The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould (free ebook novel .TXT) 📖

who were seated at the end of the bridge

sprang up and called to the people on board to wake up, for there was

danger in the wind. So Hallvard and his men sprang to arms. Then came

Kveldulf over the bridge and Skallagrim with him into the ship.

Kveldulf had in his hand a cleaver, and he bade his men go through the

vessel and hack away the awning. But he pressed on to the

quarter-deck. It is said the werewolf fit came over him and many of

his companions. They slow all the men who were before them. Skallagrim

did the same as he went round the vessel. He and his father paused not

till they had cleared it. Now when Kveldulf came upon the quarter-deck

he raised his cleaver, and smote Hallvard through helm and head, so

that the haft was buried in the flesh; but he dragged it to him so

violently that he whisked Hallvard into the air., and flung him

overboard. Skallagrim cleared the forecastle and slew Sigtrygg. Many

men flung themselves overboard, but Skallagrim’s men took to the boat

and rowed about, killing all they found. Thus perished Hallvard with

fifty men. Skallagrim and his party took the ship and all the goods

which had belonged to Hallvard … and flitted it and the wares to

their own vessel, and then exchanged ships, lading their capture, but

quitting their own. After which they filled their old ship with

stones, brake it up and sank it. A good breeze sprang up, and they

stood out to sea.

 

It is said of these men in the engagement who were werewolves, or

those on whom came the berserkr rage, that as long as the fit was on

them no one could oppose them, they were so strong; but when it had

passed off they were feebler than usual. It was the same with Kveldulf

when the werewolf fit went off him—he then felt the exhaustion

consequent on the fight, and he was so completely ‘done up,’ that he

was obliged to take to his bed.”

 

In like manner Skallagrim had his fits of frenzy, taking after his

amiable father.

 

“Thord and his companion were opposed to Skallagrim in the game, and

they were too much for him, he wearied, and the game went better with

them. But at dusk, after sunset, it went worse with Egill and Thord,

for Skallagrim became so strong that he caught up Thord and cast him

down, so that he broke his bones, and that was the death of him. Then

he caught at Egill. Thorgerd Brák was the name of a servant of

Skallagrim, who had been foster-mother to Egill. She was a woman of

great stature, strong as a man and a bit of a witch. Brák

exclaimed,—‘Skallagrim! are you now falling upon your son?’ (hamaz þú

at syni þínum). Then Skallagrim let go his hold of Egill and clutched

at her. She started aside and fled. Skallagrim. followed. They ran out

upon Digraness, and she sprang off the headland into the water.

Skallagrim cast after her a huge stone which struck her between the

shoulders, and she never rose after it. The place is now called Brak’s

Sound.”—(c. 40.)

 

Let it be observed that in these passages from the Aigla, the words

að hamaz, hamrammr, &c. are used without any intention of conveying

the idea of a change of bodily shape, though the words taken literally

assert it. For they are derived from hamr, a skin or habit; a word

which has its representatives in other Aryan languages, and is

therefore a primitive word expressive of the skin of a beast.

 

The Sanskrit ### carmma; the Hindustanee ### cam, hide or skin;

and ### camra, leather; the Persian ### game, clothing, disguise;

the Gothic ham or hams, skin; and even the Italian camicia, and

the French chemise, are cognate words. [1]

 

[1. I shall have more to say on this subject in the chapter on the

Mythology of Lycanthropy.]

 

It seems probable accordingly that the verb að hamaz was first

applied to those who wore the skins of savage animals, and went about

the country as freebooters; but that popular superstition soon

invested them with supernatural powers, and they were supposed to

assume the forms of the beasts in whose skins they were disguised. The

verb then acquired the significance “to become a werewolf, to change

shape.” It did not stop there, but went through another change of

meaning, and was finally applied to those who were afflicted with

paroxysms of madness or demoniacal possession.

 

This was not the only word connected with werewolves which helped on

the superstition. The word vargr, a wolf, had a double significance,

which would be the means of originating many a werewolf story.

Vargr is the same as u-argr, restless; argr being the same as

the Anglo-Saxon earg. Vargr had its double signification in Norse.

It signified a wolf, and also a godless man. This vargr is the

English were, in the word werewolf, and the garou or varou in

French. The Danish word for werewolf is var-ulf, the Gothic

vaira-ulf. In the Romans de Garin, it is “Leu warou, sanglante

beste.” In the Vie de S. Hildefons by Gauthier de Coinsi,—

 

Cil lon desve, cil lou garol,

Ce sunt deable, que saul

Ne puent estre de nos mordre.

 

Here the loup-garou is a devil. The Anglo-Saxons regarded him as an

evil man: wearg, a scoundrel; Gothic varys, a fiend. But very

often the word meant no more than an outlaw. Pluquet in his _Contes

Populaires_ tells us that the ancient Norman laws said of the

criminals condemned to outlawry for certain offences, Wargus esto:

be an outlaw!

