Human Animals
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Title: Human Animals
Author: Frank Hamel
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMAN ANIMALS ***
HUMAN ANIMALS
HUMAN ANIMALS
BY
FRANK HAMEL
AUTHOR OF
"THE DAUPHINES OF FRANCE," "FAIR WOMEN AT FONTAINEBLEAU,"
ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES Co.
PUBLISHERS
PREFACE
From the abundant records and traditions dealing with the curious
belief that certain men and women can transform themselves into
animals I have collected a number of instances and examples which
throw fresh light on the subject both from the point of view of
folk-lore and occultism. The causes of transformation are various:
contact with a wer-animal, touching what he has touched, wearing an
animal skin, rubbing the body with ointment, slipping on a girdle,
buckling on a strap, and many other expedients, magical and otherwise,
may bring about the metamorphosis. Removing the skin, burning it, or
piercing it with the stab of a knife, or the shot from a gun, so that
blood is drawn, are among the best-known methods for causing the human
shape to be resumed, but the stab should be on the brow or between the
eyes, and the bullet should be made of silver and is all the better
for having been blessed in a chapel of St. Hubert, otherwise the
attempt to break the enchantment may fail. The penalty for being a
wer-animal is death, but sentence is not passed until after some
ordeal has been gone through, such as dipping the finger into boiling
resin, innocence being established if the finger be drawn out unhurt.
Any wound inflicted on the transformed animal is simultaneously
inflicted on the human body, and in many other characteristics the
nature of the wer-animal is similar to that of the witch or wizard.
In "Balder the Beautiful" Dr. J. G. Frazer, after telling many typical
stories, endeavours to establish a parallelism between witches and
wer-animals, the analogy appearing to confirm the view that the reason
for burning a bewitched animal alive is a belief that the human being
is in the animal, and that by burning you compel him to assume another
shape. Since the sum of energy in the universe is held to be constant
and invariable, the chain of transformation is thus continued, and
form follows form, endlessly linked together. By some such theory the
phenomena of life and death may be explained and the doctrine of
immortality, usually applied only to the soul of man, can be
reasonably extended to animals.
The belief that human and animal souls possess power and entity when
externalised and apart from the living body is less widely held than
that of persistence after death. It is one that bears strongly on the
subject of animal transformation, as well as on the affinity which
certain animals possess for some families, an affinity that is akin to
totemism.
These preliminary suggestions will enable readers to grasp the scope
of my book, which is intended to provide a comprehensive view of the
subject and to familiarise them with the nature of the phenomena, even
though it has been well-nigh impossible to classify and tabulate them
fully, or to explain them satisfactorily.
I wish to express my thanks to Miss J. A. Middleton, author of "The
Grey Ghost Book," for her kindness in reading my work in MS., and to
her and others for suggesting interesting material.
FRANK HAMEL
_London_, 1915
TO
C. A. W.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. TRANSFORMATION 5
III. THE BUSH-SOUL 15
IV. HUMAN SOULS IN ANIMAL BODIES 23
V. ANIMAL DANCES 28
VI. MAN-ANIMAL AND ANIMAL-MAN 39
VII. SCAPEGOAT AND SAINT 45
VIII. THE WER-WOLF TRIALS 54
IX. THE WER-WOLF IN MYTH AND LEGEND 65
X. LION- AND TIGER-MEN 78
XI. WER-FOX AND WER-VIXEN 88
XII. WITCHES 103
XIII. FAMILIARS 120
XIV. TRANSFORMATION IN FOLK-LORE AND FAIRY-TALE 131
XV. TRANSFORMATION IN FOLK-LORE AND FAIRY-TALE
(_continued_) 143
XVI. FABULOUS ANIMALS AND MONSTERS 159
XVII. HUMAN SERPENTS 173
XVIII. CAT AND COCK PHANTOMS 189
XIX. BIRD-WOMEN 202
XX. FAMILY ANIMALS 215
XXI. ANIMAL GHOSTS 236
XXII. THE PHANTASMAL DOUBLE 261
XXIII. ANIMAL ELEMENTALS 270
XXIV. ANIMAL SPIRITS IN CEREMONIAL MAGIC 283
XXV. CONCLUSION 293
HUMAN ANIMALS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The belief that men can change into animals and animals into men is as
old as life itself. It originates in the theory that all things are
created from one substance, mind or spirit, which according to
accident or design takes a distinctive appearance, to mortal eye, of
shape, colour, and solidity. Transformation from one form to another
then becomes a thinkable proposition, especially if it be admitted
that plastic thought in the spirit world takes on changed forms and
conditions more readily than in the world of matter. The belief of
primitive races that all created beings have an immortal soul dwelling
in a material body applies equally to the brute creation and to the
human race. "In the beginning of things," says Leland, "men were as
animals and animals as men."[1] The savage endows brutes with similar
intelligence and emotions to his own. He does not distinguish between
the essential nature of man, of various beasts, and even of inanimate
objects, except where outward form is concerned; and he senses, even
more clearly than his civilised brother, the psychic bonds which unite
man and the animals. Folk-lore abounds in incidents which are based on
the impermanence of form and which tell of people changing into
animals or animals changing into human beings.
The scientific problems of to-day which deal with the theory of
breaking up matter into electrons may quite possibly have a bearing on
this subject and may not be so far removed, as appears at first sight
to be the case, from the intuitive beliefs of the savage.
Transformation was held to be accomplished in various ways, a
sorcerer, a witch or the evil one himself being the agent through whom
the change was effected. Certain people have had ascribed to them the
power of self-transformation, a curious psychical gift which to this
day appeals to imaginative people, and which may be regarded as a
projection of mind in animal form.
Changes may be voluntary or involuntary, self-transformation belonging
more frequently to the former class and transformation by sorcery,
witchcraft or black magic more often to the latter class. The motives
of a human being who wishes to change into an animal are naturally
regarded with suspicion. Greed, cruelty, and cannibalism are
accusations brought against those who were tried in the Middle Ages
for the crime of lycanthropy, the transformation into a wolf or other
wild beast. The desire to taste human flesh is a horrible but not
improbable reason for the offence. The wish to inspire fear or to gain
personal power over others are motives for impersonating wild and
fearsome animals, as effective where superstitious people are
concerned as the less common faculty of transforming actual flesh.
Savage races do not necessarily connect the idea of transformation with
any thought of evil. They find the plan of impersonating an animal in
its lair, for the sake of safety, say, extremely useful. They have also
the best of reasons for developing a special attribute, such as the keen
scent of the hound, the long sight of the eagle, the natural protective
power against cold possessed by the wolf and so forth, imitative
suggestion which occurs in many of their primitive customs. Thus the
Cherokee Indian when starting on a winter's journey endeavours by
singing and other mimetic action to identify himself with the wolf, the
fox, the opossum or other wild animal, of which the feet are regarded by
him as impervious to frost-bite. The words he chants mean, "I become a
real wolf, a real deer, a real fox, and a real opossum."[2] Then he
gives a long howl to imitate the wolf or barks like a fox and paws and
scratches the ground. Thus he establishes a belief in transformation by
sympathetic or homœopathic magic, and starts forth on his difficult
journey in perfect confidence, the power of auto-suggestion aiding him
on his way. Such customs are closely allied with the superstitions of
the dark ages, when it was assumed without question that bodily
transformation took place.
Involuntary change into animal shape was thought to occur as a
punishment for crime, and was looked upon as a judgment of the gods.
Few beliefs are more common among savages than that reincarnation in a
lower form is the result of sin in a previous existence. Bats
especially are held to be the abode of the souls of the dead, and to
some races they are sacrosanct for this reason. Most animals have been
looked upon as a possible receptacle of man's soul, and many primitive
tribes believe that man can choose in which animal body he prefers to
dwell. In the Solomon Islands, for instance, a dying man informs the
members of his family in what sort of animal shape he expects to live
again. One among hundreds of similar superstitions is that if a cat
jumps over a corpse, the soul of the deceased enters its body.
Murder of what is holy, and the offering of human sacrifices are two
offences punishable by transformation, but once transformed, the
soul-animal wins respect rather than contempt, and care is taken that
no injury shall befall it, lest a relative or friend should suffer. A
savage avoids harming his own family animal, but does not hesitate to
kill the soul-animal into which a member of a hostile tribe has
entered. Should such an animal die, the soul is thought by many races
to pass into another body of the same type, but other tribes,
especially in Madagascar, believe that the death of the animal
releases the human soul that had lodged within it.
A more original idea is that certain human beings possess animal
doubles and that the soul-animal roams at large while the man remains
visible in his ordinary form, and many of the vampire and wer-wolf
stories are traceable to this belief. The Toradjas of Central Celebes
believe that the inside parts only of the man take on the animal
shape, a state which they term _lamboyo_. The _lamboyo_ may be
distinguished from an ordinary animal by being misshapen to some
extent, for instance, a buffalo may have only one horn, or a dog may
have a pig's snout. The _lamboyo_, like the vampire, has a preference
for human victims, whom he grievously tortures and maims.
Far more beautiful is the myth of _tanoana_, the divine essence in man
which goes forth from his body, as in sleep, and, being of the same
nature as the soul of the animal, allows of interchange to take place
between the human and the animal bodies.
Even amongst the most practical and enlightened people of to-day
psychic experiences in which animals have played a part are of common
enough occurrence, and a survey of the grounds on which man and animal
shapes and spirits meet may help them to understand things which, to
our limited human intelligence, appear at least strange, if not
altogether inexplicable.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Leland, C. G., "Algonquin Legends of New England," Boston 1884, p.
31.
[2] Frazer, J. G., "The Golden Bough," "The Magic Art," 1911, Vol. I,
pp. 155-6.
CHAPTER II
TRANSFORMATION
How did man come to change into an animal? Folklore and superstition
describe a number of ways. The most common method appears to have been
the wearing of the skin of the animal in question. One drew it over
one's shoulders, mask and all, and awaited results. These were not
always satisfactory, and if any delay occurred it was better to strip
off the clothes, rub the limbs with a potent ointment and murmur a
long incantation. Such things, if we may believe tradition, invariably
did the trick. But there were many other ways of bringing about the
desired state. According to Grimm,[3] transformation could be effected
by tying a strap of human skin round the body; others say the skin
must be a girdle made from the animal's hide.... It also sufficed to
shift the buckle of a certain strap to the ninth hole. To drink water
out of the footprint made by the animal, to partake of its brains, to
drink from certain enchanted streams, to haunt the lair of a wer-wolf,
to eat his food or come into personal contact with him or his
belongings were all means of voluntary or involuntary transformation
which, according to its nature, might be permanent or merely
transitory. Livonian wer-wolves were initiated by drinking a cup of
beer of a special character accompanied by a particular incantation.
Other countries had magical procedure which differed in detail, if not
in the main features. As a rule the devil was supposed to have had a
hand in the transformation process, and one man accused of the crime
declared that a female devil had presented him with a belt and
whenever he buckled it he was changed into a wolf spontaneously. This
gentleman, when he was back in human shape, was always heard to remark
in surprise that he had not the faintest idea where the bristles went
which had adorned him when in wolfish form.
A return to human body was sometimes easy, sometimes extremely
difficult. The girdle or skin being removed was often sufficient to
remove the enchantment too. Plunging into water or rolling over and
over in dew were said to be equally efficacious. A considerably slower
method was to kneel in one spot for a hundred years, long enough, one
would imagine to deter anyone from ill-judged ambitions to prowl
around the world in animal shape. Other cures, however, were simpler,
such as being saluted with the sign of the cross, or to be called
three times loudly by the baptismal name, or to be struck three blows
on the forehead by a knife, or to have three drops of blood drawn from
some part of the body. In many cases one other person besides the
transformed man was in possession of certain formulæ necessary for
restoring him to a normal appearance, and if by any accident this
person was killed or otherwise removed from the sphere of action, woe
betide him in animal shape, for he probably had to retain it during
the rest of his natural existence.
There is a legend in Lorraine that if stalks of grass are pulled up,
blessed and thrown against a tree, wolves spring forth, being
transformed from the men who threw the grass. To become a she-bear it
is only necessary to put a slip of wood into one's mouth; when the
wood is taken out human shape returns.
Another myth, mentioned by Grimm, is that at certain times of night
wer-wolves turn into three-legged dogs and can only be freed by
someone crying out "wer-wolf."
Seven and nine are important numbers in transformation. When seven
girls are born of one marriage, one is thought to turn into a wer-wolf
and the seventh child of the seventh child is predestined to the same
fate. The spell is said to last nine days. Anyone who puts on a
wolf-shirt is transformed into a wolf for this period and returns to
human shape on the tenth day. Grimm says the seal is supposed to doff
his fishy skin every ninth day and for one day become a man, and there
is a common saying that a cat twenty years old turns into a witch, and
a witch of a hundred turns back into a cat.
Having taken the body of a beast, man becomes known as a wer-animal,
wer being probably derived from the Latin _vir_.[4] He then assumes
the characteristics of the natural animal, with additional strength,
agility, and ferocity.
In mediæval times powers of transformation seem to have been sought
after and were even regarded as a privilege. Although often acquired for
evil purposes, among primitive peoples to change into an animal did not
necessarily imply a descent in the scale of being. To them there is but
a slight line of demarcation between the animal world and mankind. They
are not influenced so much by the idea of human degradation as by a
beautiful belief in the brotherhood and fellowship of all creation.
Lycanthropy is the technical name for the pathological condition of a
man who believes he has become an animal. The word means literally
wolf-man, the wolf being chosen as the most dangerous animal known in
European countries, though the tiger, hyæna, or any other wild animal
serves the purpose equally well.
The symptoms exhibited by the wer-animal are at first extreme
restlessness and anxiety. He develops, sometimes instantaneously,
sometimes by degrees, the instincts of the kind of creature into which
he has been transformed, often acquiring enormous strength and the
special characteristics of the animal. If it be carnivorous by nature
he has a lust to kill, and he can do what the animal does as well as
what he was naturally capable of doing. His body is in the shape of an
animal, but his eyes, according to some accounts, remain unchanged,
and the human being looks out of these windows of his soul. His
intelligence will probably, however, be darkened by the shadow of
malignity or passion usual to the lower creation.
As early as 1579, Wierius described lycanthropia as a disease, and
declared the Arabs called it _Chatrap_, after an animal. Another name
was _Tipule_. (Latin race.) The victims had sunken eyes and could not
see well, the tongue was dry and they were thirsty, the saliva being
dried up. To cure them they had to be well-fed, much bathed, and given
drugs which were used in melancholic diseases. Before an attack the
head was rubbed with soporific herbs, opium was applied to the nose
and the patient was dosed with a narcotic.
When under the delusion that he is changed into a wolf the wer-animal
gives vent to a long howl and starts off with a rush to the nearest
forest, where he prowls about through the night seeking his victims.
These he kills in the ordinary manner of a wild beast, tearing asunder
their limbs and feasting on their flesh. In some countries his method
is more elaborate and it is supposed that the wer-wolf, having chosen
his victim, exerts certain occult powers to numb his faculties and,
cutting up the body, extracts the liver, which he eats and then joins
the parts of the body together again so that the friends of the dead
man know not how he came to lose his life.
Having satisfied his thirst for blood, the man-wolf, at the wane of
his madness, once more seeks human shape, and then it is probable that
he suffers for his abnormal appetites. Reaction leaves him weak and
debilitated, with dry throat and tongue, feeble vision, hollow and
discoloured cheeks, and sore places where he was hurt by his victim
struggling for life.
Some subjects of lycanthropia, or imitative madness, endure still
greater horrors, and the case of a patient who trembled with terror at
his own condition is quoted by M. Morel in his "Études Cliniques."[5]
"See this mouth," he cried, touching his lips with his fingers, "it is
the mouth of a wolf, and see the long hairs which cover my body and my
paws. Let me bound away into the woods so you may shoot me there!"
When his family endeavoured to caress him, he cried out that they were
embracing a wolf. He asked for raw meat, the only food he could touch,
but on tearing it apart he found it not to his liking as it had not
been freshly killed. Thus he went through the tortures of the damned
until released by death.
Another victim of the disease is mentioned by Fincelius in his second
Book of Wonders. He says that "at Padua in the year 1541 a certain
husbandman did seem to himself wolf, and did leap upon many in the
fields, and did kill them. And that at last he was taken not without
much difficulty, and did confidently affirm that he was a true wolf,
only that the difference was in the _skin turned in with the hairs_.
And therefore that, having put off all humanity and being truly
truculent and voracious, he did smite and cut off his legs and arms,
thereby to try the truth of the matter, but the innocency of the man
being known, they committed him to the chirurgeon's to be cured, but
that he died not many days after. Which instance is sufficient to
overthrow the vain opinion of those men that believe that a man or
woman may be really transubstantiated into a wolf, dog, cat, squirrel
or the like without the operation of an omnipotent power."
In spite of the unpleasant consequences with which lycanthropy seems
to be connected there is little doubt that transformation used to be
regarded as a useful and sometimes even profitable relaxation. Those
who were already initiated into its mysteries were generally willing
to help others to obtain proficiency, and a draught from the hand of
an expert was considered enough to produce the desired condition in
the novice.
Predestination to become a wer-animal is thought to be distinguished
by some peculiarity in the appearance, such as the meeting of the
eyebrows, and the tendency to transform is believed to wax and wane
with the seasons and to be subject to the influence of the moon.
The head, claws, and hairy skin of a wer-wolf are like those of a real
wolf, but the great test of identity lies in his lack of tail, and in
his clothes, which are sure to be found not far from the scene of
slaughter.
When doubt is felt whether a wer-wolf is a human being or a real wolf,
steel or iron is thrown at the animal under suspicion. When this is
done to a genuine wer-wolf the skin is said to split crosswise on the
forehead and the naked man comes out through the opening. Sometimes
the wer-wolf is frozen with the cold and then he is invulnerable to
ordinary weapons. The only way to wound him is to shoot at him with
balls of elder pith or bullets of inherited silver.
When the victim is attacked by a human animal the injured person's
clothes are stripped from his body. The genuine animal tears them in
shreds. If the wer-animal has been transformed by means of a strap of
human skin, his tail is then certain to be truncated.
In the following Hessian folk-story, which concerns a poverty-stricken
married couple, a large ring was used to bring about the metamorphosis.
The wife always contrived to have meat for every meal and the husband
never knew how she managed it. After much questioning she agreed to tell
him, and taking him to a field where sheep were grazing she threw a ring
over herself and became a wer-wolf. She seized one sheep and was running
off with it when the man, who had promised not to call her by name
during the performance, cried out, "Oh, Margaret!" and as he did so the
wolf disappeared and the woman stood there with no clothes on.
A very similar story is told of a nobleman who fell short of food
while traversing a wide tract of country in Russia with a party of
friends. He transformed himself into a wolf and caught several sheep,
which provided an excellent meal for the travellers.
