Wolf-Madness (Lycanthropy) By A. M. Judd 1897
PART I.
By Wolf-madness is meant, not hydrophobia (rabies), which occasionally attacks wolves as well as other animals, but that far more terrible malady, which, in almost all nations, and in all ages, afflicted men and made them fancy themselves wolves, and act as such.
Half the world believed that certain persons had the power of changing themselves into beasts, and indeed the superstition is not wholly extinct in the present day. In parts of France the peasants still firmly believe in the loups-garoux, and will not pass their haunts after nightfall.
Wehr-wolves were called by different names in different places. The French called them loups-garoux; the Bretons, Bisclaveret; in Normandy they were designated garwolves, and they were known in the Perigord as louleerous. With regard to these latter, bastards were supposed to be obliged at each full moon to transform themselves into these beasts, and in the form of louleerous to pass the night ranging over the country, biting and devouring any animals, but more especially dogs, they might meet. Sometimes they were made ill in consequence of having eaten tough old hounds, and vomited up their undigested paws.
The belief in wehr-wolves has come down from the earliest times, from ancient mythology and classic fable. Ovid tells the story of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, who, to test the omniscience of Jupiter, served up for him a dish of human flesh, and was promptly punished by the god for his insolence, by being transformed into a wolf.
That there was a wide-spread superstition of lycanthropy, or wolf-madness, is undoubted, and the belief in a creature combining human intelligence with wolfish ferocity and demoniac strength, was especially strong and prevalent in the middle ages. To this day the idea is still cherished by peasants in remote and secluded parts of Europe.
There was a basis of truth on which the wehr-wolf superstition rested. The old Norse freebooters were celebrated for the murderous frenzy, "Berseker rage," which possessed them at times. The craving for blood and rapine, stimulated by their ravages in summer climes, was developed at home into a strange homicidal madness. When the fit was on them, they would go forth at night, dressed in the skins of wolves and bears, and crush the skulls, or cleave the backbones of any unfortunate belated traveller they might meet, whose blood they sometimes drank. In their frenzied excitement, they acquired superhuman strength and insensibility to pain, and, as they rushed about with glaring eyeballs, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth, and howling like wild beasts, it is not strange that the terrified peasantry should have regarded them as veritable wehr-wolves. Great exhaustion and nervous depression followed these attacks. According to the Norse historians this "Berseker rage" was extinguished by baptism.
The belief in these transformations in the middle ages derived a new and terrible significance from its connection with witchcraft. The ancients regarded the subjects of metamorphoses with superstitious reverence. Divine natures were believed to assume earthly forms, and human beings were supposed to assume, after death, the shapes of those animals their natures most resembled, but these mythological conceptions were degraded by the mediaeval Christians, into diabolical influences. The Church, jealous of miraculous powers exercised beyond its pale, denounced the wehr-wolf as a devil. Thus a person suspected of beast metamorphosis ran the double risk of losing both his soul and his life, of being anathematized by the clergy, and then burnt at the stake. Ignorance of the phenomena of mental disease led to a belief that its victims were ministers of the Evil One, and even mere eccentricity was often fatal to its unfortunate possessor. These ideas were strengthened by some terrible instances of homicidal insanity, occasionally accompanied by cannibalism and lycanthropic hallucinations which were often ascribed to demoniac agency.
The saints were believed to have a power similar to that of the demons. Vereticus, king of Wales, was said to have been transformed into a wolf by St. Patrick, and another saint doomed the members of an illustrious family in Ireland to become wolves for seven years, prowling among the bogs and forests, uttering mournful howls, and devouring the peasants' sheep to allay their hunger.
Though imprisoned in a lupine form, the unfortunate victims were believed to retain their human consciousness, and in some cases their voices, and to yearn for an alleviation of their condition.
The superstitious belief in lycanthropy is of very remote antiquity and its origin is involved in much obscurity. It pervaded Greece, Rome, Germany and other nations; even in England it was prevalent in the middle ages, and was supposed to have come down from the Chaldeans and other nomadic people, who had unceasingly to defend their flocks from the attacks of wolves. The terror that those ferocious beasts spread by prowling at night round the folds proved favourable to malefactors, who, assuming the guise of furious wolves, were the better enabled to perpetrate acts of theft or vengeance.
