some time in
a stupefied state of astonishment… . At last, after I had rubbed
my eyes some time, had recovered a little from the amazement and
abstraction of mind, and begun to feel a consciousness of the reality
of things about me, I took hold of the hand of Fotis and said,—‘Sweet
damsel, bring me, I beseech thee, a portion of the ointment with which
thy mistress hath just now anointed, and when thou hast made me a
bird, I will be thy slave, and even wait upon thee like a winged
Cupid.’ Accordingly she crept gently into the apartment, quickly
returned with the box of ointment, hastily placed it in my hands, and
then immediately departed.
“Elated to an extraordinary degree at the sight of the precious
treasure, I kissed the box several times successively; and uttering
repeated aspirations in hopes of a prosperous flight, I stripped off
my clothes as quick as possible, dipped my fingers greedily into the
box, and having thence extracted a good large lump of ointment, rubbed
it all over my body and limbs. When I was thoroughly anointed, I swung
my arms up and down, in imitation of the movement of a bird’s pinions,
and continued to do so a little while, when instead of any perceptible
token of feathers or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin,
alas! grew into a hard leathern hide, covered with bristly hair, my
fingers and toes disappeared, the palms of my hands and the soles of
my feet became four solid hoofs, and from the end of my spine a long
tail projected. My face was enormous, my mouth wide, my nostrils
gaping, my lips pendulous, and I had a pair of immoderately long,
rough, hairy ears. In short, when I came to contemplate my
transformation to its full extent, I found that, instead of a bird, I
had become—an ASS.” [1]
[1. APULEIUS, Sir George Head’s translation, bk. iii.]
Of what these magical salves were composed we know. They were composed
of narcotics, to wit, Solanum somniferum, aconite, hyoscyamus,
belladonna, opium, acorus vulgaris, sium. These were boiled down
with oil, or the fat of little children who were murdered for the
purpose. The blood of a bat was added, but its effects could have been
nil. To these may have been added other foreign narcotics, the names
of which have not transpired.
Whatever may have been the cause of the hallucination, it is not
surprising that the lycanthropist should have imagined himself
transformed into a beast. The cases I have instanced are those of
shepherds, who were by nature of their employment, brought into
collision with wolves; and it is not surprising that these persons, in
a condition liable to hallucinations, should imagine themselves to be
transformed into wild beasts, and that their minds reverting to the
injuries sustained from these animals, they should, in their state of
temporary insanity, accuse themselves of the acts of rapacity
committed by the beasts into which they believed themselves to be
transformed. It is a well-known fact that men, whose minds are
unhinged, will deliver themselves up to justice, accusing themselves
of having committed crimes which have actually taken place, and it is
only on investigation that their self-accusation proves to be false;
and yet they will describe the circumstances with the greatest
minuteness, and be thoroughly convinced of their own criminality. I
need give but a single instance.
In the war of the French Revolution, the Hermione frigate was
commanded by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and a severe commander. His crew
mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy’s port, having murdered
the captain and several of the officers, under circumstances of
extreme barbarity. One midshipman escaped, by whom many of the
criminals, who were afterwards taken and delivered over to justice,
one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson, the Government actuary,
who at that time held an official situation in the Admiralty,
states:—“In my own experience I have known, on separate occasions,
more than six sailors who voluntarily confessed to having struck the
first blow at Capt. Pigot. These men detailed all the horrid
circumstances of the mutiny with extreme minuteness and perfect
accuracy; nevertheless, not one of them had ever been in the ship, nor
had so much as seen Capt. Pigot in their lives. They had obtained by
tradition, from their messmates, the particulars of the story. When
long on a foreign station, hungering and thirsting for home, their
minds became enfeebled; at length they actually believed themselves
guilty of the crime over which they had so long brooded, and submitted
with a gloomy pleasure to being sent to England in irons, for
judgment. At the Admiralty we were always able to detect and establish
their innocence, in defiance of their own solemn
asseverations.”—(_London Judicial Gazette_, January, 1803.)
CHAPTER X.
MYTHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE WEREWOLF MYTH.
Transformation into beasts forms an integral portion of all
mythological systems. The gods of Greece were wont to change
themselves into animals in order to carry out their designs with
greater speed, security, and secrecy, than in human forms. In
Scandinavian mythology, Odin changed himself into the shape of an
eagle, Loki into that of a salmon. Eastern religions abound in stories
of transformation.