In India a story is current that there was once a man who was able to
change himself into a tiger, but who found it very difficult to resume
his normal shape. When he wished to become human again, it was
necessary for a particular friend of his to cite a certain formula.
The friend died and as this catastrophe limited the tiger-man's powers
he determined to teach the proper formula to his wife.
A few days later, having enjoyed a glorious hunt and devoured several
antelopes, he trotted up to his wife in the disguise of a tiger, hoping
she would not forget how to work the spell. When she saw the dangerous
monster approaching her she began to scream. The animal jumped round
about her, trying to remind her by dumb show of what she had to do, but
the greater efforts he made the more frightened she grew and the louder
became her cries. So annoyed was the man-tiger by her aggravating
stupidity that he thought, "This is the most irritating woman I ever
saw," and, flying into a terrible passion, he attacked and slew her.
Then to his regret he remembered that no other human being knew the
incantation necessary for his release and that he would have to remain a
tiger for the rest of his days. He grew to hate all human beings after
that and killed men whenever the chance occurred.
In the Sanjor and Nerbudda territories there is a saying that if a tiger
has killed a man he will never slay another, because the dead man's
spirit rides on his head and forces him to seek more lawful prey.
Some African tribes believe that tailless tigers are transformed men,
probably because the wer-animal is frequently said to have no tail.
In early Christian times the wer-wolf was often regarded as a victim
of the evil machinations of a sorcerer. There is a story in the
seventh century of a man-wolf who defended the head of St. Edward the
Martyr from the onslaught of other wild beasts. The apostles Peter and
Paul, according to a Russian folk-tale, turned an evil-minded husband
and wife into bears as a judgment for their sins.
An object which may have been an inducement to transformation was the
hope of acquiring second sight, a gift with which many animals are
thought to be endowed.
In the last century in France a connection of the old _loup-garou_
existed in the person of the _meneur des loups_, who was said to have
the gift of charming or taming wolves, which followed him across waste
lands on midnight rambles after the style in which the rats followed
the piping of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The _loup-garou_ of the French is found in Italy under the name of the
_lupo manaro_ or _versiero_. The _lupo manaro_ of the Middle Ages was
a witch dressed as a wolf, but the same term was applied to a certain
hobgoblin who was peculiar to the city of Blois and whose chief
occupation seems to have been to inspire deadly fear in young
children. The _lupo marino_, which might be thought to be another kind
of wolf, is the name of a most ravenous fish, which does not appear to
have had human attributes.
The great Gaston de Foix, known as Phœbus, who is famed for his book
on the chase, expresses his opinion that the term _garou_ in
_loup-garou_ is an ellipse of the phrase _gardez-vous_.
When wolves grew scarce in England it became the fashion for those who
wished to be transformed to change into cats, weasels, or harmless
hares; rather a mild amusement after the adventuresome exploits of the
man-attacking beasts of prey, but one which led to some extraordinary
proceedings akin to black magic.
In some old French Records the account is given of a man who buried a
black cat in a box at a spot where four cross-roads met. In the box he
placed bread soaked in holy water and holy oil, sufficient to keep the
animal alive for three days. His intention was to dig up his innocent
victim, slay him, and make a girdle of his skin, by which means he
expected to be able to transform himself into an animal and gain the
gift of clairvoyance. Unfortunately for his projects, however, the
buried animal was exhumed by hounds. The whole affair came to public
knowledge and ended in the courts, where the guilty man was condemned
for sorcery.
Another man whose friend threw doubts on his power to change into
animal shape, quickly turned into a wolf to prove that his comrade was
wrong and, being set upon by a pack of dogs, was deprived by them of
one eye before he could resume his normal appearance.
A thief acted more cleverly. Being condemned to the gibbet, he saved his
skin by taking the form of a wolf directly his would-be executioners
opened the door of the cell in which he was imprisoned. During the panic
of dismay which greeted the sight of him, he escaped into the woods.
One of the most marvellous stories of wer-wolves is related by
Giraldus Cambrensis in his "Topography of Ireland."[6] A priest was
journeying from Ulster to Meath accompanied only by a single youth
when they were benighted in a wood.
They had kindled a fire when a huge wolf approached them and spoke,
telling the travellers to fear nothing.
The priest adjured him by all that was sacred not to do them harm and
begged him to say "what creature it was that in the shape of a beast
uttered human words."
The story told by the wolf is as follows:--
"There are two of us, a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, who,
through the curse of one Natalis, saint and abbot, are compelled every
seven years to put off their human form and assume that of wolves. At
the end of seven years, if they chance to survive, two others being
substituted, they return to their former shape. Now, she who is my
partner in this visitation lies dangerously sick not far from hence. I
beseech you, inspired by divine charity, to give her the consolations
of your priestly office."
The priest followed the mysterious speaker into the thicket and
performed the rites of the Church over the dying she-wolf, as far as
the last Communion. But the wolf was not satisfied, and begged him to
complete his good offices. The priest said this was impossible as he
was not provided with the wherewithal for giving the viaticum. Then
the man-wolf pointed to the priest's neck, suspended round which he
carried a missal and consecrated wafers, entreating him not to deny
the aid provided by Divine Providence. To remove the priest's doubts
he tore off the she-wolf's skin and exposed the body of an old woman.
The last Communion having been given, the wolf replaced the skin and
reverently thanked the priest for the benefit which he had conferred.
These representative incidents go far to show how deeply ingrained is
the belief in transformation among primitive people, but it is necessary
to go back still further into the origins of folk-lore to discover the
bedrock of thought in which the human-animal theory takes its rise.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "Teutonic Mythology."
[4] This appears to be the usually adopted explanation, but on p. 67 a
suggestion is made regarding the word _versipelles_, which may throw a
different light on the derivation.
[5] Vol. II, p. 58.
[6] "The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis," 1863. Bohn's
Library p. 79 _et seq._
CHAPTER III
THE BUSH-SOUL
The animal which savage races take as a symbol of the family becomes
their totem. Many believe that their ancestors were originally
animals, fishes, or reptiles, and are so accustomed to this idea that
transformation appears simple and natural to them. They hold that the
souls of the dead pass into one or another animal form.
"Wise people," says the Bhagavad Gita, "see the same soul (Atman) in
the Brahman, in worms and in insects, in the dog and the elephant, in
beasts, cows, gadflies, and gnats."
"Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of primitive thinking than
the close community of nature which it assumes between man and brute,"
writes Fiske. "The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some
shape or other all over the world, implies a fundamental identity
between the two; the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in
the meadow, and will on no account lift his hand against a cow, for
who knows but it may be his own grandmother?"[7]
The primeval worship of ancestors and the savage customs of totemism
are connected with this belief in transformation.
Primitive man cannot grasp the idea of death as final. He believes
that the man who has passed away is still capable of communicating
with the living, and the idea of the persistence of the dead is to him
the reality. Even though a dead man has thrown off the body like a
mask, his appearance remains the same and he is still possessed of
human powers, perhaps intensified by the experience he has undergone.
He can show himself to his friends, and may do so preferably after
nightfall. He is then wrapped to some extent in mystery, and connected
with strange sights, movements, and sounds.
Gifted with new powers he may appear as an animal, perhaps in order to
harm his enemies or warn people of evil. His howling may be heard
above the sound of the tempest. Perhaps he rides on the night-wind,
perhaps he comes in the form of a hound, as a messenger of death, and
bays under the window of the sick a warning that death is at hand.
Again, he may come as a ravening wolf to devour some victim of his
greed. Thus the savage mind fails to distinguish between the real and
the imaginative and, basing his beliefs on the stories about his own
tribal totem, is convinced that his ancestors may career about his
home in the form of lion, leopard, serpent or other tutelary genius.
This curious mental process expands with what it feeds on until the
shade of distinction between wolf-like ghosts and corporeal human
wolves is obliterated and the metempsychosis is complete.
In "Life Amongst the Modocs,"[8] Joaquin Miller tells a poetic story
of the descent of the Indians from the grizzly bear.
One severe spring-time many thousands of years ago there was a storm
on the summit of Mount Shasta and the Great Spirit sent his fair
daughter to speak to the storm and bid it stop, but he told her not to
look forth from the hole in the top of the mountain lest she should be
caught in the wind and come to disaster.
Curiosity, however, caused her to forget her father's instructions and
she put her head out to look at the far-distant ocean, white with
storm. As she did so the wind caught her long red hair and she was
blown down the mountain-side which was covered with ice and snow, so
that she slid to the dark belt of firs below the snow rim.
This district belonged to the grizzly bears. They were not really
beasts then, but lived in caves, walked on two legs, talked and used
clubs to fight with, instead of their teeth and claws as they do now.
An old grizzly found the red-haired girl and took her home, where she
was reared with the bears' offspring. In time she was married to the
eldest son of the family. Their children did not resemble either of
their parents exactly, but partook somewhat of the nature and likeness
of both. Thus was the red man created, for these children were the
first Indians.
The legend goes on to tell how angry the Great Spirit was when he
heard what had befallen his daughter and that he punished the
grizzlies by making them walk on all-fours like other beasts, and on
account of this legend of their origin, the Indians about Mount Shasta
never kill a bear, and if a bear kills an Indian the latter's body is
burnt and all who pass the spot cast a stone upon it till a large heap
is gathered, and Indians will point out to this day that bears are
more like men than any other animal.
The members of a totem clan call themselves by the name of the totem,
and numerous clans are connected with various animals, such, for
instance, as the Crane clan of the Ojibways who think they are
descended from a pair of cranes which settled near Lake Superior where
they became transformed by the Great Spirit into a man and a woman.
The Osages are descended from the union between a snail and a beaver.
The snail burst its shell, grew arms and legs and became a handsome
human being who wedded a beaver maiden.
In Bechuanaland when a crocodile clansman sees a crocodile he spits on
the ground and says, "There is sin," for fear the sight should give
him inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is his father, and he
celebrates it at his festivals and marks his cattle with an incision
in the ear that resembles the mouth of his totem animal.
The inhabitants of the Ellice Island in the South Pacific believe the
island was first inhabited by the porcupine fish, whose offspring became
men and women. The snake clan among the Moquis of Arizona say they are
descended from a woman who gave birth to snakes, and they indulge in
extraordinary snake dances to propitiate their tutelary genius.
In Indonesia many stories are told of women who have brought forth
animals. Sometimes the woman gives birth to twins, one being a human
being and one a beast.[9] At Balen in New Guinea a native told a
missionary that his ancestress had given birth to a boy and also to an
iguana, and since then he had had a great respect for iguanas.
The turtle clan of the Iroquois believe themselves to be descended
from a fat turtle, which, burdened by the weight of its shell in
walking, threw it off after great exertions and developed gradually
into a human being.[10]
People of the cray-fish clan of the Choctaws were said to have lived
originally underground as cray-fish, only coming to the surface of the
mud occasionally. Some kindly Choctaws captured these fish, taught
them to walk after cutting off their toe-nails and adopted them into
the tribe.
The Masai race in Uganda have a theory that some of their ancestors
return to earth after death in the shape of serpents, generally
pythons or cobras, and when a Masai marries, he introduces his wife to
the tutelary snake of the tribe, and she is told to recognise it and
never harm it. The fetish snake is often consulted by people in
trouble, because they think they will get valuable advice based on
the experience of their ancestors[11].
The people of Miri believe themselves to be related to large deer, and
suppose that their dead relatives become deer. The Bakongs, another
group of Mohammedan Malasians, believe their friends become bear-cats
after death. The Papuans of New Guinea hold that at death souls of
human beings pass into animals such as cassowaries, fish, or pigs.
They do not eat these sacred creatures, which are taboo.
The taboos include all animals which must not be killed. They enjoy
local sanctity, and are never eaten or even touched. Taboo animals are
thought to give favourable and unfavourable omens. Death is sometimes
foretold by their means.
These instances of the supposed connection between savage races and
certain animals might be multiplied a hundredfold, and they lead to
interesting developments of the transformation theory.
The belief that beasts are the dwelling-places of the souls of
depraved men is a variation of the idea that depraved men were
inhabited by demons.
In Australia and America it is customary for savages to have what is
called "a medicine animal," something in the nature of a tutelary
genius or second soul. The natives of Central America call this animal
_nagual_, the Algonquins _manitou_, the Eskimo _tornaq_, and amongst
the last-named people it is usually a bear. Others call it simply the
bush-soul.
The young Tinkhlet Indian goes out hunting the otter, and when he has
killed his prey he cuts out its tongue, which he uses as a charm,
wearing it round his neck and believing that he now understands the
language of all animals. In other races various animals are killed in
order that part of their body may be used as a talisman. A _nagual_
may be obtained in other ways, perhaps through dreaming of the right
animal, or by having it chosen by the magician of the tribe. It then
becomes sacred, and should it die the man dies too.
The West African negroes believe that a man can have as many as four
souls, one of which lives in animal form out in the bush, and is then
called his bush-soul. If this animal soul is trapped or shot, the man
himself dies. Nor will a native kill his bush-soul, for this would
surely be the cause of his own end. Bush-souls are often regarded as
an hereditary possession, generally passing from father to son and
from mother to daughter. Among many primitive peoples the belief
exists that the human being can and does actually change into this
tutelary animal genius. In Iceland, for instance, it is believed that
various members of a family have a kind of animal double called
_fylgja_, in the shape of a dog or bird.
The Yakuts of Siberia believe that every wizard has one of his souls
incarnate in an animal. "Nobody can find my external soul," said one
famous wizard, "it lies hidden far away in the stony mountains of
Edzhigansk." Once a year at the melting of the snow, these souls
appear amongst the dwellings of men in the shape of animals, invisible
to all but the wizards themselves. Strong ones hurry about noisily,
but the weak ones move furtively as though afraid. Sometimes they
fight, and the sorcerer whose soul is worsted in the battle falls ill
and may even die. The souls of cowardly wizards are in the form of
dogs, and they give their human double no peace, but gnaw at his heart
and tear his body. Powerful wizards have souls incarnate in stallions,
elks, boars, eagles, and black bears.
The Samoyeds in the Turukhinsk region believe that sorcerers have a
familiar in the shape of a boar, and that they lead him by a magic
belt. If the boar dies the sorcerer too must die. Sometimes battles
occur between sorcerers who send forth their familiars to encounter
one another before they themselves meet in the flesh.
The Melanesians of Mota in the New Hebrides, call the soul the _atai_,
and they believe that every person has a second self which is visible
and is, in fact, the reflection in animal form of his own personality.
He and his _atai_ would rejoice or grieve, live and die together.
Some of the Melanesians also believe that they have special relation
to some animal or reptile with which their life is bound up and which
is named _tamaniu_. The _tamaniu_, like the _atai_, has an objective
and material existence.
When its owner wishes to injure anyone he sends his familiar to do so;
if an eel it would tear or bite, if a shark probably swallow him. If
the owner falls ill, he examines his familiar to discover what is
wrong. The imps or familiars of witches embody the same idea.
Dr. W. H. R. Rivers quotes the case of a man whose _tamaniu_ was a
lizard[12]. The owner was blind and asked a friend to help him with the
ceremony of examination. He told his friend to go and see the animal,
using the words "Look at me," referring to the lizard as himself. The
man went alone to the banyan tree where the lizard was to be found, but
when he came there he was too frightened to call upon the animal. He was
sent a second time in the company of the sick man's son and others, and
when they reached the tree the man called out the lizard's name,
Rosasangwowut, and the _tamaniu_ appeared. It was a very large animal,
larger than the ordinary lizards in Mota. It appeared to be sluggish and
walked as a sick man would walk. The blind man's son then asked the
_tamaniu_ if it was ill and the creature nodded its head and moved
slowly back to the tree. They went back and told the man that his
familiar was ill, and soon afterwards he died. At the same time the
banyan tree fell, which was taken as a sign that the _tamaniu_ died too.
This is an uncanny story which brings out strongly the psychic
connection between the man and his representative animal.
In Melanesia a native doctor was once attending a patient when a large
eagle hawk soared past the house and a hunter was about to shoot it
when the doctor called out in alarm, "Don't fire, that is my spirit!
If you kill it I shall die." He also said, "If you see a rat to-night,
don't drive it away, it's my spirit, or a snake may come to-night,
which will be my spirit." Apparently the doctor had the power to send
his familiar in animal form for the purpose of working a cure.
At Ongek in the Gaboon a French missionary spent the night in the hut of
a Fan chief. He was awakened before daylight by the rustling of dry
leaves and, lighting a torch, perceived a huge black poisonous serpent,
coiled and ready to strike. He was about to shoot the horrible reptile
when his arm was suddenly struck up by the chief, who, extinguishing the
torch, cried, "Don't fire, I beg of you. In killing the snake you would
kill me. That serpent is my _elangela_. Fear nothing!" Speaking thus he
seized and caressed the noisome reptile, which showed emotions of
delight rather than fear or anger. Then the chief bore away his serpent
and laid it in another hut, lying down beside it, after exhorting the
missionary never to speak of what he had seen.[13]
From this occurrence it will easily be gathered that it is highly
dangerous to kill a _tamaniu_, _nagual_, or _manitou_.
The possibility of the soul existing temporarily apart from the body
is believed by most savages, and civilised races, such as the Romans,
have held identical ideas. "The _nagual_," writes W. Northcote Thomas
in his valuable article on Animals,[14] "is the lineal ancestor of the
_genius_ of the Romans, no less than of the _guides_ of modern
spiritualism." This statement gives ample food for thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Fiske, J., "Myths and Myth-makers," 1873, p. 74.
[8] 1873, pp. 242-7.
[9] Frazer, "Totemism," Vol. II, p. 58.
[10] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 5.
[11] "The Uganda Protectorate," by Sir Harry Johnston, 1902, Vol. II,
p. 832.
[12] "Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia" in "Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute," 1909, Vol. XXXIX, p. 177.
[13] Frazer, "Golden Bough," "Balder the Beautiful," 1913, Vol. II, p.
200, etc.
[14] Hastings' "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics," 1908, Vol. I.
CHAPTER IV
HUMAN SOULS IN ANIMAL BODIES
At all periods of the world's history and in every country people have
believed in the "external soul" of a man appearing in animal form. For
instance, in the island of Florida the natives tell the story of an
alligator which used to come out of the sea and visit the village in
which the man whose ghost it was had dwelt. It was known by his name
and was on friendly terms with the natives, allowing children to ride
on its back.[15]
In Syria there are stories of girls being carried off by bears and
giving birth to human-animal offspring. The Creeks believe the
offspring to be bears which later turn into men. Japan is famous for
its white bear-god and the Tartars believe that earth spirits take the
form of bears.
The Gilyaks believe that if one of their race is killed by a bear, his
soul transmigrates into the animal's body. Californian Indians have
been heard to plead hard for the life of a she-bear. They said its
wrinkled face was like the withered features of a dead grandmother
whose soul had entered into the animal.
One of the Omaha clans believe they are descended from bison and the
males wear their hair in imitation of the animal which is their totem.