This lycanthropy was a disease, and a very terrible one. The victims of the hallucination that they were wehr-wolves were undoubted madmen who fully believed they were able to transform themselves into wolves. At the present day some of the inmates of lunatic asylums fancy they can turn themselves at will into beasts, and howl and gnash their teeth in decided wolfish fashion.
Sometimes the wehr-wolves were satisfied with rending and tearing sheep and drinking their blood, but in others this insane appetite took the still more horrible form of cannibalism. Animal flesh would not satisfy their dreadful cravings; human beings, generally children, falling victims to this frightfully depraved taste.
There is another revolting phase that this madness took. Occasionally persons were transformed into human hyenas. Their craving was not, as was that of lycanthropists, for fresh, warm human flesh, they preferred their tit-bits to have been kept some time, as game is hung in order to make it tender; in other words these hyena victims of the terrible malady preferred to dig the corpses out of the graveyards. They were seized with an irresistible desire to enter cemeteries and rifle the newly-made graves so that they might enjoy their gruesome repast.
Strangely enough, these human ghouls were sometimes found in the ranks of the upper classes, unlike the majority of those who killed their victims; these latter being, for the greater part, composed of the most poverty-stricken, ignorant and degraded, of a very low type of intellectual and moral development.
So lately as 1849, one of these ghouls was discovered in Paris. He was a French officer named Bertrand. Delicate and refined in appearance, he was beloved by his comrades for his generous and cheerful qualities. He was, however, of retiring habits, and occasionally subject to fits of depression; but no one had any idea of his ghoulish propensities till they were brought to light.
In the autumn of 1848 several of the cemeteries in the neighbourhood of Paris were found to have been entered during the night, and some of the graves rifled.
It was at first supposed that wild beasts were the perpetrators of these outrages; but footprints in the soft earth showed that it was a man.
Close watch was kept in Pere la Chaise, and the outrages there ceased. But in the following winter other cemeteries were ravaged.
It was not until the March of 1849 that the depredator was discovered by means of a spring gun, which had been set in the cemetery of St. Parnasse. One night it went oft, and the watchers rushed to the spot, just in time to see a dark figure in a military cloak leap over the wall and disappear in the darkness, but not without leaving traces behind; there were marks of blood and a fragment of blue cloth, and these were the means of bringing the guilt home to Bertrand.
He was an officer in the 1st Infantry regiment; and when he was cured of his wound, he was tried by court-martial, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. He said that the madness suddenly came upon him one day when, walking in a cemetery, he saw a grave not yet filled in, and a spade near at hand. He soon dragged the corpse out and hacked it about with the spade. After this he visited the cemeteries at night, and dug up various corpses, principally women and little girls, and mutilated them in a horrible manner, some he chopped up with the spade, others he ripped and tore with his teeth and nails, rending the flesh from the bones. Sometimes he tore the mouth open, and rent the face back to the ears; he opened the stomachs, pulled off the limbs, and scattering the pieces around, rolled among the fragments. He used to dig up the bodies of men also, but never felt any inclination to mutilate them; it was female corpses he used to delight in rending.
It was excess in drinking that first brought on this horrible madness, and after these accesses of diabolical ghoulishness he would fall into fits of utter exhaustion and helplessness, when, after crawling to some place of concealment he would lie prone on the ground for hours, no matter what the weather might be, unable to stir or rise. It is not stated whether he went on with his ghoul's work after he was liberated from the year's imprisonment to which he was sentenced.
Bertrand's case shows how the brute still underlies the polish of civilization. He was not accounted mad, yet these fits of cannibalism must have been due to some form of insanity, and he seemed totally unable to control his dreadful appetite.
Somehow, much more horrible interest appears to centre on these nineteenth-century miscreants, such as Bertrand and Swiatek, than on those of former and remoter ages. There might have been exaggeration and mis-statements about the ancient men-beasts, but there could be none about their modern prototypes.
Ghouls and vampires have some connection with lycanthropists, for they were supposed in the daytime to be able to turn themselves into wolves or hyenas, while on moonlight nights they would steal among the tombs, and burrowing into them with their long nails, they disinterred the bodies of the dead ere the first streak of dawn compelled them to retire from their unhallowed feast.
To such an extent did the fear of ghouls extend in Brittany, that it was customary to keep lamps burning during the night in churchyards, so that the witches might be deterred from venturing, under cover of darkness, to violate the graves. It was supposed that troops of female ghouls used to appear upon battlefields unearthing the hastily buried bodies of the soldiers and devouring the flesh off their bones.