 

In like manner the Lex Ripuaria, tit. 87, “Wargus sit, hoe est

expulsus.” In the laws of Canute, he is called verevulf. (_Leges

Canuti_, Schmid, i. 148.) And the Salic Law (tit. 57) orders: “Si quis

corpus jam sepultum effoderit, aut expoliaverit, wargus sit.” “If

any one shall have dug up or despoiled an already buried corpse, let

him be a varg.”

 

Sidonius Apollinaris. says, “Unam feminam quam forte vargorum, hoc

enim nomine indigenas latrunculos nuncupant,” as though the common

name by which those who lived a freebooter life were designated, was

varg.

 

In like manner Palgrave assures us in his _Rise and Progress of the

English Commonwealth_, that among the Anglo, Saxons an utlagh, or

out-law, was said to have the head of a wolf. If then the term vargr

was applied at one time to a wolf, at another to an outlaw who lived

the life of a wild beast, away from the haunts of men “he shall be

driven away as a wolf, and chased so far as men chase wolves

farthest,” was the legal form of sentence—it is certainly no matter

of wonder that stories of outlaws should have become surrounded with

mythical accounts of their transformation into wolves.

 

But the very idiom of the Norse was calculated to foster this

superstition. The Icelanders had curious expressions which are

sufficiently likely to have produced misconceptions.

 

[1. SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS: Opera, lib. vi. ep. 4.]

 

Snorri not only relates that Odin changed himself into another form,

but he adds that by his spells he turned his enemies into boars. In

precisely the same manner does a hag, Ljot, in the Vatnsdæla Saga, say

that she could have turned Thorsteinn and Jökull into boars to run

about with the wild beasts (c. xxvi.); and the expression _verða at

gjalti_, or at gjöltum, to become a boar, is frequently met with in

the Sagas.

 

“Thereupon came Thorarinn and his men upon them, and Nagli led the

way; but when he saw weapons drawn he was frightened, and ran away up

the mountain, and became a boar… . And Thorarinn and his men took

to run, so as to help Nagli, lest he should tumble off the cliffs into

the sea” (Eyrbyggja Saga, c. xviii.) A similar expression occurs in

the Gisla Saga Surssonar, p. 50. In the Hrolfs Saga Kraka, we meet

with a troll in boar’s shape, to whom divine honours are paid; and in

the Kjalnessinga Saga, c. xv., men are likened to boars—“Then it

began to fare with them as it fares with boars when they fight each

other, for in the same manner dropped their foam.” The true

signification of verða at gjalti is to be in such a state of fear as

to lose the senses; but it is sufficiently peculiar to have given rise

to superstitious stories.

 

I have dwelt at some length on the Northern myths relative to

werewolves and animal transformations, because I have considered the

investigation of these all-important towards the elucidation of the

truth which lies at the bottom of mediæval superstition, and which is

nowhere so obtainable as through the Norse literature. As may be seen

from the passages quoted above at length, and from an examination of

those merely referred to, the result arrived at is pretty conclusive,

and may be summed up in very few words.

 

The whole superstructure of fable and romance relative to

transformation into wild beasts, reposes simply on this basis of

truth—that among the Scandinavian nations there existed a form of

madness or possession, under the influence of which men acted as

though they were changed into wild and savage brutes, howling, foaming

at the mouth, ravening for blood and slaughter, ready to commit any

act of atrocity, and as irresponsible for their actions as the wolves

and bears, in whose skins they often equipped themselves.

 

The manner in which this fact became invested with supernatural

adjuncts I have also pointed out, to wit, the change in the

significance of the word designating the madness, the double meaning

of the word vargr, and above all, the habits and appearance of the

maniacs. We shall see instances of berserkr rage reappearing in the

middle ages, and late down into our own times, not exclusively in the

North, but throughout France, Germany, and England, and instead of

rejecting the accounts given by chroniclers as fabulous, because there

is much connected with them which seems to be fabulous, we shall be

able to refer them to their true origin.

 

It may be accepted as an axiom, that no superstition of general

acceptance is destitute of a foundation of truth; and if we discover

the myth of the werewolf to be widely spread, not only throughout

Europe, but through the whole world, we may rest assured that there is

a solid core of fact, round which popular superstition has

crystallized; and that fact is the existence of a species of madness,

during the accesses of which the person afflicted believes himself to

be a wild beast, and acts like a wild beast.

 

In some cases this madness amounts apparently to positive possession,

and the diabolical acts into which the possessed is impelled are so

horrible, that the blood curdles in reading them, and it is impossible

to recall them without a shudder.

 

CHAPTER V.

 

THE WEREWOLF IN THE MIDDLE-AGES.

 

Olaus Magnus relates that—“In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania,

although the inhabitants suffer considerably from the rapacity of

wolves throughout the year, in that these animals rend their cattle,

which are scattered in great numbers through the woods, whenever they

stray in the very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a

serious matter as what they endure from men turned into wolves.

 

“On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, at night, such a multitude of

wolves transformed from men gather together in a certain spot,

arranged among