The Ewe negroes of Togoland ascribe to the souls of buffaloes and
leopards the power of killing the hunter who slew them, or of
misleading him in the chase so that he confuses men with animals and
gets into difficulties from being accused of murdering the former. The
souls of these dangerous animals are thought to haunt and plague the
hunter, perhaps by making him crazy, so that when he finds his way
back into the town he loses all his property and is sold into slavery.
A quaint ceremony is performed to prevent such power emanating from
the dead prey.
The Baganda natives are in deadly terror of the ghosts of the
buffaloes they have killed, believing that they may work harm to them.
The crocodile especially has played a large part in these beliefs
about human and ghostly animals.
Natives in Simbang, in German New Guinea, are convinced that their
relatives turn into crocodiles, and they recognise a certain crocodile
known by the name of "Old Butong" as head of the family. They say he
was born of a woman. Mary Kingsley tells a similar story in her
"Travels in West Africa," describing human beings, who, disguised as
alligators, swim in the creeks, attack the canoes and carry off the
crew. The natives believe in the spirit of the man actually possessing
the animal's body.
In New Guinea and the East Indies as well as in West Africa crocodiles
are thought to be the abodes of the souls of ancestors, and the victim
of this dangerous reptile is said to have incurred the vengeance of
some human being who has taken the form of the animal, while those who
kill crocodiles become themselves transformed after death. Spenser's
"cruell craftie crocodile" was held to be sacred in Egypt, and the god
Sebek was said to take its shape whenever he so desired.
The Malagasy view is that the crocodile is the ally of a magician
during his lifetime, and that he can send him forth as a familiar to
wreak harm upon his enemies.
The alligator is closely allied to the crocodile. Among the legends of
the Arawak Indians of British Guiana is one about a half human beast of
this species which received its extraordinary markings in the following
manner: Arawadi, the sun-god, coming to earth saw an alligator
disporting himself on the banks of a stream which he had preserved
specially for fish. To get rid of the enemy he seized and smote him with
a hard club upon the head and tail, but the alligator, crying out to him
to stay his hand, promised in return for clemency a beauteous
water-sprite to be his bride. Arawadi agreed to the proposal.
"The reptile's wounds were healed. Those blows
No more his hide assail;
But still their marks are seen, 'tis said,
Indented on his battered head
And notched along his tail!"
The domestic animals, bulls, cows, horses, asses, cats, and dogs, have
been regarded at one time or another as gifted with human powers, or
as suitable vehicles for the reception of human souls. The Tlaxcallans
believe that man can be transformed into a dog. The wild dog, the
coyote, according to the ideas of the Navajos, may be a bad man
transformed at death for his sins.
Armenians sacrifice an ass at the graves of people who owe them money,
their belief being that if payment is not forthcoming the ancestor's
souls will enter asses' bodies.
The Corn Spirit is supposed to take the form of a cat, and in some
places in Germany children have been warned not to go into the
corn-fields because "The cat sits there." In Silesia the reaper who
cuts the last corn is called the "Tom-cat" and is dressed up in
rye-stalks, wearing a long plaited tail. Sometimes another man
accompanies him called "the female cat."
The Lapps of the North Cape are said to consult a black cat when in
trouble, and they regard it more as a human being than as an animal.
The cat is among the soul-animals familiar to the inhabitants of the
British Islands, who, owing to this country's immunity from wild
beasts, are satisfied to "humanise" the milder species of creatures
such as the ant, butterfly, gull, moth, sparrow, and swan.
In the parish of Ballymoyer in Ireland butterflies are said to be the
souls of grandfathers, whilst the Malagasy trace their descent from a
moth, believing that a man was changed into a moth when he died. Many
races believe that moths and butterflies are the souls of the dead.
In the Solomon Islands, if a native declared he intended to transmigrate
into a butterfly, his children, on seeing one of these insects would cry
"That is Daddy" and make some suitable offering of food. Witches have
been known to have butterflies and moths as familiars.
In Cornwall ants are thought to be the souls of children who died
without baptism. Hindus also associate this insect with the souls of
the dead, and natives of New Guinea believe that a second death occurs
after the first and that the soul is transformed into an ant.
The Athabascan Dog-Ribs believe that an ant inserted beneath the skin
of the palm endows the owner of the hand with the gift of prophecy.
The Sudanese think that a wer-man has to approach an ants' nest before
being transformed into a hyæna.
Besides the ant the bat is regarded as a mysterious creature, and this
form was frequently assumed by Chamalcan, god of the Cakchiquels.
Large bats abound in an island on the Ivory Coast in West Africa and
are regarded as embodying the souls of the dead. In Tonga the same
superstition holds good. Bats and birds appear so similar when flying
at dusk that it is natural to find that birds also are often the form
in which human spirits take wing.
The Warrar races of Guiana have a very poetical belief about the
spirits of the departed. They visit the fair isle of Trinidad,
"Where souls of good men they could find,
In glittering humming-birds confined."
The Arawaks believe that vultures belong to a race which lives in a
country above the sky. When at home the vultures cease to be birds and
assume the shape and habits of human beings.
The Kalitas hold that when a man dies his soul is carried to
spirit-land by a little bird, and if he has been an evil-doer during
his lifetime, a hawk overtakes and swallows the bird.
In County Mayo swans are the souls of virgins who have been remarkable
for the purity of their lives. This idea is as beautiful as the
Bohemian tradition that children hop about the meadows in the form of
frogs is quaint.
An old Hindu story that monkeys were originally men has a distinctly
comic side to it. They contracted debts and when called upon to pay
fled from their creditors by changing into monkeys and putting their
tails between their legs. In this undignified position they made off
at full speed into the jungle.
The stories of human souls in various animal bodies would fill a
volume, and perhaps one of the most picturesque ideas of the kind is
that of the Cornish fisherfolk who say they see the spirits of their
drowning companions transformed into animal shapes as they pass away
from this earth.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] Frazer, J. G., "The Golden Bough," "Spirits of the Corn and of
the Wild," 1912, Vol. II, p. 297. See also "Balder the Beautiful,"
1913, Vol. II, pp. 196-218, "The External Soul in Animals."
CHAPTER V
ANIMAL DANCES
The ceremonial dances and festivals of primitive races in which animal
masks and skins are used are closely connected with the idea of
ancestor worship and with transformation. After careful study of the
subject it will be regarded as certain that the performers, by means
of mimic action, rhythmic and imitative sounds, as well as by narcotic
drugs and pungent or penetrating perfumes, induce in themselves an
hypnotic or excited state in which they believe they change into the
actual animal they represent.
Some of the dances are infinitely elaborate in detail, and are so
complicated in their various figures and their symbolic intention that
primitive ideas are almost lost sight of, but a certain fundamental
similarity can be found in them all which is based on root ideas of
animal worship, the desire to propitiate animals in the chase, the
belief in animal gods, or spirits of ancestors appearing in animal
form and the desire to bring about, by sacrifice and offering, the
fertility of the species.
Such exercises are both religious and magical, to secure charms
against bodily ills, and for good hunting as well as for recreation.
In special family dances the performers mimic the actions and cries of
their totemic animals.
In its most primitive form the animal disguise was used by savages
when acting in the capacity of a decoy, with the object of securing
food and clothing. The early Indian when trapping buffalo went forth
carrying a dress made of the skin of a buffalo, wearing its head and
horns over his own head. As soon as he had induced the herd to pursue
him, he led them into a trap or ambush, or over a precipice which was
fatal to many of them.
The Eskimo, when hunting the seal, wears a sealskin garment which
makes him look so much like his prey that at a distance he is only
distinguished from it with difficulty. When close to the animal he
utters sounds like those of a blowing seal.
Also when hunting deer he imitates their grunt, and two hunters on the
same track carry guns on their shoulders to resemble the animal's
antlers. Zuni hunters after deer wear cotton shirts with the sleeves
rolled up to the elbow, the back and front of the shirt being coloured
so as to represent the animal's body, the arms stained to represent
the deer's forelegs. Head and antlers are carried on the shoulders,
and the stalkers approach the game, browsing as they go.
Out of the simple imitation of animal motions and cries for the
purpose of decoy, the dance grew more complicated, with wild whirling
figures and elaborate dresses and masks. From a useful and necessary
disguise for purposes of obtaining food, the wolf-robe and mask
became, in unscrupulous hands, an instrument for personal
aggrandisement and gain through intimidation. The hideous animal-mask
was first used as a shield or protection for the face in defence
against the onslaught upon an opposing force. Then it became an
instrument with which to inspire terror and fear in those who beheld
it from the point of view of its ugliness or frightfulness, and
finally it was worn as a device or symbol of superhuman agencies. At
this stage it formed an integral part of the paraphernalia used in
religious performances, and when worn during ceremonial the wearer
became imbued in some mysterious manner with the spirit of the being
represented by the mask.
To gain the characteristics of an animal a wizard attached crow and
owl plumes to his head, that he might have the eyes of a crow and
quickly become aware of the approach of man, or of the owl that he
might travel by night.
A Zuni man, hearing the hoot of an owl, yet recognising it as human,
discovered one of his own race hidden in the thicket. "Ah," he cried,
"why do you wear those plumes upon your head? Aha! you must be a
wizard!"
The Omaha coyote dance is performed by warriors to keep up their
spirits. Each dancer wears an animal skin, and imitates the action of a
coyote, trotting and glancing round. In dance and song the performers
imagine themselves to be transformed into the animal. In the Omaha
buffalo dance, four men are attired in great shaggy skins, the horns
above their heads and the hair hanging down below the chest. Other
dances are in imitation of wolves, grizzly bears, horses or tigers.
Pawnees dance the bison dance in war habit and with bison skins and
horns over their heads. The Creeks dance similarly, uttering sounds in
imitation of the bison, their bodies bent almost double and two staffs
being held to represent the animal's forelegs.
The initiation day has at its root the idea of transforming the man
into a member of the kin by giving him a share of the nature of the
animal. Dances may give magical power over the animal to be chased,
and are performed before a hunting expedition. In the dance the animal
goes down before the onslaught of the hunter, and so the real animal,
it is hoped, will fall a victim to his weapons. Dances after hunting
are of a protective nature, so that the soul of the slaughtered animal
may have no evil effect upon the slayer. Another form of animal dance
is performed with a view to increase the number of animals. Among the
Mandan Indians, for instance, an animal festival is held, at which a
man, painted black to represent the evil one, enters a village from
the prairie, chases and terrifies the women and acts the part of a
buffalo in a dance which is intended to ensure a good supply of this
valuable animal during the year to come. Other American tribes have a
similar masquerade, in which males, dressed in buffalo skins, take the
part of male buffaloes and the females personify the female animals,
with a view to bringing about an increase of the species.
Legendary animals, or spirits, are also represented in the elaborate
masked pantomimes of the Indian tribes in North West America. The
explanation given by the natives is that the ceremonial was instituted
in ancient days when man had still the form of an animal; and before
the great transformer had given him a distinctive shape. This
ceremonial, performed by man-animals, is a dramatised form of myth, in
which the actors attempt to reproduce certain trance-states by
sympathetic mimicry.
The Eskimos of Bering Strait perform remarkable dances in which
curious mythological beasts, said to inhabit sea and land, become
visible and occasionally play a part. Strange forms, probably of known
animals modified and adapted, are conjured to appear. The dance is
based on the old belief that in the early days all animate beings had
a dual existence, choosing to be men or animals as the will prompted
them. If an animal wished to be transformed into a man, the body was
drawn erect and the foreleg or wing was raised so that it pushed up
the jowl or beak, and thus changed the form and features into
something more manlike. It is still believed by these races that
animals have this power, and the form taken is called _inua_ and
represents the psychical part of the creature, at death appearing as
its shade. The wizards are said to have the power of piercing the
animal mask and recognising the human features it conceals.
Masks may also represent totemic animals, and the dancers are then
transformed into these special creatures, or at least are moved by
their spiritual essence.
Some of these masks are made with double faces, so that the muzzle of
the animal fits over and conceals the face of the _inua_ and the outer
mask is hinged on or held in place by pegs so that it may be removed
at any minute. The psychological moment when actual transformation
occurs is symbolised at a particular part of the ceremony.
The wearer of the mask then becomes imbued with the true spirit of the
animal represented, and the dance turns into a species of thanksgiving
for the hunter's success.[16]
Dancing is sometimes used as a form of exorcism.
In Abyssinia a disorder similar to that of being possessed by a
_bouda_, or sorcerer, is called _tigritiya_, and is a supposed
possession by the devil in which the victim, who is generally a woman,
believes that she has been transformed into an animal. Whatever the
patient demands must be procured, for else she becomes sulky and,
covering up her head, remains for days without eating or speaking.
Since the symptoms always include the wasting away of the attacked
person, this state is very dangerous.
Ornaments of all kinds have to be borrowed in answer to her lightest
whim. She asks for the lion's skin worn by a warrior, his silver
ornaments, or other valuable articles difficult to procure. In some
cases music is used as a means of charming away the _tigritiya_. Drums
and other instruments strike up and the patient moves her body in time
to the music and gradually increases her energy until the pace is
furious and her motions so violent that it seems likely she will
dislocate her limbs, if not her neck. Having lain on a bed of
sickness, reduced to a mere bag of bones, such fatiguing exercises
appear uncanny, but it is on this dancing and on her incantations that
the ejection of the evil spirit depends.
Some of the dances imitate the antics of bush-hogs and other animals
desirous of fun rather than of injury to human beings. In one of the
Acawoio dances, each dancer has a kind of trumpet to which a rudely
carved figure of some animal or reptile is fixed, and he impersonates
this animal for the time being.[17]
Musical instruments used in the dances are frequently made of animal
skins, and the Indians attribute special virtues to the wolf-skin.
It is said that a tom-tom or drum made of this animal's skin can
silence any similar instrument made of sheep's skin from which no man
can emit a sound while the wolf-skin vibrates.
Real animals often play a part in the ceremonial, especially snakes in
the serpent dances and sacred animals in such dances as are dedicated
to their worship.
In China a big dog is dressed up like a man and is carried round in a
palanquin to break up a drought.
Masks and animal skins worn at dances are, of course, not confined to
the use of primitive races, but have been employed since ancient days
in every kind of masque, dance, and pantomime. Much might be written
on their symbolic meaning, and attention may be drawn to the special
instance of the _festa asinaria_ of mediæval days at which dancers
wore the heads of asses.
Besides the masks and animal skins, ordinary clothing was often made
to represent special animals. For instance, at Athens, Artemis was
worshipped in ceremonies at which young maidens attired in saffron
gowns danced a particular movement and were called "bears."
The Royal family of Dahomey worship the leopard, and some of the
king's wives are distinguished by the title of "leopard wives" and
wear striped cloths to resemble the animal.
Many savages paint a rude picture of the animal they represent upon
the clothes worn, and this is a special feature of some of the
extraordinary snake dancers, especially amongst the Moquis.
These dances as well as those of the Hopis are expressions of clan
totemism rather than of snake worship. Several figures in the Maya
codices represent human beings, evidently personifying deities and
wearing the symbolic masks of animal gods. One of the human figures in
the Codex Cortesianus wears the mask of a snake. The Hopi usually
carries only the head of the animal personified, but the Mexican dresses
in the skin. In some examples the head-dress is most elaborate, the head
being painted green, with open mouth and red lips dotted with black, two
pendant white, tooth-shaped projections hanging from the upper jaw. From
the mouth a red tongue lolls. The eye is oval, with curved lines drawn
upon the pupil, and the whole is capped by a crescentic figure towering
above the head. Three triangular-shaped plumes extend from the cap, and
over the nose a red-coloured flap hangs. Though usually green, the heads
are sometimes painted white or brown, but none is red or yellow. In the
Hopi folk-tales it is said that the waters of the world come from the
breasts of the great snake, and sometimes a female figure, bearing a
snake as a head-dress, is symbolised with water flowing from her
breasts. Another symbolic figure has a snake's body with curious
markings and a head practically drawn in identical lines with that of a
human being. No doubt this represents a man transformed into, or
personifying, a snake. At any rate, he wears the mask and represents the
feathered snake ceremonially.
A number of animals are represented in Tusayan ceremonials and are then
called _Katcinas_, which means the supernatural being personified, as
well as the dance or act of personification. Besides the coyote, the
wolf, the cougar, the bear, the antelope, and the badger, which figure
largely among the supernatural beings found in the Sia ritual, the hawk,
the man eagle, the bee, butterfly, mountain sheep, and owl all play an
important part in Tusayan ceremonial. No women wear _Katcina_ masks in a
Hopi ceremony, the female _Katcinas_ being invariably represented by
men. The masked dances amongst the Pueblos, in which animal
personifications take place and masks are worn, are called _Katcina_
dances. They take place between January and August.[18]
The following strange ceremony is practised by Mexicans and is not
unlike the Hopi snake dance. It is celebrated once in every eight
years about October or November.
After fasting for some days, says one who has seen the dance, the
natives disguised themselves in all manner of animal and bird dresses,
and came up dancing to the chosen spot where the rain-god had been
placed before a pool of water in which live snakes and frogs were
swimming. The Macateca, which may be rendered "those from Deerland,"
then seized upon the wriggling reptiles with the mouth, never touching
them with the hand, and attempted to swallow them alive, dancing all
the time. He who managed to swallow the first snake cried out, "papa,
papa" and danced round about the temple. After two days of these
extraordinary exertions a procession was formed and all marched slowly
four times round the temple. Then came a feast of fruit and pastry
which had been placed ready in baskets for the purpose, and the
ceremonial was ended. The old men and women present, knowing that
there would be no repetition of the dance for eight years, wept
bitterly at the close of the performance.
In a festival in vogue among the Cholutecas, a slave of good figure,
and no personal blemish, is dressed for forty days in the same animal
skin and mask which represent the special god to be personified.
The dresses of the Moquis during their serpent dances are fashioned of
painted cotton kilts, of a reddish-yellow colour, decorated with narrow
bands of yellow and green, and bordered by a narrow black stripe. At
the bottom is a fringe of small bells of lead or tin. A snake is painted
in the folds of the kilt, covered with white spots and bordered by
narrow white lines. The arms and legs of the dancers are naked, but
dangling to their heels behind they wear skins of the fox or coyote.
Marching solemnly round a sacred stone, they begin by shaking rattles
and waving snake-wands to which eagle feathers are attached. After
some chanting, a number of women, dressed in white and red mantles,
come forward and scatter corn-meal from baskets with which they are
provided. Presently the head priest, followed by a number of male
performers, marching two and two, come forward towards the sacred
rock, carrying live snakes in their mouths and hands. Some of the
Indians tickle the heads, necks, and jaws of the wriggling serpents to
distract their attention from those who are grasping their bodies
firmly between their teeth.
When the snake-carriers reach the further end of the space cleared for
the dance they spit the snakes out upon the ground and, facing the
sacred rock, stamp the left foot twice, giving forth strange sounds,
half grunt, half wail.