That the belief in vampires is not extinct in the present day, the following, which appeared in the Standard of May 11th, 1893, will show. "Eleven peasants in the Polish village of Muszina, in Galicia, actuated by a superstition that the recent frosts were the work of a vampire which had entered into an old man who had lately been buried, opened the grave, beheaded the body, and pierced the heart with a stake. They were all arrested."
There was a very ghastly idea in Normandy, that the loup-garou was sometimes a metamorphosis forced upon the body of a damned person, who, after being tormented in his grave, worked his way out of it. It was supposed that he first devoured the cerecloth which enveloped his face, then his moans and muffled howls rang from the tomb through the gloom of night, the earth of the grave began to heave, and at last, having torn his way up, with a scream, surrounded by a phosphorescent glare, and exhaling a foetid odour, he burst away as a wolf.
Sometimes the transformed was supposed to be a white dog that haunted churchyards. With regard to this latter superstition, at this day in some country places in England, the farmers hold white animals to be unlucky, and will not choose white horses, cats or dogs, and consider it an omen of misfortune if they come across a white hare or rabbit. Some two or three years ago the writer was in Devonshire, and near the place where he took up his temporary abode was a very picturesque-looking churchyard. One moonlight evening, all unconscious of there being anything unusual in it, he announced his intention of sitting there for an hour or so before turning in, there being a magnificent view over a long stretch of sea, the church being built on the edge of the cliff. The landlady, a prosaic enough looking old woman, one would think, threw up her hands in protestation.
"You surely wouldn't do anything so rash, sir," she said. "Why not?"
"Because," and she lowered her voice to an awed whisper, "it's haunted." "Indeed?"
"Yes, sir; it's haunted by the ghost of_________"
Oh! shades of wehr-wolves, loups-garoux, bear-men or other ferocious creatures, shiver in your graves and hide your diminished heads before the terrible monster the landlady's imagination conjured up. This evil thing that had the power to work untold harm was nothing more nor less than the ghost of a "white rabbit."
This was too much for the writer's risible nerves, and he disgusted the landlady, not only by a peal of laughter, but also by making a point of going every night during the remainder of his stay to the haunted churchyard. It is needless to add that the formidable ghost never gratified him by making its appearance.
The earliest mention of wehr-wolves is to be found among the traditions and in the mythology of the Scandinavians. The wolf is frequently mentioned in the Edda. There is Fenris, the offspring of Loki, the Evil Principle, an enormous and appalling wolf. The ancient Scandinavians believed that he will continue to cause great mischief to humanity until the Last Day, when, after a fearful combat, he will devour Odin; not content with this, he will devour the sun, but will in his turn, be killed by Vidar.
There are also two wolves, one of which pursues the sun, and the other the moon, and one day both these orbs will be caught and devoured by them; probably one of these is confounded with Fenris, for two wolves would scarcely devour one sun, unless they divided it in halves.
Of the origin of these wolves the Edda tells that "a hag dwells in a wood to the east of Midgard, this is called J'arnvid, or the Iron Wood, and is the abode of a race of witches called J'arnvidjur.
This old hag is the mother of many gigantic sons, who are all of them wolf-shaped. The most formidable of these is named Managarm; he will be filled with the life-blood of men who draw near their end, and will swallow up the moon, and stain the heavens and the earth with blood. Then shall the sun grow dim (preparatory to being devoured) and the winds howl tumultuously to and fro. The snow will fall from the four corners of the world. The stars will vanish from the heavens. The tottering mountains will crumble to pieces; the sea will rush upon the land; and the great serpent, advancing to the shore will inundate the air and water with floods of venom. Then will follow "the twilight of the Gods"—the end of the world.
It may not be out of place here to mention that that apocryphal monster, the dragon, was by many affirmed to be the offspring of an eagle and a she-wolf. An old writer declared that "the dragon had the beake and wings of an eagle, a serpente's taile, the feete of a wolfe, and a skin speckled and partie-coloured like a serpente." He adds the following extraordinary statement, "Neither can it open the eyelids, and it liveth in caves."
Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsal, and Metropolitan of Sweden in the sixteenth century, wrote a great deal on the subject of wehrwolves. He relates, that in the northern parts, at Christmas, there is a great gathering of these men-wolves, who, during the night, rage with such fierceness against mankind, for they are much more savage than natural wolves, that the inhabitants suffer infinite miseries. They attack houses, break open doors, destroy the inmates, and going to the cellars, drink amazing quantities of ale and mead, leaving the empty barrels heaped one on another. Somewhere in those wild northern regions, there was once a wall, belonging to a castle which had been destroyed; and here the wehr-wolves were wont to assemble at a given time and exercise themselves in trying to leap over the wall. The fat ones that could not succeed were flogged by their captains. Olaus asserts that great men and members of the chief nobility of the land belonged to this singular confraternity. The change was effected by mumbling certain words and drinking a cup of ale to a man-wolf. It was necessary that the transformation should take place in some secret cellar or private wood, and the wehr-wolves could change to and fro as often as they pleased. It was not always, however, that the man-wolf could change his shape in time to save his life.
There is a story told of a Russian Archduke, who seized a sorcerer, named Lycaon (perhaps a descendant of the Arcadian king), and commanded him to change himself into a wolf. The enchanter obeyed; not thinking of treachery, he crouched down, muttering incantations, and straightway became a wolf, with glaring eyes, grinning jaws, and raging so fearfully that the keepers could scarcely hold him. By way of having a little sport, the Archduke set two ferocious hounds upon him, and the unfortunate Lycaon was torn to pieces before he could resume his human form.
Some of the lycanthropists felt no uneasiness during the change, but others were afflicted with great pain and horror, while the hair was breaking out of their skin even before they were thoroughly changed.
Some could change themselves whenever they wished, others were transformed twice a year, at Christmas and Midsummer, at which times they grew savage, and were seized with a desire to converse with wolves in the woods. Many of these wehr-wolves bore marks of wounds and scars on their faces and bodies which had been inflicted on them by dogs or men when in their lupine form.
Wehr-wolves were distinguished from natural wolves by having no tails, and by their eyes; for these latter never changed, they were always human. The salve, which in some places was supposed to work the change, was composed of gruesome ingredients, in which the fat of newly-born strangled infants, the marrow of malefactors collected at the foot of the gibbet, the blood of bats, toads and owls, the grease of sows, wolves and weasels, mixed with belladonna, aconite, parsley, poppy, hemlock, combined with various other noxious ingredients, and must have formed a delectable compound.
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That lycanthropy was known as a disease is evident, from some of the old writers speaking of it: "The infected," says one of them, "imitate wolves, and think themselves such, leaping out of their beds and running wild about the fields at night, worrying the flocks, and snarling like a dog. They lurk about the sepulchres by day with pale looks, hollow eyes, thirsty tongues, and exulcerated bodies. They have a black, ugly and fearful look."
It is supposed that Nebuchadnezzar was attacked with this kind of madness when he grovelled about on all fours and ate grass like the beasts.
So late as the reign of James the First, an Englishman, Bishop Hall, travelling in Germany, related that he went through a certain wood that was haunted, not only by freebooters, but by wolves and witches (although these last are oft-times but one). He saw there a boy, half of whose face had been devoured by a witch-wolf, yet so as that the ear was rather cut than bitten off.
At Limburgh the Bishop saw one of these creatures executed; the wretched woman was put on the wheel, and confessed in her tortures that she had devoured two-and-forty children in her wolf-form.
Other authorities state that wehr-wolves were always at enmity with witches. There is a tale told of a countryman who put up at the house of a jovial bailiff, drank too much, and was left to have his sleep out on the floor. The next morning, a horse was found dead in the paddock, cut in two with a scythe. In answer to questions, the guest admitted that he was a wehr-wolf, and that he had hunted a witch about the field. She had taken refuge under the horse, and in aiming at her he had unintentionally divided the animal in halves.
PART II.
Many are the stories related of wehr-wolves; but they differ somewhat according to the locality from which they come. Thus, there are many versions of the following.
A nobleman was travelling with his retainers; and one night they found themselves in a thick wood, far from all human habitations. They were hungry, for they had no provisions with them and did not know what to do. One of the servants, however, told them not to be surprised at anything that might happen. He then went into a dark part of the forest, and presently a wolf was seen to run past, and soon came back with a sheep it had slain, which the company were very grateful for. Then the wolf went to the dark spot, and the servant emerged from there in his proper shape. He was a wehr-wolf.