The line of demarcation between this and the translation of a beast’s
soul into man, or a man’s soul into a beast’s (metempsychosis) is very
narrow.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness of
gradation between beasts and men. The belief in a soul-endowed animal
world was present among the ancients, and the laws of intelligence and
instinct were misconstrued, or were regarded as a puzzle, which no man
might solve.
The human soul with its consciousness seemed to be something already
perfected in a pre-existing state, and, in the myth of metempsychosis,
we trace the yearnings and gropings of the soul after the source
whence its own consciousness was derived, counting its dreams and
hallucinations as gleams of memory, recording acts which had taken
place in a former state of existence.
Modern philosophy has resumed the same thread of conjecture, and
thinks to see in man the perfected development of lower organisms.
After death the translation of the soul was supposed to continue. It
became either absorbed into the nous, into Brahma, into the deity,
or it sank in the scale of creation, and was degraded to animate a
brute. Thus the doctrine of metempsychosis was emphatically one of
rewards and punishments, for the condition of the soul after death
depended on its training during life. A savage and bloodthirsty man
was exiled, as in the case of Lycaon, into the body of a wild beast:
the soul of a timorous man entered a hare, and drunkards or gluttons
became swine.
The intelligence which was manifest in the beasts bore such a close
resemblance to that of man, in the childhood and youth of the world,
that it is not to be wondered at, if our forefathers failed to detect
the line of demarcation drawn between instinct and reason. And failing
to distinguish this, they naturally fell into the belief in
metempsychosis.
It was not merely a fancied external resemblance between the beast and
man, but it was the perception of skill, pursuits, desires,
sufferings, and griefs like his own, in the animal creation, which led
man to detect within the beast something analogous to the soul within
himself; and this, notwithstanding the points of contrast existing
between them, elicited in his mind so strong a sympathy that, without
a great stretch of imagination, he invested the beast with his own
attributes, and with the full powers of his own understanding. He
regarded it as actuated by the same motives, as subject to the same
laws of honour, as moved by the same prejudices, and the higher the
beast was in the scale, the more he regarded it as an equal. A
singular illustration of this will be found in the Finnboga Saga, c.
xi.
“Now we must relate about Finnbog. Afterward in the evening, when men
slept, he rose, took his weapons, and went forth, following the tracks
which led to the dairy farm. As was his wont, he stepped out briskly
along the spoor till he came to the dairy. There he found the bear
lying down, and he had slain the sheep, and he was lying on them
lapping their blood. Then said Finnbog: ‘Stand up, Brain! make ready
against me; that becomes you more than crouching over those sheep’s
carcases.’
“The bear sat up, looked at him, and lay down again. Finnbog said, ‘If
you think that I am too fully armed to match with you, I will do
this,’ and he took of his helmet and laid aside his shield. Then he
said, Stand up now, if you dare! ‘
“The bear sat up, shook his head, and then cast himself down again.
“Finnbog exclaimed, ‘I see, you want us both to be boune alike!’ so
he flung aside his sword and said, ‘Be it as you will; now stand up if
you have the heart that I believe you have, rather than one such as
was possessed by these rent sheep.’
“Then Bruin stood up and prepared to fight.”
The following story taken from the mouth of an Osage Indian by J. A.
Jones, and published in his _Traditions of the North American
Indians_, shows how thoroughly the savage mind misses the line of
demarcation between instinct and reason, and how the man of the woods
looks upon beasts as standing on an equality with himself.
An Osage warrior is in search of a wife: he admires the tidy and
shrewd habits of the beaver. He accordingly goes to a beaver-hut to
obtain one of that race for a bride. “In one corner of the room sat a
beaver-woman combing the heads of some little beavers, whose ears she
boxed very soundly when they would not lie still. The warrior, i. e.
the beaver-chief, whispered the Osage that she was his second wife,
and was very apt to be cross when there was work to be done, which
prevented her from going to see her neighbours. Those whose heads she
was combing were her children, he said, and she who had made them rub
their noses against each other and be friends, was his eldest
daughter. Then calling aloud, ‘Wife,’ said he, ‘what have you to eat?
The stranger is undoubtedly hungry; see, he is pale, his eye has no
fire, and his step is like that of a moose.’
“Without replying to him, for it was a sulky day with her, she called
aloud, and a dirty-looking beaver entered. ‘Go,’ said she, ‘and fetch
the stranger something to eat.’ With that the beaver girl passed
through a small door into another room, from which she soon returned,
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