For nearly an hour this mad dance of wriggling snakes, rushing
figures, and clouds of whirling corn-meal continues and then the
snakes are released, the symbolic dance is over and the performers
resume their ordinary clothes and, presumably, their natural human
proclivities. The origin of this dance lies in the belief that the
Moquis are descended from snakes and is told thus by the natives:--
"Many years ago the Moquis used to live on the other side of a high
mountain beyond the San Juan River in Colorado. The chief thought he
would take a trip down the big river, so he made himself a boat of a
hollow cottonwood log, took some provisions and started down. The
stream carried him to the sea-shore, where he found some shells. When
he arrived on the beach he saw a number of houses on the cliff in
which lived many men and women who had white under their eyes, and
below that a white mark on their cheeks. That night he took one of the
women as his wife. Shortly after his return the woman gave birth to
snakes, and this was the origin of the snake family or clan which
manages the dance. When she gave birth to these snakes they bit a
number of the children of the Moquis. The Moquis then moved in a body
to their present villages and they have this dance to conciliate the
snakes so they won't bite their children."[19]
Snake worship and ancestor or spirit worship seems here combined in
the same rite, and the Moquis evidently believe in the transmigration
of souls. The dancers belong to a Secret Society, a sort of Serpent
Brotherhood.
The peculiar qualities said to distinguish departed relatives,
reappearing in the form of snakes, from the ordinary reptiles are that
they will frequent the huts, never eat mice and show no fear of man.
"Sometimes," says Sir John Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilisation,"[20]
"a snake is recognised as the representative of a given man by some
peculiar mark or scar, the absence of an eye, or some similar point of
resemblance."
The noiseless movement and the rapid action of the serpent, combined
with its fascinating gaze and magnetic power, no doubt lead savages to
view it as a possessor of wisdom and embodiment of spirits.
The Kobena and other Indians of Brazil perform masked dances in honour
of their dead. They have a butterfly dance in which two performers
represent large blue butterflies fluttering in the sunshine. Darting
swallows are also mimicked by masked dancers, as well as vultures,
owls, fish, jaguars, and, curiously enough, the sloth, in which dance
a man hangs for a long time to the bough of a tree or the cross-beam
of a hut. Another strange sight is the sandfly dance, in which a swarm
of masked men make the air dark with their antics.
All these performances are based on certain magical formulæ. A
mysterious force permeates the dancer, beneath his mask, and for the
time being he has become a mighty animal demon or spirit, capable of
unlimited powers.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] See E. W. Nelson's "The Eskimo about Bering Strait," in
"Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology," 1899,
Part II, p. 394 _et seq._
[17] Brett, W. H., "The Indian Tribes of Guiana," 1868, pp. 374-5.
[18] _See_ Fewkes, J. W., "Comparison of Sia and Tusayan Snake
Ceremonials" and other tracts.
[19] Bourke, J. G., "The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona," 1884,
p. 177.
[20] p. 180.
CHAPTER VI
MAN-ANIMAL AND ANIMAL-MAN
In remote ages man and animal were closely bound by a thousand ties.
Under barbaric conditions human beings and animals lived, as it were,
in touch with one another, they were next-door neighbours in the
primeval forests, their necessities were the same to a large extent
and their tastes did not widely differ. Both were actuated by the need
of shelter, food, and protection against enemies. Is it surprising,
then, that primitive man was closely allied to his less intelligent
brothers, and that he believed them to be endowed with feelings and
desires akin to his own?
Owing to his powers of mental growth, however, it was not long before
man's instincts developed above those of the beasts. He was still, in
reality, a savage animal, but he had more skill and ingenuity in the
art of killing, as soon as he began to realise that a stick, a stone,
or other weapons could be used to beat out the life of other animals.
Gradually he found out that he possessed higher qualities on the
mental plane, and that he had the power of conscious spiritual
development which was apparently denied to brute creatures.
Many writers have endeavoured to formulate the great kinship which
exists amongst all created beings in this particular aspect of the
evolution of soul.
"There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it is
capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures," writes
Ruskin;[21] "and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, and a
pleasure also for the beholding of all other creatures that can
behold. So the unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy and partly
in their giving and taking, and always in their love; and these are
their delight and their strength; for their strength is their
co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in their giving
and receiving of alternate and perpetual good; their inseparable
dependancy on each other's being, and their essential and perfect
depending on their Creator's."
"Let us label beings by what they are," says a more modern writer,[22]
"by the souls that are in them and the deeds they do--not by their
colour, which is pigment, nor by their composition, which is clay. There
are philanthropists in feathers and patricians in fur, just as there are
cannibals in the pulpit and saurians among the money-changers."
The great seer, Prentice Mulford, believed that the spirit of an animal
could actually be re-embodied in a man or woman, and he thought that its
prominent characteristics would appear in that man or woman. The mother
might attract to her the spirit of some more intelligent or highly
developed savage animal. That spirit would then lose its identity as a
quadruped and reappear in the body of the new-born child.
"Remember," he writes, "that as to size and shape the spirit of a
horse need not be like the horse materialised in flesh and blood.
Spirit takes hold of a mass of matter and holds that matter in
accordance with its ruling desire and the amount of its intelligence.
An anaconda is but the faint spark of intelligence only awakened into
desire to swallow and digest. Such low forms of life as the reptile or
fish have not even awakened into affection for their young. The
reptile, as to spirit or intellect, is but a remove from the
vegetable. Trees have life of their own; they are gregarious, and grow
in communities. The spirit of the old tree reanimates the new one.
There is in the vegetable kingdom the unconscious desire for
refinement, for better forms of life. For this reason is the entire
vegetable kingdom of a finer type than ages ago, when the world's
trees and plants, though immense in size, were coarse in fibre and in
correspondence with the animal life about them."
The true evolution, then, is that of spirit, taking on itself through
successive ages many re-embodiments and adding to itself some new
quality with each re-embodiment.
The survival of the fittest implies that the best qualities so gathered
do survive. The lower, coarse and more savage are gradually sloughed
off. The best qualities in all animal forms of life eventually are
gathered in a man. He has so gained or absorbed into himself courage
from the lion, cunning from the fox, rapaciousness from vulture and
eagle. You often see the eagle or vulture beak on one person's face, the
bulldog on that of another, the wolf, the fox, and so on. Faces hang out
no false sign of the character of the spirit. Man, unconsciously
recognising this, uses the terms "foxy," "wolfish," "snaky," and even
"hoggish," in describing the character of certain individuals.[23]
Most people are able to find physical similarities between human beings
and animals. The equine man who moves his ears is not rarely to be met
with. The person who uncovers his canine teeth in a snarl is an even
more common type. Short women who flap their arms and waddle in the
style of penguins; tall ones who have the graceful sliding movement of
the giraffe; persons of either sex who jerk along with hops like
feathered creatures on a lawn are all to be met with any day.
Mrs. Heron stalks in with solemnity and stateliness, and cranes her
neck to find something she has mislaid. She has a prying face, sharp
nose, and small projecting chin.
Lion faces, tiger faces, cat faces, fox faces, fish faces, bird faces,
sheep faces, and rat faces meet us at every turn.
Sheep men are mild in appearance, beaming with amiability,
truthfulness, and freedom from cant. Ox faces are more robust, with
wider and broader features, and a certain flatness of face. People of
this appearance have good dispositions, good appetite, are stubborn in
bargains perhaps, but reliable and trustworthy.
Hercules was depicted with a powerful neck, a small head, short and
curly hair, which bore a striking resemblance to a vigorous and
untamable bull, whilst Herod was like a fox, with thin face, cunning
eye, restless head and neck, artful and deceptive with highly strung
nerves.
The weasel man is thin, tall, sharp-eyed, always in a hurry, and the
nose that augurs badly is that which is strikingly similar to the beak
of a parrot. The parrot-man is filled with a sense of his own
importance and is an endless prattler. Those who have a high and
narrow forehead and a nose that terminates like the beak of a crow are
sure to be subject to vile passions.
Beaumarchais said wittily, "Boire sans soif et faire l'amour en tout
temps, c'est ce que distingue l'homme de la bête."
Artists, too, have attempted to depict the animal spirit that dwells
in human beings. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted two portraits of young
girls, one holding a cage with a mouse in it, the other a kitten. The
former is called Muscipula,[24] the latter Felina, and it may be
surmised that he intended to show in their features the imitative
sympathy young children have with young animals, for Muscipula's
expression is that of the mouse.
Charles Le Brun, the artist, worked out the same idea in a less
symbolic and more practical manner, from the physiognomical aspect, in
his series of drawings illustrative of the relation between human
physiognomy and brute creation which depict man's features
transformed in many animal countenances.
"Man is a talkative and religious ape," says J. Howard Moore in "The
Universal Kinship,"[25] and goes on to point out that while man has
expressed his opinion about animals constantly, he has never had the
opportunity of hearing what animals have to say about human beings.
Although we know what a lion looks like when painted by a man, "human
eyes have never yet been illumined by the sardonic lineaments of a man
painted by a lion."[26]
Emerson expressed something of the same idea when confronting the
inmates of a stable or menagerie. "What compassion," he cries, "do
these imprisoning forms awaken! You may sometimes catch the glance of
a dog which lays a kind of claim to sympathy and brotherhood. What!
somewhat of me down there? Does he know it? Can he, too, as I, go out
of himself, see himself, perceive relations? We fear lest the poor
brute should gain one dreadful glimpse of his condition, should learn
in some moment the tough limitation of this fettering organisation. It
was in this glance that Ovid got the hint of his metamorphosis;
Calidasa of his transmigration of souls.
"For these fables are our own thoughts carried out. What keeps these
wild tales in circulation for thousands of years? What but the wild fact
to which they suggest some approximation of theory! Nor is the fact
quite solitary, for in varieties of our own species where organisation
seems to predominate over the genius of man, in Kalmuck or Malay or
Flathead Indian, we are sometimes pained by the same feeling; and
sometimes, too, the sharp-witted prosperous white man awakens it. In a
mixed assembly we have chanced to see not only a glance at Abdiel so
grand and keen, but also in other faces the features of the mink, of the
bull, of the rat, and the barn-door fowl."[27]
The great Chinese Epic "A Journey to Heaven," depicts the gradual
evolution of the beast into man and the transformation of character from
unpromising materials into saints worthy of heaven. The monkey's
ambition, the pig's love of ease and the horse's one talent of bearing
burdens are all made to play their part in working out the salvation of
man. One of the chief characters in the story is Sun Wu King, who
personates the irrepressible human mind, an inventive genius full of
resource who begins with monkey inquisitiveness to discover the reasons
of things and presently develops into a man of science and an inventor.
The pig impersonates man's lower nature and demons represent the untamed
passions of man. One demon having once been a clever, handsome man,
became extremely ugly with a snout like a pig and long flapping ears. He
tells his story thus: "Since I was born I have been stupid and loved
ease night and day. I received the pill of nine Transformations and
studied all the arts by which man could be united to the powers above
and below, till at last I was able to fly with a light but strong body
and was a guest in the celestial Court." Thence he was thrown out for
misdemeanours and made to take the shape of a pig, but gradually he was
weaned to better things and lost his animal propensities.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Ruskin, "Frondes Agrestes," 1899, pp. 146-9.
[22] Moore, T. H., "The Universal Kinship," 1906, pp. 233-4.
[23] Mulford, Prentice, "The Gift of the Spirit," 1904. "Re-embodiment
Universal in Nature," pp. 170-1.
[24] The original painting is at Holland House.
[25] 1906, p. 17.
[26] _Ibid._, p. 233.
[27] Emerson, "Works," 1903, Vol. IV. "Demonology," pp. 12-13.
CHAPTER VII
SCAPEGOAT AND SAINT
According to the tradition of the scapegoat, the evil or lower side of
man can be transferred from him to an animal. In this process of
removing disease or sin, the bad spirit is expelled from the human
being and enters the form of some beast. In India the scape-animal may
be a pig, buffalo, a goat or a black cock.
The Jews had the custom of bringing a goat to the door of the Tabernacle
and the high priest laid the sins of the people upon the animal, sending
it thereafter away with its burden into the wilderness.
In Thibet a human scapegoat, dressed in goat's skin, is kicked out of
the community as soon as the people have confessed their sins, and
wealthy Moors keep a wild boar in their stables as a vehicle for the
evil spirits to enter into which might otherwise injure their horses.
The Kaffirs sometimes take a goat in the presence of a sick man and
confess sins over him. Then a few drops of the patient's blood are
allowed to fall on the animal's head and the sickness is thought to be
transferred, the animal being turned loose over the veld. The
medicine-men of the Baganda races perform a similar operation, taking
hold of the animal and tying upon it some herbs they have passed over
the patient's body. Then the animal is driven away to waste land, and
the sick man is supposed to recover. The Baganda people transmit the
sins of a dead man to a calf, the animal being led three times round
the bier and the hand of the dead man being placed on its head, by
which act the calf takes upon itself the evil done by the deceased.
Then the scapegoat is driven on to waste land, where it cannot
contaminate anybody.
Thus Christ, in the country of the Gadarenes, permitted devils to use
swine as scapegoats when driving them out of two men possessed. The
unclean spirits besought the favour of Him, and the whole herd of
swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in
the waters.
St. Regulus, archbishop of Arles and Senlis, was once confronted by a
man possessed of a devil. The devil besought him, saying, "If you cast
me out suffer me to enter into the body of this ass," and the bishop
said, "Go!" When the devil was about to enter into the ass, the
animal, aware of his intention, made the sign of the cross on the
ground with his fore-foot and the devil found it impossible to obtain
his body and had to pass on, leaving the ass unmolested.
In another scapegoat story the devil leaves the possessed man in the
form of two worms:
Jean de la Roque was a young nobleman of vicious habits. St. Francis of
Paula hearing of the youth's evil ways sent a messenger to arrest him
and had him locked up in a monastery. Roque was furious at this manner
of tampering with his liberty and, vowing vengeance on those who
detained him, beat on the door of his cell and uttered loud cries. At
last, exhausted by passion, he lay down on the floor and slept. Then St.
Francis entered the cell and, waking the young sinner, said to him
coldly, "How now, friend, what thinkest thou? Pull from thine ear that
which torments thee so." The young man, still half asleep, put his hand
to his right ear and drew forth a hideous hairy worm of monstrous size.
Then putting his hand to his left ear he drew forth another similar
worm. Thus the devil by which he had been possessed came forth in the
form of two worms, and the young man, returning to himself, threw
himself at the saint's feet and prayed for pardon. He was formally
admitted to the monastery and remained there as a monk until 1520.
Birds, too, have been employed to carry away any evil,--from leprosy
to freckles.
The idea of the scapegoat is closely bound up with, and typifies the
substitution of the Christ for sinners and His eternal removal of
their transgressions.
In the legends of the saints, also, animals take upon themselves the
burden of sins committed and no human beings are more closely related to
the brute creation than the holy men, who frequently treated them as
though they were brothers. St. Francis of Assisi spoke to birds and
animals in the same tone that he used to his friends, and he often went
into solitudes and preached to the cattle of the field, the fishes of
the sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the forest; dumb
creatures which listened attentively to the words of wisdom which fell
from his lips. One day when he was preaching at Alviano, the swallows
were twittering so loudly that he grew annoyed. Breaking off suddenly in
his discourse, he said, "My sisters, the swallows, please keep peace
while I am preaching." After that they disturbed him no more.
There are many stories in which saints are assisted in their work by
animals. St. Gentius made a wolf which had eaten one of his oxen help
him with the ploughing. St. Maidoc, having neither ox, horse nor ass,
ordered a sea-cow to come from the ocean, which she did and, being
harnessed to the plough, she furrowed his fields. When St. Malo
settled down near Saintes, the neighbours made him a present of an
ass, which was one day killed by a wolf. St. Malo said to the wild
beast, "Since you have killed my ass you must serve me instead." The
wolf performed his duties admirably for many years without a grumble.
A similar story is told about St. Santes of Urbino.
When St. Ronan was accused of being a vampire, Grallo, King of
Quimper, horrified to hear of such a monster, set dogs upon him to
prove the truth of the statement. As the savage animals rushed towards
him the saint raised his right hand, made the sign of the cross, and
said, "Stop! in the name of the Lord." The animals became gentle at
once and fawned on the saint.
There are legends of the souls of saints being borne away by animals,
of the souls of saints taking flight in the shape of birds, of saints
changing from one animal form to another, of saints being approached
by the devil in the form of animals, and of saints being worshipped in
animal shape.
At the moment of the death of St. Vincent Ferrer, the windows of his
bedchamber opened of their own accord and a number of winged creatures
no larger than butterflies, white in colour and very beautiful, flew
into the house. As the saint drew his last breath these winged
creatures disappeared suddenly, leaving a delightful perfume behind
them. Everyone was convinced that the butterflies were angels who had
come to carry away the pure soul of the saint to paradise.
The same saint was said to be able to assume wings, whenever he
wished, and, in the form of a bird-angel, to fly through the air in
the hope of consoling and comforting anyone who was in trouble and
required his assistance.
St. Benedict (A.D. 480-543) was tempted by the devil in the form of a
blackbird. The saint had retired to a cavern in Subiaco, about fifty
miles west of Rome, and the evil one resolved to do away with a holy
man who might prove a great enemy to his kingdom upon earth. Taking
the form of a bird, he hovered around the hermit's dwelling-place,
sometimes approaching so close that the saint had only to put out his
hand to touch the bird. Becoming suspicious of the bird's motives,
however, St. Benedict made the sign of the cross and the evil spirit
vanished instantly.
St. Peter of Verona was also set upon by the devil, this time in the
shape of a horse. The holy man attracted large crowds to his church,
and the devil, growing jealous, rushed into the midst of the
congregation in the form of a black horse, stamping upon many present
and causing a panic of fear among the rest. The saint made the sign of
the cross and the phantom vanished in a cloud of smoke.
Sometimes the devil appears to saints in the form of a bull, and can
work serious bodily harm, as in the case of St. Catherine of Sweden,
daughter of prince Ulpho, who was brought up in the convent of
Risburgh. The abbess was at matins one morning and the devil, assuming
the form of a bull, tossed the child out of its cradle and left her
half-dead in the middle of the floor. The abbess found her in this
condition on her return, and the bull, addressing the holy woman,
cried, "I should certainly have finished my work if God had permitted
it," and then he vanished. The devil, according to tradition, has
often been seen in the form of a dog,[28] and some of the saints were
annoyed by such phantoms.
Simon Magus, the sorcerer, sent unto Peter the Apostle certain devils
in the likeness of dogs to devour him. St. Peter, "not looking for
such currish guests, consecrates certain morsels of bread and throws
them to the dog-devils, and by the power of that bread they are all
put to flight."[29]
When St. Stanislaus Kostka was preparing for admission into the society
of Jesus he was taken ill and the devil appeared to him in the guise of
a great black dog. The demon took the sick man three times by the throat
and tried to throttle him, but Stanislaus after some difficulty
succeeded in driving him away by making the sign of the cross.