Another account says that it was a slave who turned himself into a wolf, but unfortunately the dogs set upon him and tore out one of his eyes, so that afterwards he was blind of one eye.
Again, a tale says it was a gentleman who transformed himself because a lady wished to see the change, and lost his eye in consequence.
There are numerous instances of wolves having been wounded, and the next day human beings being found wounded in exactly the same place, thus clearly demonstrating the fact that they were wehrwolves.
In one case a nobleman had a beautiful wife; whether he had tired of her is not stated, but the sequel looks like it, and that he took this means of getting rid of her. A friend came to stay at the castle, who went out hunting. On his return he informed the nobleman that a huge wolf had attacked him, but that he had succeeded in cutting off one of its forepaws which he brought home with him. On taking it out of the cloth in which he had wrapped it, he was horrified to see, not a wolf's paw, but a delicate white hand, having jewels on the fingers. The nobleman instantly recognised the rings as his wife's. Going to her room he found her looking very ill and carefully keeping her right hand covered up. Insisting on seeing it, he soon discovered the bleeding wrist, and knew for certain that his wife was a wehrwolf. This unfortunate lady was tried and executed, falling a victim to her husband's dislike.
In one version, a man going home in the dark was attacked by a wolf, but managed to cut off a paw, which, on reaching his house, he found was a human hand. In a day or two he discovered that a young man of his acquaintance had lost his right hand that very night, which was proof-positive that he was the wehr-wolf who had attacked him.
There is a story related that a nobleman travelling with his servants in some part of France came upon an old beggar-man who was toiling along under a heavy wallet. One of the servants good naturedly offered to carry it, an offer which was accepted. The man felt curious to know what was in the bag, and opening it saw a wolf skin. A desire to put it on came over him, and doing so, he was instantly transformed into a wolf, and rushed about snarling and howling, and trying to attack everyone near him. The dogs had to be set on him, and he only succeeded in getting out of the wolf skin with his life, having received several wounds from the dogs. This man averred that the nature of a wolf seemed to come upon him with its skin, and he had a desire to rend anyone he could seize. Of course they looked at once for the original owner of the skin, the beggar, but the old loup-garou had disappeared and never came to claim his property.
In different countries these metamorphoses were effected by different means. A Swedish tradition relates that a cottager named Lasse, having gone into the forest to fell a tree, neglected to cross himself and say his Paternoster. By this neglect a troll was enabled to change him into a wolf. His wife, who mourned his loss for many years, was told by a beggar-woman, to whom she had been kind, that she would see her husband again as he was not dead, but roaming the forest as a wolf. That very evening, as she was in her pantry putting away a joint of meat, a wolf put its paws on the window-sill, and looked sorrowfully at her. "Ah!" said she, "if I knew that thou wert my husband, I would give thee this meat." At that instant the wolf skin fell off, and her husband stood before her in the same old clothes which he had on on the day of his disappearance.
In parts of Germany, those who wished to become wehr-wolves, obtained the power by drinking a nauseous draught from the hands of one already initiated.
In France, usually, the change was made by rubbing with some unguent, generally of demoniacal origin. Others asserted that wolf skins given them by devils, had the quality of transforming those who put them on into ferocious animals themselves.
Mostly the loup-garou was able to re-transform himself back into his human shape at his own will by such expedients as plunging into water, rolling over and over in the dew, or resuming his clothes, which were usually hidden in some thicket while the wehr-wolves were on their runs; but there were cases where the victims were unable to escape from their lupine form for periods ranging from a month to seven years. These were generally victims of the hatred of relatives who took this method of punishing those who were obnoxious to them.
It was said that jilted mistresses and deserted wives used to bribe witches t'o turn their faithless swains or husbands into wolves for the term of seven years. These wolves, however, were not credited with a taste for human flesh.
Some of those who were executed as lycanthropists, declared in their confessions, that no sooner had they put on the wolf-skin received from a demon, than their whole nature seemed to change. Their teeth felt on edge to bite and rend, the bloodthirst awoke in them, and they would dart forth from hut or brake or thicket, whereever, in fact, the metamorphoses had taken place, and traverse meadows, forests, plains and marshes, howling in a frightful manner until they met a victim, when they would rend him with teeth and claws, preparatory to making a meal of him. In great fear were these wehr-wolves held, and terrible tales were told of them and the bloody scenes and unhallowed deeds that were supposed to be enacted in their nocturnal haunts.