Devils in the guise of rooks or crows annoyed St. Agnes of Mount
Pulciano by attacking her with beaks, claws, and wings. The young girl
with great presence of mind invoked the name of the Saviour and the
whole flock flew off.
St. Pascal Baylon, who lived from 1540-1592, was assailed by devils in
the guise of various animals. Sometimes they rushed upon him in the form
of lions and tigers seeking to devour him. As he withstood their attacks
with wonderful courage they tried to get at him in another way, and
offered to impress upon his body the marks of divine wounds, making
crosses of blood on various parts of his body. Then Pascal, horrified at
this form of deception, cried out to the evil one, "You ravening wolf,
how dare you take upon yourself the clothing of a lamb? Away with you!"
This speech acted as an exorcism, and the devil vanished.
The evil one has often been likened to a ravening wolf, which has led
to the symbolic form of transformation from a wolf to a lamb being
found in many legends--a mental change as extreme in its effects as
any physical change could be. Andrew Corcini, afterwards Bishop of
Fiesole, was converted in this figurative sense from a wolf into a
lamb. He was the son of wealthy parents in Florence, and, shortly
after his birth, in 1302, his mother dreamt that she had brought forth
a wolf and that her wolfish offspring ran into a church and became
transformed into a lamb. As the boy grew, his wolfish character was
clearly apparent; he was cruel, selfish, and untamable. One day his
mother said to him, "Andrew, you are in very truth the child of my
dream," and then she told him what she thought of him. He was greatly
struck by her story and spent the night in solitude and prayer. The
next day he went to the church of the Carmelites and, prostrating
himself before the image of the Virgin, he said, "Glorious Virgin, see
the wolf full of iniquity at thy feet. Thy offspring, oh mother, was a
Lamb without blemish. Make me also a lamb of God, and receive me into
the fold." For three hours he prayed without ceasing, and then the
prior found him and acceded to his request to be taken into the
Carmelite order, when he became a changed man.[30] He died in 1373.
St. William of Acquitaine was also "converted from a wolf to a lamb"
(A.D. 1157). He was Count of Poitou and Duke of Guyenne, a giant in
stature and a wild beast in disposition. Through the holy offices of
St. Bernard he became changed, and calling himself "the chief of
sinners" repented of his evil ways in sackcloth and ashes.[31]
These cases of spiritual transformation from animal-man to man-animal,
though interesting psychologically, do not awaken the intense
curiosity which material metamorphosis arouses, and which centres
especially in the subject of the wer-wolf.
Bodin[32] accumulated a large amount of evidence in favour of actual
transformation. He quotes one Pierre Mamor, who, whilst in Savoy,
deposed to having seen a man change into a wolf and described how he
did it. Henry of Cologne, author of a treatise, "de Lamys," vouched
for the truth of similar statements. Ulrich le Meusnier, who dedicated
a treatise to the Emperor Sigismund, gave numerous examples of the
veritability of transformation, and swore to having seen a wer-wolf at
Constance, who was accused of and executed for this crime. Germany,
Greece, and Asia were much infested by these pests. In 1542, under the
rule of Sultan Suleiman, a number of wer-wolves were found at
Constantinople. The Emperor called out the guard and, marching forth
at its head, freed the city of one hundred and fifty of these terrors
in full view of the people.
Paracelsus, one of the greatest occultists the world has known, was
positive that men could change into animals. Gaspar Peucerus, who had
long been sceptical and thought such ideas were a fable, was
constrained to believe there was truth in certain stories brought to
him by merchants trading in Livonia, who had seen victims of
lycanthropia executed for their misdeeds.
In the history of Johannus Trithemius, it may be read that in the year
970 there was a Jew called Baian, son of Simeon, who was not only able
to turn into a wolf at pleasure, but could also render himself
invulnerable, and Sigebertus, the historian, wrote that one of the Kings
of Bulgaria was able to transform himself into all kinds of animals.
Boguet, if anything, erred on the side of credulity. He asserted that in
1148 a huge man-wolf was seen at Geneva, which killed thirty people.[33]
In July, 1603, in the district of Douvres and Jeurre a great storm of
hail fell and damaged all the fruit trees, and three mysterious wolves
were seen. They had no tails, and they passed harmlessly through a
herd of cows and goats, touching none of them except one kid, which
one of the wolves carried to a distance without in any way injuring
it. This unnatural conduct made it fairly evident that these were not
real wolves, but sorcerers who had brought about the hail-storm and
wished to visit the scene of the disaster. It was said that the
biggest wolf that led the pack must be the evil one himself.
The two stories which follow show that transformation was sometimes
regarded as an instrument of divine punishment for sins committed.
Albertus Pericofcius in Muscovy treated his subjects with gross
cruelty, and extorted herds and flocks from them. One night he was
away from home and all his cattle were killed. When informed of his
loss he swore a round oath, saying, "Let him who has slain, eat; if
the Lord chooses, let him devour me as well."
At his words some drops of blood fell to the ground, he was
transformed into a wild dog, and rushing upon his dead cattle began to
devour the carcases.
Another gentleman in the vicinity of Prague who had robbed his tenants
right and left took the last cow from a widow who had five children
to support. As a judgment he lost all his cattle, at which misfortune
he broke into horrible curses. He was there and then transformed into
a dog which had a human head.
These incidents, however, throw no light on the real nature of the
wer-wolf or wer-dog, which remains as much a mystery as that of the
vampire. In some points a similarity may be said to exist between
them, both being destructive forces, of an evil and self-seeking
character. Those afflicted become subject to trance-like states and
hysterical phenomena.
A certain kind of vampire (which is really a bloodsucking ghost) is
said to have the power of assuming animal shape, and Bulgarian
vampires appear to be especially gifted with this peculiarity.
It is believed in a certain district of Germany that unless money is
placed in the mouth of a corpse at the time of burial, or if the dead
man's name is not cut from his shirt, he will become a vampire and his
ghost will issue from his grave in the form of a pig.
A gruesome story is told of a witch who chose to wander in animal
shape. She died in 1345 and her body was cast rudely into a ditch, but
instead of resting quietly she roamed at night in the form of various
unclean beasts, leaving havoc and death in her tracks. On exhumation
she was found to be a vampire, and a stake was driven through her
breast, which, however, failed to have the desired effect. She still
prowled around in the dark, using the stake as a weapon with which to
slay her victims, nor did she cease her nefarious deeds until her body
had been reduced to ashes.
Camden says that jilted maidens or deserted wives used to bribe witches
to get their faithless men consigned to prison for lycanthropy, the
usual term being seven years, but, judging from the trials which are on
record, death by burning was more frequently resorted to.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] _See_ Chapter XXI on Animal Ghosts.
[29] Harsnet, Samuel, "Popish Impostures," 1603, pp. 97, 98.
[30] Surius, "Lives of the Saints."
[31] Thibault, "Life of Guillaume of Acquitaine."
[32] "De la Démonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, Book II, pp. 195-6.
[33] "Discours des Sorciers," 1610.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WER-WOLF TRIALS
In Poitou the peasants have a curious expression, "courir la
galipote," which means to turn into a wer-wolf or other human-animal
by night and chase prey through the woods. The _galipote_ is the
familiar or imp which the sorcerer has the power to send forth.
In the dark ages sorcerers capable of this accomplishment were dealt
with according to the law, and hundreds were sent to trial for
practising black arts, being condemned, in most instances, to be burnt
alive or broken on the wheel. One of the most notorious historical
cases was that of Pierre Bourgot, who served the devil for two years
and was tried by the Inquisitor-General Boin.
Johannus Wierius[34] gives in full the confession of Bourgot,
otherwise called Great Peter, and of Michael Verding. The prisoners,
who were accused of wicked practices in December, 1521, believed they
had been transformed into wolves.
About nineteen years before Pierre's arrest at Pouligny a dreadful
storm occurred which scattered the flock of sheep of which he was
shepherd, and while he went far afield to search for them he met three
black horsemen, one of whom said to him, "Where are you going, my
friend? You appear to be in trouble."
Pierre told him that he was seeking his sheep, and the horseman bade
him take courage, saying that if he would only have faith, his master
would protect the straying sheep and see that no harm came to them.
Pierre thanked him and promised to meet him again in the same place a
few days later. Soon afterwards he found the stray sheep.
The black horseman, at their second meeting, told Pierre that he served
the devil, and Pierre agreed to do likewise if he promised him
protection for his flock. Then the devil's servant made him renounce
God, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints of Paradise, his baptism and
the tenets of Christianity. Pierre swore that he would do so, and kissed
the horseman's left hand, which was as black as ink and felt stone-cold.
Then he knelt down and took an oath of allegiance to the devil, and the
horseman forbade him thenceforth to repeat the Apostles' creed.
For two years Pierre remained in the service of the evil one, and
during that time he never entered a church until mass was over, or at
least until after the holy water had been sprinkled.
Meanwhile his flock was kept in perfect safety, and this sense of
security made him so indifferent about the devil that he began to go
to church again and to say the creed. This went on for eight or nine
years, when he was told by one Michael Verding that he must once more
render obedience to the evil one, his master. In return for his homage
Pierre was told that he would receive a sum of money.
Michael led him one evening to a clearing in the woods at Chastel
Charlon, where many strangers were dancing. Each performer held in his
hand a green torch which emitted a blue flame. Michael told Pierre to
bestir himself and that then he would receive payment, so Pierre threw
off his clothes and Michael smeared his body with an ointment which he
carried. Pierre believed that he had been transformed into a wolf, and
was horrified to find that he had four paws and a thick pelt. He found
himself able to run with the speed of the wind. Michael had also made
use of the salve and had become equally agile. After an hour or two
they resumed human shape, their respective masters giving them
another salve for this purpose. After this experience Pierre
complained that he felt utterly weary, and his master told him that
was of no consequence and that he would be speedily restored to his
usual state of health.
Pierre was often transformed into a wer-wolf after this first attempt,
and on one occasion he fell upon a boy of seven with the intention of
killing and eating him, but the child screamed so loudly that he beat a
hasty retreat to the spot where his clothes lay in a heap, rubbed
himself hurriedly with the ointment and resumed human form to escape
capture. Another time Michael and he killed an old woman who was
gathering peas, and one day whilst in the shape of wolves they devoured
the whole of a little girl except for one arm, and Michael said her
flesh tasted excellent, although it apparently gave Pierre indigestion.
They confessed also to strangling a young woman, whose blood they drank.
Among other disgusting crimes, Pierre murdered a girl of eight in a
garden by cracking her neck between his jaws, and he killed a goat
near to the farm of one Master Pierre Lerugen, first by setting on it
with his teeth and then by gashing its throat with a knife. The latter
operation leads to the belief that he had resumed his ordinary shape
at the time.
A peculiar point worth noticing about the case of Michael and Pierre
was that the former was able to transform himself at any moment with
his clothes on, while the latter had to strip and rub in ointment to
achieve the same result. At the time of his confession Pierre declared
that he could not recollect where the wolf's fur went to when he
became human again.
He also deposed that an ash-coloured powder was given to him, which he
rubbed upon his arms and left hand and thus caused the death of every
animal he touched. Here there would seem to be some discrepancy, for
he declared that in many instances he strangled, bit, or wounded his
victims!
Garinet[35] gives a good account of the important trial in 1573 of
Gilles Garnier, who was arrested for having devoured several children
whilst in the form of a wer-wolf.
The prisoner was accused of seizing a young girl aged ten or twelve in
a vineyard near Dôle, of killing her and dragging her into a wood, and
of tearing the flesh from her bones with his teeth and claws. He found
this food so palatable that he carried some of it away with him and
offered to share it with his wife. A week after the feast of All
Saints he captured another young girl near the village of La Pouppé,
and was about to slay and devour her when someone hastened to her
rescue and he took flight.
A week later, being still in the form of a wolf, he had killed and
eaten a boy at a spot between Gredisans and Menoté, about a league
from Dôle. He was accused also of being in the shape of a man when he
caught another boy of twelve or thirteen years of age and carried him
into the wood to strangle him, and, "in spite of the fact that it was
Friday," he would have devoured his flesh had he not been interrupted
by the approach of some strangers, who were too late, however, to save
the boy's life. Garnier, having admitted all the charges against him,
the judge pronounced the following sentence:--
"The condemned man is to be dragged to the place of execution and
there burnt alive and his body reduced to ashes."
The account of the trial, which took place on the 18th day of January,
1573, was accompanied by a letter from Daniel d'Ange to the Dean of
the Church of Sens which contained the following passage:--
"Gilles Garnier, lycophile, as I may call him, lived the life of a
hermit, but has since taken a wife, and having no means of support for
his family fell into the way, as is natural to defiant and desperate
people of rude habits, of wandering into the woods and wild places. In
this state he was met by a phantom in the shape of a man, who told
him that he could perform miracles, among other things declaring that
he would teach him how to change at will into a wolf, lion, or
leopard, and because the wolf is more familiar in this country than
the other kinds of wild beasts he chose to disguise himself in that
shape, which he did, using a salve with which he rubbed himself for
this purpose, as he has since confessed before dying, after
recognising the evil of his ways."[36]
The affair made such a stir in the neighbourhood, and the dread of
wer-wolves had risen to such a pitch, that it was found necessary to
ask the help of the populace in suppressing the nuisance. A legal
decree was issued which empowered the people at Dôle to "assemble with
javelins, pikes, arquebuses, and clubs to hunt and pursue the
wer-wolf, and to take, bind, and kill it without incurring the usual
fine or penalty for indulging in the chase without permission."
Boguet is the authority who cites the following cases of
lycanthropy:[37]
A boy called Benedict, aged about fifteen, one day climbed a tree to
gather some fruit, when he saw a wolf attacking his little sister, who
was playing at the foot of the tree.
The boy climbed down quickly, and the animal, which was tailless, let
go of the little girl and turned upon her brother, who defended
himself with a knife. According to the boy's account, the wolf tore
the knife out of his hand and struck at his throat. A neighbour ran to
the rescue and carried the boy home, where he died a few days after
from the wound. Whilst he lay dying he declared that the wolf which
had injured him had fore-paws shaped like human hands, but that its
hind feet were covered with fur.
After inquiry it was proved that a young and demented girl called
Perrenette Gandillon believed herself to be a wolf and had done this
horrible deed. She was caught by the populace and torn limb from limb.
This case occurred in the Jura mountains in 1598.
Soon afterwards Perrenette's brother Pierre was accused of being a
wer-wolf, and confessed that he had been to the witches' Sabbath in
this form. His son George had also been anointed with salve and had
killed goats whilst he was in animal shape. Antoinette, his sister,
was accused of sorcery and of intercourse with the devil, who appeared
to her in the form of a black goat. Several members of the Gandillon
family were arrested, and in prison Pierre and George conducted
themselves as though they were possessed, walking on all fours and
howling like wild beasts.
Not long after the Gandillon family had been disposed of, one Jeanne
Perrin gave evidence that she was walking near a wood with her friend
Clauda Gaillard, who disappeared suddenly behind a bush, and that the
next moment there came forth a tailless wolf which frightened her so
much that she made the sign of the cross and ran away. She was sure that
the hind legs of the wolf were like human limbs. When Clauda saw her
again she assured Jeanne that the wolf had not meant to do her harm, and
from this it was thought that Clauda had taken the shape of the wolf.
One of the best known of the wer-wolf trials concerns Jacques Rollet,
the man-wolf of Caude, who was accused of having devoured a little boy.
He was tried and condemned in Angers in 1598. Rollet came from the
parish of Maumusson, near to Nantes, and he carried on his practices
in a desolate spot near Caude, where some villagers one day found the
corpse of a boy of about fifteen, mangled and blood-bespattered. As
they approached the body three wolves bounded into the forest and were
lost to sight, but the men gave chase, and following in the animals'
tracks, came suddenly upon a half-naked human being, with long hair
and beard, his hands covered with blood and his teeth chattering with
fear. On his claw-like nails they found shreds of human flesh.
This miserable specimen of man-animal was hauled up before the judge,
and under examination he inquired of one of the witnesses whether he
remembered shooting at three wolves. The witness said he remembered
the incident perfectly. Rollet confessed that he was one of the wolves
and that he was able to transform himself by means of a salve. The
other wolves were his companions, Jean and Julian, who knew the same
means of acquiring animal shape. All the particulars he gave as to the
murder were accurate, and he confessed to having killed and eaten
women, lawyers, attorneys, and bailiffs, though the last-named he
found tough and tasteless. In other respects his evidence was
confused, and he was judged to be of weak intellect, and though
condemned to death was sent finally to a madhouse, where he was
sentenced to two years' detention.
There was an epidemic of lycanthropy throughout this year, and on the
4th of December a tailor of Châlons was burnt in Paris for having
decoyed children into his shop, a cask full of human bones being
discovered in the cellar. For the space of a few years no notorious
wer-wolf trials appear to have taken place, but the year 1603 was
almost as prolific in this respect as 1598.
Information came before the criminal court at Roche Chalais that a
wild beast was ravaging the district, that it appeared to be a wolf,
and that it had attacked a young girl called Margaret Poiret in full
daylight.[38]
A youth of thirteen or fourteen in the service of Peter Combaut
deposed to the fact that he had thrown himself upon the said Margaret,
whilst transformed into a wolf, and that he would have devoured her
had she not defended herself stoutly with a stick. He also confessed
to having eaten two or three little girls.
Evidence was given on May 29th, 1603, by three witnesses, one of whom
was Margaret herself. She said she had been accustomed to mind cattle
in the company of the boy, Jean Grenier, and that he had often
frightened her by telling her horrible tales about being able to
change into a wolf whenever he wished, and that he had killed many
dogs and sucked their blood, but that he preferred to devour young
children. He said he had recently killed a child, and after eating
part of her flesh had thrown the rest to a companion wolf.
Margaret described the beast which had attacked her as stouter and
shorter than a real wolf, with a smaller head, a short tail, and
reddish hide. After she struck at it, the animal drew back and sat
down on its haunches like a dog, at a distance of about twelve paces.
Its look was so ferocious that she ran away at once.
The third witness was Jeanne Gaboriaut, who was eighteen years old.
She gave evidence that one day, when she was tending cattle in company
with other girls, Jean Grenier came up and asked which was the most
beautiful shepherdess amongst them. Jeanne asked him why he wanted to
know. He said because he wished to marry the prettiest, and if it was
Jeanne he would choose her.
Jeanne said, "Who is your father?" and he told her that he was the son
of a priest.
Then she replied that he was too dark in appearance for her taste, and
when he answered he had been like that for a long time, she asked him
whether he had turned black from cold or whether he had been burnt
black.
He said the cause was a wolf's skin he was wearing, which had been
given to him by one Pierre Labourant, and when he wore it he could
turn into a wolf at will or any other animal he preferred, and he went
on with details similar to those he had disclosed to Margaret Poiret.
It was proved, however, that Grenier was not the son of a priest, but
of a labourer, Pierre Grenier, and that he lived in the parish of St.
Antoine de Pizan.
When questioned as to his crimes, he confessed to the assault upon
Margaret Poiret as described by her, and also that he had entered a
house in the guise of a wolf, and finding no one there but a babe in
its cradle he seized it by the throat and carried it behind a hedge in
the garden, where he ate as much of the body as he could and threw the
remainder to another wolf.
At St. Antoine de Pizan he attacked a girl in a black dress who was
tending sheep, and he killed and devoured her, a strange point being
that her dress was not torn, as happens in the case when real wolves
make the assault.
When questioned as to how he managed to turn into a wolf, he said that a
neighbour, called Pierre la Tilhaire, had introduced him in the forest
to the Lord thereof, who had given wolf-skins to both, as well as a
salve for anointing themselves. When asked where he kept the skins and
the pot of ointment he replied that they were in the hands of the Lord
of the Forest, from whom he could obtain them whenever he wished.
He declared that he had changed into a wolf and gone coursing four
times with his companion Pierre la Tilhaire, but they had killed no
one. The best time for the hunt was an hour or two a day when the moon
was on the wane, but he also went out at night on some occasions.
When asked whether his father knew of these proceedings, he replied in
the affirmative, and declared that his father had rubbed him three
times with the ointment and helped him into the wolf's skin.
The inquiry into Jean Grenier's case was a very lengthy one and was
adjourned several times, but eventually he was sentenced to
imprisonment for life at Bordeaux on September 6th, 1603, his youth
and want of mental development being pleaded in extenuation of the
crimes of infanticide he had undoubtedly committed. The president of
the Court declared that lycanthropy was a form of hallucination and
was not in itself a punishable crime. Jean's father was acquitted of
complicity, and allowed to leave the court without a stain on his
character, and Jean was sent to a monastery.
In 1610, after Jean had been at the Monastery of the Cordeliers in
Bordeaux for seven years, De Lancre, who relates his story, went to see
him. He was then about twenty years of age and of diminutive stature.
His black eyes were haggard and deep-set, and he refused to look anyone
straight in the face. His teeth were long, sharp, and protruding, his
nails were also long and black, and his mind was a mere blank.
He told De Lancre, not without pride, that he had been a wer-wolf, but
that he had given up the practice. When he first arrived at the
monastery he had preferred to go on all fours, eating such food as he
found on the ground. He confessed that he still craved for raw human
flesh, especially the flesh of little girls, and he hoped it would not
be long before he had another opportunity of tasting it. He had been
visited twice during his confinement by the Lord of the Forest, as he
called the mysterious person who had given him the wolf-skin, but that
both times he had made the sign of the cross and his visitor had
departed in haste.
In other respects his tale was identical with the experiences he had
related before the court.
De Lancre thought that the name Grenier or Garnier was a fatal name in
connection with wer-wolves.
Evidence was given as to the times, places, and number of murders, and
many of the facts were proved incontestably.
Jean's evidence as to the part his father had played in his misdeeds
was hazy. He said that on one occasion his father had accompanied him,
also wearing a wolf-skin, and that together they had killed a young
girl dressed in white, and that they had devoured her flesh, the month
being May of 1601.
He also added curious details regarding the Lord of the Forest, who
had forbidden him to bite the thumbnail of his left hand, which was
thicker and longer than the others, and that if he lost sight of it
while in the form of a wolf he would quickly recover his human shape.
When confronted with his father Jean altered some of the details of
his story, and it was agreed that long imprisonment and extended
cross-examination had worn out his already feeble intellect.
It is worth pointing out that in the cases of Rollet, the tailor of
Châlons, and the Gandillon family, the prisoners were accused of
murder and cannibalism, but not of association with wolves, and that
in the trial of Garnier evidence was given as to the depredations of
the wolf rather than of the accused. There was doubtless a difficulty
in proving the identity of the perpetrator of the murders.
A new era in these trials begins with that of Jean Grenier, for from
that time onward medical men became more enlightened, and the belief
spread that lycanthropy was a mental malady, with cannibalistic
tendencies which had developed under diseased conditions.
In his "Dæmonologie," 1597, a reply to Reginald Scott's "Discovery of
Witchcraft," James I of England declared that wer-wolves were victims
of a delusion induced by a state of melancholia, and about the same
period wolves became practically extinct in England, and only harmless
creatures such as the cat, hare, and weasel were left for the sorcerer
to change into with any possibility of a safe and natural disguise.
For many years afterwards the confessions of witches, who were
executed for their crimes, bore striking resemblance to those made by
wer-wolves, and many strange facts which were published at these
trials have never been, and may never be, satisfactorily explained on
a purely materialistic basis.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] "Histoires, Disputes et Discours des Illusions et Impostures des
Diables, etc.," 1579, p. 654.
[35] "Histoire de la Magie en France," 1818, pp. 129-31.
[36] Cimber, "Archives Curieuses de Histoire de France," 1836, Series
I, Vol. VIII, pp. 9-11.
[37] "Discours des Sorciers," 1610, pp. 361-2.
[38] _See_ De Lancre, Pierre, "Tableau de L'Inconstance des Mauvais
Anges et Demons," Paris, 1613, p. 255 _et seq._
CHAPTER IX
THE WER-WOLF IN MYTH AND LEGEND
An extraordinary story about a wer-wolf comes from Ansbach in 1685:
The supposed incarnation of a dead burgomaster of that town was said
to be ravishing the neighbouring country in the form of a wolf,
devouring cattle as well as women and children. At last the ferocious
beast was caught and slaughtered, and its carcass was encased in a
suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, while its head and face were
adorned with a chestnut-coloured wig and long white beard, after the
animal's snout had been cut off and a mask resembling the dead
burgomaster's features had been substituted. This effigy was hanged,
its skin stuffed and put in a museum, where it was pointed out as a
proof of the actual existence of wer-wolves. This incident appears to
prove that the belief in wer-wolves had been shaken at that date, but
it has never been finally eradicated, and it is only natural that a
theme which has had such world-wide credence should occur again and
again in mythology and literature. It is dealt with in the story of
the festival of the god Zeus, which was held every nine years on the
Wolf mountain in Arcadia. During the banquet a man, having tasted of a
flowing bowl in which human and animal flesh were mixed, was turned
into a wolf and remained a wolf nine years. If he had abstained from
eating human flesh in the interval he became once more a man. The
tradition appears to have originated in the existence of a society of
cannibal wolf-worshippers, a member of which perhaps represented the
sacred animal for nine years in succession.
This compares in some degree with the practices of the Human Leopard
Society, which is of comparatively recent origin.
Lycaon, the King of Arcadia and father of Callisto, was turned into a
wolf because he offered human sacrifices to Jupiter, or, in the version
given by Ovid, because he tried to murder Jupiter, who was his guest.
Others believe that Lycaon is the Constellation of the Wolf, and that in
him were the united qualities of wolf, king, and constellation.
Pliny points out that the origin of transformation into wolves was due
to Evanthes, a Greek author of good repute, who tells the story of
Antheus, the Arcadian, a member of whose family is chosen by lot and
then taken to a certain lake in the district, across which he swims and
is changed into a wolf for a space of nine years. So, too, Demæntus,
during a sacrifice of human victims, tasted the entrails of a boy who
had been slaughtered, upon which he turned into a wolf, but ten years
later he was victorious in the pugilistic contests at the Olympic games.
The following quaint story is taken from Petronius, being told by one
Niceros, at a banquet given by Trimalchio.
"It happened that my master was gone to Capua to dispose of some
second-hand goods. I took the opportunity and persuaded our guest to
walk with me to our fifth milestone. He was a valiant soldier, and a
sort of a grim water-drinking Pluto. About cock-crow, when the moon was
shining as bright as midday, we came amongst the monuments. My friend
began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to
sing or count them; and when I turned to look at him, lo! he had already
stripped himself and laid his clothes near him. My heart was in my
nostrils, and I stood like a dead man; but he made a mark round his
clothes and on a sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest, I would not
lie for any man's estate. But to return to what I am saying. When he
became a wolf he began howling and fled into the woods. At first I
hardly knew where I was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his
clothes, they were turned into stone. Who then was more like to die from
fear than I? Yet I drew my sword, and cutting the air right and left
came thus to my sweetheart's house. When I entered the courtyard I was
like to breathe my last, perspiration poured from my neck, and my eyes
were dim. My Melissa met me to ask where I had been so late, and said,
'Had you only come sooner you might have helped us, for a wolf came to
the farm and worried our cattle; but he had not the best of the joke,
for all he escaped, as our servant ran a lance through his neck.' When I
heard this I could not doubt what had happened, and as the day dawned I
ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When I came to the spot where
the clothes had been turned into stone I could find nothing except
blood. But when I got home I found my friend, the soldier, in bed,
bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing his wound. I then
knew he was a turnskin; nor would I ever have broken bread with him
again, no not if you had killed me."
The expression turnskin or turncoat is a translation of the Latin
_versipelles_, a term used to describe a wer-wolf.
Another story in which the human being suffers from the wound inflicted
on the wer-wolf concerns a fine lady of Saintonge, who used to wander at
night in the forests in the shape of a wolf. One day she caught her paw
in a trap set by the hunters. This put an end to her nocturnal
wanderings, and afterwards she had to keep a glove on the hand that had
been trapped, to conceal the mutilation of two of her fingers.
Eliphas Levi, the occultist, has endeavoured to explain this
sympathetic condition between the man and his animal presentment.
"We must speak here of lycanthropy, or the nocturnal transformation of
men into wolves, histories so well substantiated that sceptical science
has had recourse to furious maniacs, and to masquerading as animals for
explanations. But such hypotheses are puerile and explain nothing. Let
us seek elsewhere the solution of the mystery, and establish--First,
that no person has been killed by a wer-wolf except by suffocation,
without effusion of blood and without wounds. Second, that wer-wolves,
though tracked, hunted, and even maimed, have never been killed on the
spot. Third, that persons suspected of these transformations have always
been found at home, after the pursuit of the wer-wolf, more or less
wounded, sometimes dying, but invariably in their natural form....
"We have spoken of the sidereal body, which is the mediator between
the soul and the material organism. This body remains awake very often
while the other is asleep, and by thought transports itself through
all space which universal magnetism opens to it. It thus lengthens,
without breaking, the sympathetic chain attaching it to the heart and
brain, and that is why there is danger in waking up dreaming persons
with a start, for the shock may sever the chain at a blow and cause
instantaneous death. The form of our sidereal body is conformable to
the habitual condition of our thoughts, and in the long run it is
bound to modify the features of the material organism. Let us now be
bold enough to assert that the wer-wolf is nothing more than the
sidereal body of a man whose savage and sanguinary instincts are
represented by the wolf, who, whilst his phantom is wandering abroad,
sleeps painfully in his bed, and dreams that he is a veritable wolf.
What renders the wer-wolf visible is the almost somnambulistic
over-excitement caused by the fear of those who see it, or their
disposition, more particularly among simple country-folk, to place
themselves in direct communication with the astral light which is the
common medium of dreams and visions. The blows inflicted on the
wer-wolf really wound the sleeper by the odic and sympathetic
conjestion of the astral light and by the correspondence of the
immaterial with the material body...."[39]
This peculiarity of the wound dealt to the wer-wolf being reproduced in
the human being is emphasised by an incident which occurred about 1588
in a tiny village situated in the mountains of Auvergne. A gentleman was
gazing one evening from the windows of his castle when he saw a hunter
he knew passing on his way to the chase. Calling to him, he begged that
on his return he would report what luck he had had. The hunter after
pursuing his way was attacked by a large wolf. He fired off his gun
without hitting the animal. Then he struck at it with his hunting knife,
severing one of the paws, which he picked up and put in his knapsack.
The wounded wolf ran quickly into the forest. When the hunter reached
the castle he told his friend of his strange fight with a wolf, and to
emphasise his story opened his knapsack, in which to his horror and
surprise he saw, not a wolf's paw as he had expected, but the hand of a
woman which had a gold ring on one of the fingers.
The owner recognised the ring as belonging to his wife, and hastening
into the kitchen to question her he found her with one arm hidden
beneath the folds of a shawl. He drew it aside and saw she had lost
her hand. Then she confessed that it was she who, in the form of a
wolf, had attacked the hunter. She was arrested and burnt to death
soon afterwards at Ryon.
In another variation of the wer-wolf story, the human being retains a
material object acquired by his animal replica and is freed thereby
from his obsession.
A man, who from his childhood had been a wer-wolf, when returning one
night with his wife from a merrymaking, observed that the hour was at
hand when the transformation usually took place. Giving the reins to
his wife, he got out of the cart and said, "If anyone comes to thee,
strike at it with thy apron." Then he went away and a few minutes
later the poor woman was attacked by a wolf. Remembering what her
husband had told her, she struck at it with her apron, and the animal
tore out a piece and ran off. Presently the man himself returned
holding in his mouth the torn fragment of the apron. Then his wife
cried out in terror, "Good Lord, man! Why, thou art a wer-wolf!"
"Thank thee, mother!" replied he, "but now I am free!" and after this
incident he kept human form until the day of his death.[40]
In "William of Palermo," the old romance known as "William and the
Wer-Wolf," translated from the French at the command of Sir Humphrey
de Bohun about A.D. 1350,[41] the wer-wolf appears as a sort of a
guardian angel. The brother of the King Apulia, envious of the
heir-apparent, bribes two women to murder the king's son. While the
boy William is at play a wer-wolf runs off with him, swims across the
Straits of Messina, and carries him into a forest near Rome, where it
takes care of him and provides him with food. The wer-wolf in reality
is Alphonso, heir to the Spanish throne, who has been transformed by
his stepmother Queen Braunde, who desires her own son Braundinis to
wear the crown of Spain.
The wer-wolf embraces the king's son
With his fore-feet,
And so familiar with him
Is the king's son, that all pleases him,
Whatever the beast does for him.
While the wer-wolf seeks provender, a cowherd finds William and takes
him to his hut, where the Emperor meets him when out hunting. Placing
him behind him on his horse he takes him to Rome and gives him in
charge of his daughter Melior, to be her page.
William and Melior fall in love with one another, and to avoid the
Emperor's wrath devise an escape, disguised in the skins of white
bears, helped by Melior's friend Alexandrine. When Melior asks whether
she makes a bold bear, Alexandrine answers, "Yes, Madame, you are a
grisly ghost enough, and look ferocious." Together the lovers wander
out of the garden on all fours and making their way to the forest hide
in a den. Meanwhile the wer-wolf has followed William's fortunes, and
finding the wanderers in need, he sets on a harmless passer-by who
carries provisions, and seizing bread and boiled beef out of his bag,
lays it before the lovers, then runs off and, attacking another
traveller, secures two flagons of wine.
Being pursued, the lovers escape to Palermo, led always by the
wer-wolf, Alphonso, half-brother to Braundinis, who was destined by
Melior's father to become his son-in-law. William does battle with the
proposed suitor and, still helped by the wer-wolf, whose symbol is
painted on his shield, overcomes his rival, takes the King and Queen
of Spain prisoner and refuses to let them go until Queen Braunde
promises to transform the rightful heir from a wolf back into a human
being. "Unless she disenchants you, she shall be burnt," he says
forcibly. Braunde takes her stepson, the wolf, into a private chamber,
draws forth a magic ring with a stone in it that is proof against all
witchcraft and binds it with a red silk thread round the wolf's neck.
Then she takes a book out of a casket and reads in it a long time till
he turns into a man. The wer-wolf is delighted, but apologises to his
stepmother for having no clothes on, and she commands him to choose
who shall fetch his clothes. He answers that he will take his attire
and the order of knighthood from the worthiest man alive, William of
Palermo. William, being called, enters the chamber, where he sees a
man who is an utter stranger and is only satisfied when he hears
Alphonso's explanation, "I am the wer-wolf who saved you from many
perils." William and Melior are married, all ends happily and William
becomes Emperor of Rome.
The Bretons give the name of Bisclavaret to the wer-wolf, or wer-fox,
which throws itself upon the hunter's horse and terrorises it. The same
thing is called Garwal by the Normans. Bisclavaret is supposed to be a
wizard, and if in olden times an unknown lady offered food to the
hunters at the moment the animal appeared she was thought to be a witch.
Marie de France in her "Lay of the Bisclavaret" used the idea of a
wer-wolf, and again in this case the animal has no savage instincts
except against his enemies, a faithless wife and her perfidious lover.
A gallant knight of Brittany, a favourite with the king, weds a fair
lady whom he loves tenderly. Only one cloud darkens the wife's
horizon. Her husband leaves her invariably three days a week and she
does not know where he goes. One day she has the temerity to ask him,
and he warns her that the information may be dangerous, but when she
pleads with him he says:
"Learn then that I become a wer-wolf during my absence. I go into the
forest, hide in the thickets and seek my prey."
"But, my dear, tell me whether you take off your clothes," says the
wife, "or whether you keep them on?"
"I am naked when the transformation occurs, Madame."
"And where do you leave your clothes?"
"I must not tell you, because if I were seen when I take them off I
should remain a wer-wolf for the rest of my life. I can only recover
human form at the moment I put them on again. After that you will not
be surprised if I say no more." But she urges him to tell her, and
finally he says that he hides his clothes under a bush near an old
stone cross in the corner of a chapel, and there he puts them on when
he wishes to resume his original shape.
Frightened by his awful story the wife decides to live with him no more
and immediately sends for a young man who is in love with her, tells him
the story and enjoins him to go and take away her husband's clothes.
Thus she betrays her husband, the wer-wolf, who does not return and is
given up for dead, and some time after she marries her false lover.
About a year later the king goes on a hunting expedition in the
forest. There he comes across the wer-wolf, and the hounds immediately
take up the scent and give chase the whole day long. Wounded by the
hunters and wearied nigh unto death, the wolf seizes the bridle of the
king's horse and licks his majesty's foot. The king, in great fear,
calls his companions to look at the extraordinary wild beast that is
capable of this humble action. He refuses to allow the wolf to be
slaughtered and takes it back, in his train, to the castle. There the
wolf lives in great comfort like a domestic pet and harms no one.
Presently a great function is held at the court and the wer-wolf's
former wife comes there with her new husband. The moment the wolf sets
eyes on him he springs at his throat, and would surely have killed him
had not the king beaten him off with a whip. For the rest of the
gentleman's visit the wolf is kept under strict discipline.
Some time afterwards, the king, accompanied by his faithful wolf, pays
a visit to the lady, and the animal springs at her ferociously and
bites off her nose. Then the courtiers say that the matter must be
inquired into, for the wolf only turns savage when in the presence of
this lady and her new husband. The king decides to have the couple
arrested and the lady has to confess what happened, saying she thinks
the wer-wolf must be her transformed husband. After hearing her story
the king orders the wer-wolf's clothes to be placed where he can get
them privately, and after waiting outside the room in which the
metamorphosis is to take place, for some time, he enters and finds the
former knight, his old friend whom he thought dead, lying quietly
asleep. He restores all his honours and has his faithless wife chased
out of the kingdom in company with her false lover. All their
daughters are born without noses as a punishment for the wicked fraud
practised on the wer-wolf.[42]
Olaus Magnus[43] declares that although the inhabitants of Prussia,
Livonia, and Lithuania suffer considerably from the depredations of
wolves as far as their cattle are concerned, their losses are not so
serious in this quarter as those they suffer at the hands of wer-wolves.
On Christmas Eve multitudes of wer-wolves gather at a certain spot and
band together to attack human beings and animals. They besiege
isolated houses, break in the doors and devour every living thing.
They burst into the beer-cellars and there empty the casks, thus
proving their human tastes. A ruined castle near Courland appears to
have been their favourite meeting-place, where thousands congregate in
order to test their agility. If any of them fail to bound over the
castle wall they are slain by the others, as they are considered in
that case to be incompetent for the work in hand.
It is believed that a messenger in the person of a lame youth is sent
round the neighbourhood to call these followers of the devil to a
general conclave. Those who are reluctant to attend the meeting are
beaten with iron scourges. When the gathering is assembled the human
forms vanish and the whole multitude become wolves. The troops follow
the leader, "firmly convinced in their imagination that they are
transformed into wolves." The sorcery lasts for twelve days, and at
the expiration of this period the human forms are resumed.
Referring further to these Courland wer-wolves, it is said of them
that Satan holds them in his net in three ways. Firstly they execute
certain depredations, such as mangling cattle, in their human shapes,
but in such a state of hallucination that they believe themselves to
be wolves and are regarded as such by others in a like predicament.
Though not true wer-wolves they hunt in packs. Secondly they leave
their bodies lying asleep and send forth their imagination in a dream
that they believe they have injured the cattle, but that it is the
devil who does what is suggested to them by their thoughts, and
thirdly that the evil one induces real wolves to do the horrid deeds,
but impresses the scene so vividly on the mind of the sleeper that he
considers himself to be guilty of the act.
The following stories exemplify these conditions. The first is told of
a man who when starting on a journey saw a wolf attacking one of his
sheep. He fired and it fled wounded into the thicket. On his return he
was told that he had fired at one of his tenants, called Mickel.
Mickel's wife, when questioned, said that her husband had been sowing
rye and had asked her how he could get some meat for a feast. She said
on no account was he to steal from the master's flock as it was well
guarded by dogs. Mickel ignored her advice and had attacked the sheep.
He came home limping badly and in a passion had fallen upon his own
horse and had torn its throat. It seemed as though he were bewitched
or in a trance.
In 1684 a curious incident occurred to a man who had gone hunting in a
forest. At dusk a pack of wolves had rushed towards him, and as he
levelled his gun with the intention of aiming at the leader a voice
arose from their midst, saying, "Don't fire, Sir, for no good will come
of it." Then the phantom pack rushed onwards and he saw it no more.
The third story is about a man-wolf who was accused of sorcery of the
most flagrant kind. Finding a difficulty in getting evidence against
the criminal, the judge sent a peasant to his cell who was charged
with the unpleasant task of forcing a confession. The prisoner was
told that he might avenge himself upon another peasant to whom he owed
a grudge, by destroying his cow secretly, and if possible when in the
shape of a wolf himself. After much persuasion the supposed wer-wolf
undertook to carry out the suggested plan. The next morning the cow in
question was found to be fearfully mangled, but the strange part of
the story is this, that although witnesses were set to watch the man
in his cell, they swore unanimously that he had never left it and had
passed the whole of the night in deep sleep, only at one time making
slight movements of his head, his hands and his feet.[44]
Just as the man who thinks he changes into a wolf suffers from
lycanthropy, so the one who believes he changes into a dog is
suffering from kynanthropy, and those who change into kine from
boanthropy. Every part of the world chooses a special animal as being
the most suitable for disguise, and naturally enough the animal is one
which is common to the district. Thus we find the tiger chosen for
India and Asia, the bear for Northern Europe, the lion, leopard, and
hyæna for Africa, the jaguar for South America, and so forth.
Many superstitions surround the tiger. Besides being the abode of the
soul of a dead man it may be the temporary or even the permanent form
of a living human being. In India it is said that a certain root
brings about the metamorphosis and that another root is used for the
antidote. In Central Java powers of transformation are believed to be
hereditary, no shame is attached to it, and the wer-tiger is looked
upon as a friendly animal, and if his friends call upon him by name he
behaves like a domestic pet and is believed to guard the fields. In
the Malay Peninsula faith in the genuine wer-tiger persists, and it is
thought there also that the soul of a dead wizard enters the animal's
body. During the process of transformation the corpse is laid in the
forest, and beside it a supply of rice and water is placed, sufficient
for seven days, in which time transmigration, resulting from a
compact made by the _pawang's_ ancestors, is complete. A ceremony is
also gone through by the son of a _pawang_ who wishes to succeed his
father in tiger's form.
A wer-tiger belief exists in India, and the Garrows think the mania is
produced by a special drug which is laid on the forehead. First the
wer-tiger pulls the earrings out of his ears and then wanders forth
alone, shunning the company of his fellow-man. The disease lasts about
fourteen days, and patients are said to have glaring red eyes, their
hair dishevelled and bristled, and a peculiar convulsive manner of
moving the head. When taken by fits of this kind they are believed to
go forth in the night to ride on the backs of tigers.
Another form of the belief is the wizard in the shape of a tiger, and
the Thana tradition is that mediums are possessed by a tiger spirit. The
Binuas of Johore think that every _pawang_ has an immortal tiger spirit.
The belief that lion form is assumed by wizards is found near the
Luapula and on the Zambezi, where a certain drink is supposed to
effect the transformation. Among the Tumbukas people smear themselves
with white clay, which gives them a certain power of metempsychosis.
Not only can men take lions' shape but lions can change into men.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] "Mysteries of Magic," 1897, pp. 237-8.
[40] Thorpe, B., "Northern Mythology," 1851, Vol. II, pp. 168-9.
[41] Edited by W. W. Skeat, 1869.
[42] "Poesies de Marie de France," 1819, pp. 179-201.
[43] "History of the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals," 1658, pp. 193-4.
[44] _See_ Leubuscher, R., "Ueber die Wehrwölfe und Thierverwandlungen
in Mittelalter," 1850, pp. 9-11.
CHAPTER X
LION- AND TIGER-MEN
The rooted idea in the savage mind that animals may be invested by human
souls, and that men may at will transform themselves into animals, has
been largely strengthened throughout the ages by the teachings of the
"Medicine men" or wizards, who have no doubt found it profitable and
conducive to their own acquisition of power to work on the superstitions
and foster the weaknesses of the people to whom they minister.
Stories about lion- and tiger-men, hyæna-women, and other strange
monsters gifted with human qualities are found in the Books of Travel
in every part of the world.
The way the sorcerer sets to work on the imagination of primitive
people has often been described. Firstly he declares that he is about
to change himself into a tiger and tear the people to pieces, and he
no sooner begins to roar than the frightened natives, acting under the
spell of suggestion, take to their heels, but they dare not go beyond
the reach of those terrible sounds. "Look," cry the fear-stricken
women, who cannot really see what is going on, "his body is covered
with spots like a tiger! Horrible! his nails are turning into claws."
All the time the sorcerer is hidden in his tent, carrying on a kind of
magical performance which inspires the people with a dread of the
unknown, so that they fall a prey to the imagination and almost lose
their reason. When asked to explain this unholy dread, they declare
that it arises from being unable to see and to kill the fearsome
tiger-image which threatens them.
Africa is vastly rich in stories of wer-lions, wer-leopards, and
wer-hyænas, and the language of Bornu has a word "_bultungin_," which
means "I change myself into a hyæna." It is even said that in the
village of Kabutiloa every native possesses the faculty of
transformation.
The wizards of Abyssinia are said to be able to become hyænas at will,
and in "The Life of Nathaniel Pearce"[45] the story is told of a man
called Coffin who was asked by a servant for leave of absence. No
sooner had he granted the request than one of the other servants
called out, "Look, look, he has turned himself into a hyæna!" Coffin
gazed in the direction in which the first servant had disappeared, and
there he saw a large hyæna bounding across the open plain. The next
morning the servant returned, and when asked about the matter asserted
that such a transformation had actually taken place. Coffin brought
himself to believe in these native stories, and quoted in evidence of
their truth that he had often seen a certain kind of earring in the
ears of hyænas shot, trapped and speared by himself or his friends,
identical with those which were commonly worn by the native servants.
A natural explanation has been sought in the suggestion that the
sorcerers themselves adorned the hyænas with the gems in order to
encourage a superstition which they found profitable for their own
purposes, but no proof of any such thing has been discovered.
Abyssinia is a hotbed of strange happenings of this character, some of
which are quite beyond understanding.
The trade of blacksmith is hereditary there and is regarded with more
or less suspicion, from the fact that blacksmiths are, with few
exceptions, believed to be sorcerers and are opprobriously given the
name of _Bouda_. They are said to have the power of turning themselves
into various kinds of animals. "I remember," says Mansfield Parkyns
in "Life in Abyssinia,"[46] "a story of some little girls, who, having
been out in the forest to gather sticks, came running back breathless
with fright; and on being asked what was the cause, they answered that
a blacksmith of the neighbourhood had met them, and entering into
conversation with him, they at length began to joke about whether, as
had been asserted, he could turn himself into a hyæna. The man, they
declared, made no reply, but taking some ashes, which he had with him
tied up in the corner of his cloth, sprinkled them over his shoulders,
and to their horror and alarm they began almost immediately to
perceive that the metamorphosis was actually taking place, and that
the blacksmith's skin was assuming the hair and colour of the animal
in question. When the change was complete he grinned and laughed at
them, and then retired into the neighbouring thickets. They stood
rooted to the spot from sheer fright; but the moment the hideous
creature withdrew, they made the best of their way home."
Parkyns tells another _Bouda_ story[47] which is fully credited by the
natives. In the neighbourhood of Adoua there was said to be a woman
who had one human foot and in the place of the other the hoof of a
donkey. Several persons assured Parkyns that they had seen this human
monstrosity, and others firmly believed the following account of the
affair:
The woman was said to have died, and was buried with ceremony in the
churchyard. The following day a man came to one of the priests and
offered him a sum of money for the body, pledging himself to strict
secrecy. The bargain was concluded and the unscrupulous priest allowed
the stranger, who was a blacksmith, to disinter and carry off the
corpse. On the way to the market the blacksmith passed the house where
the deceased lady's family lived, and he usually rode or drove a
remarkably fine donkey which, strangely enough, on passing the house,
or any of the old woman's children, brayed loudly and endeavoured to
run towards them.
At first no notice was taken of this odd behaviour on the part of an
ass, but at last one of the sons grew suspicious and exclaimed, "I am
sure that ass is my mother!"
Accordingly _Bouda_, ass and all were seized and brought to the hut,
much to the apparent satisfaction of the animal, which rubbed its nose
against the young men and was even said to shed tears of joy on the
occasion.
On being charged with the offence of sorcery the _Bouda_ tried to make
light of it and denied the accusation, but at last by dint of threats
and promises he was induced to confess that he had turned the old woman
into a donkey, she having been not really dead but in a trance, into
which he had purposely thrown her. His power, he asserted, was
sufficient to change the external appearance, but not to alter the mind
of his victim. Hence it was that the old woman, or rather donkey,
possessed human feelings, which she had displayed in her endeavours to
enter her former habitation and in her recognition of her children. The
_Bouda_, moreover, agreed to restore her human appearance, and began his
exorcism. As he proceeded she by degrees assumed her natural form, and
the change was almost complete, when one of the sons, blinded by his
rage, forgot the promises of pardon which the _Bouda_ had exacted, and
drove his spear through his heart. The incantation not being entirely
finished, one foot remained in the shape of the hoof of an ass and
continued so until her death, which was not till many years afterwards.
Still another story belonging to the same class concerns two brothers
who lived in Gojam. One of them having transformed himself into a horse,
ass or cow, was sold in the market and driven out of town by his
purchaser. Directly night had closed the eyes of his new master in sleep
the _Bouda_ took on human form again and walked quietly home. The
brothers were known to sell cattle in the market so frequently that
people became suspicious, because they did not know where their stock
was kept, and they often had no beasts in their yard even the very day
before the sales. Besides, it soon leaked out that every animal sold
make its escape the same night and was never heard of again. Then a
purchaser who had been twice taken in by the brothers, determined to
discover how the fraud was carried out. One market day he bought a fine
horse from one of the brothers and rode off upon it, but no sooner had
he left the market town behind him than he dismounted and drove a knife
through the animal's heart. Then he walked back to the market-place and
meeting the vendor told him that he had killed the beautiful animal he
had just bought in a fit of passion. The _Bouda_ gave a start, but
managed to conceal his grief till he entered his house, when he burst
forth into lamentations and rubbed the skin off his forehead, as the
custom is when a near relative dies. To his inquisitive neighbours he
declared that his favourite brother had been robbed and murdered in the
Galla country, whither he had travelled in order to purchase horses. It
was said, however, that he afterwards sent no more animals to the
market-place for sale.
According to Livingstone's account[48] the Makololo also believe that
certain people can transform themselves into animals, and they call such
persons "Pondoro." Livingstone came across a Pondoro in the Kebrasa
hills, and heard that this gentleman was in the habit of assuming the
shape of a lion which he retained for days and sometimes even for a
month, during which time he wandered in the woods where his wife had
built a den for him and took care that he was provided with food and
drink. No one was allowed into the den except the Pondoro and his wife,
and no strangers were permitted even to lay a gun against any of the
trees in the neighbourhood of the den, or against any shanty owned by
the Pondoro. The wer-lion used his gift to go hunting in the village.
After a few days had passed his faithful spouse scented her returning
husband and provided him with a certain kind of medicine or ointment by
which it became possible for him to change into a man again. But she had
to hurry over this duty, so that the lion might not catch sight of her
and, falling upon her, devour even her.
After the Pondoro was once more human he returned to the village and
asked the inhabitants to help him carry home his prey. One of the odd
things about this wer-lion was that he always trembled if he smelt
gunpowder, and he sometimes overacted his part. Livingstone asked the
natives to make him show off while he was watching, offering a reward
for the performance, but they refused, saying, "If we ask him to do
so, he may change while we are asleep and kill us." It was owing to
his distaste for the smell of gunpowder that it was made punishable to
rest muskets against his den.
In the same district the belief is also current that the souls of
departed chiefs enter into lions "and render them sacred." Thus when a
hungry lion prowled round the camp where a freshly killed buffalo lay,
a native servant harangued him loudly in between his roars, saying,
"What sort of a chief do you call yourself, sneaking round here in the
dark trying to steal our buffalo meat? You're a pretty chief, you are!
You've no more courage than a scavenger beetle. Why don't you kill
your own dinner?" The Pondoro took no notice except to roar the
louder, so a second native took the matter up and expostulated in more
dignified terms as to the impropriety of the conduct of "a great chief
like him" prowling round in the dark, "trying like a hyæna to steal
the food of strangers."
A piece of meat dipped in strychnine brought the lion-chief to his
senses and he took his departure. It is not to be wondered at that
such things occur in a country where the natives regard their chiefs
as almighty and infallible. The extent of their faith in him appears
from the story of one Chief Chibisa, who placed a powerful "medicine"
in the river and told his people they might safely enter the water as
it was a protection against the bite of crocodiles. Thereupon the
people bathed there without fear of these dangerous reptiles.
Du Chaillu, in "Ashango Land,"[49] tells the story of a young lad,
Akosho, who declared that he had been turned into a leopard, and
feeling a craving for blood had gone forth into the forest where he
had killed two men. After each murder he said he had taken on human
shape. His chief Akondogo could not believe the story, but Akosho led
him to the scene where lay the mangled bodies of the victims. It
appears that the boy suffered from lycanthropia, and he was burnt to
death in full view of the tribe.
Theophilus Waldmeier mentions a similar case of possession in which
the patient thought herself to be a hyæna.[50] One evening when he was
in his house at Gaffat a woman began to cry fearfully and run up and
down the road on her hands and feet like a wild beast, quite
unconscious of what she was doing. The natives said to him, "This is
the _Bouda_, and if it is not driven out of her she will die." A crowd
gathered round and everything possible was done to relieve her
condition, but without avail. She howled and roared in an unnatural
manner and most powerful voice. At last a blacksmith, who was said to
have secret connection with the evil one, was called in to see what he
could do. The woman obeyed his orders at once. He took hold of her
hand and dropped the juice of a white onion or garlic into her
nostril, and then he questioned the evil spirit, by whom she was
supposed to be possessed, as follows:
"Why did you possess this poor woman?"
"I was allowed to do so," came the answer through her lips.
"What is your name?"
"Gebroo."
"And your country?"
"Godjam."
"How many people have you already taken possession of?"
"Forty people--men and women."
"You must now leave this woman's body."
"I will do so on one condition."
"What is it?"
"I want to eat the flesh of a donkey."
The long cross-examination being concluded the evil spirit was granted
his strange request. A donkey was brought and the possessed woman ran
hastily upon the animal and bit the flesh out of the creature's back,
and though the donkey kicked and started off, she clung to it as
though fastened by leather thongs.
After the performance had continued for some time the man recalled the
woman, and a jar of prepared liquid with which much filth had been
mixed was set down in a hidden spot where she could not see it. When,
however, the exorcist exclaimed, "Go and look for your drink," she
started off on all fours to the place where the jar stood and drank
the whole of its contents.
When she returned, the blacksmith said, "Take up this stone." Although
the stone in question was too large for her to move under natural
conditions, she placed it on her head with ease and began spinning
round, until the stone flew off on one side and she fell on to the
ground. Then the exorcist said to the people round, "Take her away to
bed, the _Bouda_ has left her."
In a similar case the woman's symptoms began in a sort of
fainting-fit; her fingers were clenched in the palms of her hands, the
eyes were glazed, the nostrils distended and the whole body stiff and
inflexible. Suddenly a hideous laugh, like that of a hyæna, burst from
her and she began running about on all fours. The cure was brought
about in much the same way as in the preceding case.
Mr. Parkyns also tells the tale of a servant who was said to have
been bewitched by a blacksmith-hyæna. He evidently attempted to lure
her into the forest with the intention of devouring her.
One evening the howls and laughter of a hyæna were clearly heard from
the hut in which the sick woman lay bound and closely guarded. Her
master happened to be present, when he saw to his astonishment that she
rose "like a Davenport brother" freed from her bonds, and made an effort
to escape from the hut in answer to the call of the wild animal without.
That such proceedings were sometimes carried out for vicious ends not
unconnected with the slaying of human victims is proved by the
existence of the mysterious Human Leopard Society which Mr. T. J.
Alldridge writes about in "The Sherbro and Its Hinterland." The
society was founded for the purpose of obtaining the human fat used in
the preparation of a certain "medicine" mixed with Borfinor, the
resulting material being regarded as an all-powerful fetish.
Victims at first were relatives of the members of the society selected
at committee meetings, who were afterwards waylaid and slaughtered by a
man in the guise of a leopard. He plunged a three-pronged knife into the
unfortunate person's neck from behind, separated the vertebræ and caused
instant death. More victims were required, outsiders were made to join
the society by the expedient of giving them a dish in which, without
their knowledge, human flesh was cooked. Afterwards, on being informed
of the unpleasant fact, they were persuaded to join the society and told
they must furnish a victim as part of the initiation ceremony.
The members of the society rapidly increased in number but great
secrecy was observed, and it was impossible to bring the criminals to
justice. When questioned the victims declared that they had seen
nothing. The leopard sprang from the bush, and it merely seemed as
though a great wind had rushed by.[51]
Before seizing their victims the human leopards cover themselves with
the skin of the animal and imitate its roars. In the paws of the
leopard skin are fixed sharp-pointed knives shaped like a leopard's
claws, which are intended to inflict similar wounds, the better to
avoid unpleasant disclosure.
Many of the Indians in Guiana believe that "Kanaima" tigers are
possessed by human spirits who, as men, devote themselves to deeds of
cannibalism. Taking the shape of the jaguar they approach the lonely
sleeping-places, or waylay Indians in the forests. No superstition
causes more terror.
A legend exists among the natives about an old man who lurked in the
forest in the shape of a Kanaima tiger. His son, who was hunting, shot
the tiger down. His arrow, which was one of the old-fashioned sort,
tipped with bone, entered the animal's jaw. The tiger raised its paw,
broke off the weapon and vanished into the forest. The young huntsman
picked up the splintered arrow-head and returned home. Next day his
guilty father came back groaning, and cried out that his mouth was
"all on fire." The son drew from his cheek a bone which, oddly enough,
fitted into his splintered arrow-head. Then the son was very sorrowful
and said to his father that he must leave him and take his young wife
away too, for neither of them would be safe from the dread Kanaima
charm. This is a specimen of the "repercussion" stories, in which the
wound inflicted on the wer-animal appears in the human form.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] "Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearce," 1831. Ed. by J. J.
Halls. Vol. I, p. 288 n.
[46] 1868, pp. 300-1.
[47] _Ibid._, pp. 310-12.
[48] Livingstone, D. and C., "Narrative of an Expedition to the
Zambesi and its Tributaries," 1865, p. 159.
[49] p. 52.
[50] "Autobiography," 1886, pp. 64-6.
[51] 1901, pp. 153-9.
CHAPTER XI
WER-FOX AND WER-VIXEN
Even more elaborate in detail and richness of lore than the lion-,
tiger- and hyæna-transformations, are those of the wer-fox; and a
curious point to be noted is that it is quite as easy for the animal
to become human as for a man or woman to become a fox. In Japanese
folklore the fox is regarded as more skilful than any other animal in
taking human shape.
In China the belief exists that foxes and wolves attain to an age of
eight hundred years, and "when more than five hundred years old they
are able to metamorphose themselves into beings shaped liked men."[52]
De Groot tells several stories about wer-foxes.[53] A man runs away from
home and is found in an empty grave. His shape is quite that of a fox,
and does not in any respect correspond to the human form. The only sound
he utters is O-tsze (meaning red) which is the name for foxes. For ten
days this wer-fox remains in a state of semi-consciousness, and then he
awakens and gives the following account of himself: "When the fox came
to me for the first time it assumed the shape of a lovely woman standing
in a fowl-house in a hidden corner of my dwelling. She called me to her
and told me she bore the name of O-tsze.[54] When she had called me many
times I followed her and she became my wife. At night I frequently
accompanied her to her dwelling, and we met without being perceived by
the dogs."
No human animal is as seductive as the wer-vixen. Numerous stories
occur in Eastern folklore of women in the shape of foxes and foxes in
the shape of women leading men on through passion to their doom. Even
male foxes take the shape of women to seduce men, but other harm than
this they do not do them.[55]
Ono, an inhabitant of Mino (says an ancient Japanese legend of A.D.
545), spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty. He met
her one evening on a vast moor and married her. Simultaneously with
the birth of their son, Ono's dog was delivered of a pup which as it
grew up became more and more hostile to the lady of the moors. She
begged her husband to kill it, but he refused. At last one day the dog
attacked her so furiously that she lost courage, resumed vulpine
shape, leaped over a fence and fled.
"You may be a fox," Ono called after her, "but you are the mother of
my son and I love you. Come back when you please; you will always be
welcome."
So every evening she stole back and slept in his arms.[56]
The wer-fox has a strange manner of bringing about transformation.
Roaming over a grassy plain, the animal picks up a skull, puts it on his
head and, facing towards the north star, worships silently. At first he
performs his religious genuflections and obeisances slowly and
circumspectly, but by and by his motions become convulsively rapid and
his leaps wondrously active. Yet, however high he jumps towards the
star, he endeavours to keep his skull-crown immovable, and if after a
hundred acts of worship he succeeds, he becomes capable of transforming
himself into a human being. But if he desires to assume the shape of a
beautiful maiden he must live in the vicinity of a graveyard.[57]
A monk who passed a moonlight night in a graveyard saw a fox placing
withered bones and a skull upon its head, and as soon as the animal
succeeded in moving its head without dropping its burden, it covered
its body with grass and leaves, and changed into a beautiful woman.
She sat by the roadside, and presently a man came riding by to whom
she told a pitiable story about herself. Charmed with her appearance
and sympathising with her forlorn condition, he was about to ask her
to mount his horse with him, when the monk appeared from behind a
gravestone and warned him that the woman was not what she appeared to
be. Making the sign of the cross and uttering an incantation, the holy
man caused the woman to fall down, and she turned into an old vixen
and expired. Nothing remained but the dry bones with the skull, and
the grass and the leaves on the dead body of the fox.
De Groot quotes the old Chinese saying that the wild fox bears the
name of Tsze (Red). At night he strikes fire out of his tail. When he
desires to appear as a spook he puts on a human skull and salutes the
Great Bear constellation, and the transformation is brought about as
soon as the skull ceases to fall.
One of the commonest stories of the fox, found in China and Japan, is
that the fox as usual assumes the form of a lovely maiden, and weds a
man. She dies and all that remains is the dead body of the fox. No
more is heard of the woman.
The Eskimos have a similar story.
A bachelor coming home in the evening finds his hut tidied. One day,
returning prematurely, he sees a woman at work straightening his things.
He falls in love with her and marries her, only to discover that she is
a fox in disguise, and when his jealous cousin mentions the tabooed
subject of the smell of a fox, she runs away, never to return.
Under the T'ang dynasty the belief in wer-vixens, who changed into
fascinating women to tempt men, was prevalent.
"When a fox is fifty years old, it can transform itself into a woman;
when a hundred years old, it becomes a beautiful female or sorceress
termed _wu_. Such enchanted beings possess a knowledge of what is
happening more than a thousand miles away. They can poison men by
sorcery or possess and bewilder them so that they lose their memory or
even their reason. When a fox reaches the age of a thousand it goes to
paradise and becomes a celestial creature."[58]
The wer-vixen in the next story had not attained to this privilege,
she belonged to a far different region.
A captain in the Imperial Guard met a beautiful lady in the moonlight
and began to talk to her. While she was speaking to him she kept her
face hidden behind a fan. As they came to the palace the man
remembered that wer-vixens were dangerous beings to deal with and he
wanted to find out whether the woman was genuine or an animal in human
shape, so he drew his sword, seized her by the hair, pushed her
against one of the pillars in front of the palace and threatened to
kill her. She struggled and jumped about violently, sending forth so
pungent an odour that he could not hold her, and as he let her go she
turned into a fox and ran off shrieking "ko, ko!" The captain did not
in the least regret the rough handling he had given the supposed
beautiful lady; he only wished he had killed her on the spot.
Fox demons are said to cause disease and madness, and sometimes they
act in a spirit of revenge, more often from unprovoked malice. The
"Huen Chung ki" mentions that foxes sometimes take the shape of
Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. Another mystic idea about wer-foxes is that
they are believed to possess a mysterious pearl which represents their
soul. They hold this pearl in their mouths and any man who gets
possession of it becomes a favourite throughout the world. In Japan
some people think that foxes have a luminous pearl in their tail.
Whether this is connected with the soul or whether it is a talisman of
power it is difficult to say.
Wer-foxes in the shape of human beings can be made to resume their
animal forms by wounding or slaying them or by setting dogs upon them.
Incantations, argument if they appear in the shape of scholars,
poisonous food, written charms, or cutting off the caudal appendage if
they show signs of one, are also effective means of making them
declare themselves in their true colours.
If a person is possessed by a wer-fox he can have the evil spirit
transferred to a woman in a similar manner to that practised by the
_Boudas_ of Abyssinia in the case of those possessed by hyænas. In one
instance the evil spirit spoke from the scape-woman's mouth as
follows:--
"I am a fox. I have not come to do evil, but only to have a look
round, because I thought there was plenty of food at a place like
this. Then I found that I (the patient) was kept indoors." Thus
speaking, she took from her bosom a white gem, the size of a small
orange. Throwing this into the air, she caught it again, and those who
saw it said, "What a strange gem; she keeps it in her pocket for the
purpose of deluding people." A young man cleverly caught the gem as
the woman threw it up and put it in his pocket. The demon fox begged
him to give it back to her but he refused. She then burst into tears
and said, "My gem is of no value to you for you do not know how to use
it. If you do not give it back to me I will be your enemy for ever,
but if you do, I will be your friend and protect you like a god." At
these words the young man returned the gem.
When the sorcerer had exorcised the fox spirit it was discovered that
the gem had disappeared, which was taken as a proof that it belonged
to the wer-fox, and was connected with some mysterious power.
The fox kept its promise, for when the young man was going home late
one night in the dark, he became suddenly very frightened and called
the fox to help him. The animal appeared and led him by a narrow
footpath instead of by the usual road. Afterwards he discovered that
highwaymen were hidden in ambush near the road, and if he had passed
that way he would surely have been killed.
The cunning of the fox turns to learning in a man, for intellectuality
appears to be regarded as a fox-like trait by the Japanese, and many
tales tell of scholars becoming animals and vice-versa.
A learned old man called Hu suddenly disappeared from the college in
which he held a professorship, and was found by his students in the
shape of a fox explaining logic out of an old book to a pack of foxes
who were drawn up in ranks before him in an empty grave.
Two foxes, in another story, were over a thousand years old and lived in
the tomb of a king. They transformed themselves into students, giving
proof of extraordinary learning, and having fine personalities and
handsome, open countenances. Mounted on horseback they rode to the house
of a talented minister to argue with him on theological questions
connected with the spirit of the glorification tree which stood before a
tomb. The minister could not get the better of them in discussion, and
after three days he became suspicious and set his dogs loose upon them,
but they showed not the slightest fear. "To be sure," he exclaimed,
"they are spectres of the true sort. If a hundred years old, they must
change their shape at the sight of hounds; if they are spooks of a
thousand years, they must change when they see the glow of fire produced
from a tree of the same age." Reasoning thus, the minister sent some
servants to the tomb in order to fell the glorification tree. The spirit
of the tree was a young child dressed in blue garments, and he was
sitting in a cleft in the side of the tree. When the child was told of
the matter he wept, and lamented the ignorance of the old foxes and his
own fate. Then he vanished. When the servants felled the tree, blood
gushed forth from it. They took the wood home and set fire to it, and
as soon as it was kindled the foxes resumed their original shape. Then
the minister had them captured and cooked.
The power possessed by the fox of bewitching men is clearly shown in
the following story quoted by Dr. Visser in "The Fox and Badger in
Japanese Folklore."[59]
In the eighth year of the Kwambei era (896) a man called Kaya
Yoshifuji resigned the post of a high official in the Bizen province
and went to live in Hongo Ashimori. His wife ran away to the capital
and he kept house quite alone. One day he went out of his mind and
began to recite love poems to an imaginary woman. After a month passed
in this manner he disappeared and his relatives searched high and low
but could find no trace of him, so they concluded that he had
committed suicide, and vowed they would make an image of the
eleven-faced Kwannon if they found the unhappy man's corpse. They cut
down an oak tree and began to carve the life-size image of Yoshifuji,
bowing before the unfinished statue to repeat the vow they had taken.
This went on for about a fortnight, when to their intense surprise
Yoshifuji crept from under his go-down as thin and pale as though he
had passed through a serious illness. The floor of the go-down was
only half a dozen inches from the ground, so that it was held to be
impossible that a man could have been beneath it. When he had
recovered his senses sufficiently to give an account of his
adventures, he said that a beautiful girl had come to him, bringing
love letters and poems from a princess, and that he had replied to
them in the same vein in which they were written.
"At last," he continued, "the girl came with a magnificent carriage
and four postilions to take me to the princess.
"After a drive of about ten miles we arrived at a splendid palace,
where an exquisite meal and a very hearty reception from the princess
soon made me feel quite at ease. There I lived with her as
inseparably as two branches growing together on the same tree. She
gave birth to a son, a very intelligent and beautiful child, whom I
loved so much that I thought of degrading my son Jadasada and putting
this child in his place as son of my principal wife--this in view of
the high rank of the princess. But after three years a Buddhist priest
suddenly entered the room of Her Highness, carrying a stick in his
hand. The effect of his appearance was astonishing. Chamberlains and
Court ladies all fled left and right and even the princess hid herself
somewhere. The priest pushed me from behind with his stick and made me
go out of the house through a very narrow passage. When I looked back
I discovered that I had just crept from under my own go-down!"
The curious point of this story is that those who listened to it
rushed to the go-down and demolished it without delay. As they did so,
twenty or thirty foxes came from beneath it and scattered in all
directions, hastening to the mountains. Yoshifuji, bewitched by these
wizard-foxes, had been lying under the go-down for a fortnight,
believing in his trance that he was spending three years in a palace.
The priest who broke the spell was a metamorphosis of Kwannon.
That the wer-vixen superstition is deeply engrained in the minds of
travellers is proved by the story of a bishop who once passed the night
in a house which was so desolate in appearance that his companions
begged him to read a sutra for the purpose of driving away evil
influences. Two of them went to a wood close to the house, where they
saw a mysterious phantom, large and white, which they took to be a
wer-vixen. They rushed in to tell the bishop, who, greatly excited,
cried, "I have often heard of foxes haunting people, but I have never
set eyes on a ghost of this kind," and he hastened to the spot, full of
eagerness, only to discover a harmless, ordinary girl--or so he said!
Another wer-vixen attempted to steal a child. The nurse was out in
the grounds with her charge of two years old when her master, the
father of the infant, heard her crying for help. Seizing his sword he
ran to the spot, when to his astonishment he found that _two_ nurses
exactly alike were pulling at his son and heir, one on one side and
one on the other. He could not say which was the genuine nurse, and in
great terror brandished his sword, making feints at both. Thereupon
one of the nurses vanished and the other swooned, the child still in
her arms. A priest was sent for and by means of incantations brought
the nurse to her senses. She then said that her double had appeared
and laying hold of the babe had claimed it as her own. Nobody knew
whether the phantom was a _fox_ or a _spirit_.[60]
Here is a story of a vindictive wer-fox, taken from the "Uji shui
monogatari":--
"A samurai was on his way home one evening when he met a fox. Pursuing
the animal, he sent an arrow into its loin. The fox howled loudly and
limped quickly away through the grass towards the samurai's house.
When the man saw the animal was breathing fire he hastened to overtake
him, but was too late. The fox, on arriving at the house, assumed
human shape and set fire to the building. Then the samurai pursued the
culprit, whom he took to be a real man, but, resuming vulpine form,
the animal disappeared into the thicket."
A number of fox legends, which have been rendered into English by Dr.
Visser, are found in the "Kokon chomonshu."
The house of a Dainagon was haunted by a number of foxes, and was so
impossible to live in that the owner decided to hold a battue. The
very night he gave orders to this effect he saw a vision of a
grey-haired old man, with the figure of a tall boy, wearing a green
hunting dress, and seated under an orange tree in the garden. The
owner asked the apparition's name, and he replied, "I have lived in
your house for two generations and have a great number of children and
grandchildren. I have always tried to keep them out of mischief but
they never would listen. Now I am sorry because they have made you
angry. If you will forgive the things my family have done, I will
protect you and let you know whenever good luck is coming your way."
Then the owner of the house awoke from his strange dream, rose and
opened the door of the verandah. There he discovered in the dim
morning light an old hairless fox, shyly trying to hide himself behind
a bamboo bench.
The _tanuki_, or badger, shares with the fox the reputation for powers
of transformation. This animal appeared in Japanese folklore later
than the fox, but is often coupled with it in stories of animal
sorcery. An old mountain lake was frequented by many water birds, but
it was well known that whoever tried to shoot them was drowned in the
lake. At last a man, who had more courage than the others, decided
that this mysterious matter must be looked into. He went alone in the
dark, armed with bow, arrows, and a sword, and when he reached the
lake he sat down under a pine tree, bent his bow and waited. Suddenly
the surface of the lake was disturbed, waves dashed on the shore and
he saw a faint light in the centre. The ball of light moved about,
coming closer and closer, and circling round him. He was about to
shoot at it when it flew back over the lake. Presently it came close
to him again, and in the centre he saw a grinning old hag, upon whom
he seized. She tried to pull him into the lake, but could not manage
to do so, for he stood like a rock and, having thrown down his bow,
stabbed at her with his sword. She grew weaker and weaker and the
light disappeared. Then she died, and he took home the animal shape
which was left on his hands, and which proved to be an old _tanuki_.
Another story of the _tanuki_ is more like a ghost story than that of
a wer-animal, and concerns a captain of the guards called Sukeyasu.
When he was hunting in the province of Tamba he passed the night in
an old chapel which the villagers warned him was haunted by a monster.
As a snowstorm was raging he preferred to face the strange risk inside
the chapel to a certain wetting in the open.
He was half asleep when he heard a noise outside the chapel and
peeping through a chink in the sliding door he saw a pitch-black
priest, so tall that his head appeared to reach the eaves. The priest
stretched a thin hairy arm through the chink in the door and stroked
Sukeyasu's forehead, afterwards withdrawing his hand. The captain was
too frightened to move, but when the same thing was repeated he
plucked up courage to grasp the hairy hand and hold it firmly. Then
ensued a struggle and the door gave way. Sukeyasu came down on the top
of the priest and as he pressed upon him with all his might he found
his opponent growing smaller and smaller, and his arms thinner and
thinner. The captain called his servants to his assistance and when a
light was obtained it was found that the huge spook was in reality a
_tanuki_. Next day the animal's head was shown to the villagers, and
from that time the chapel was no longer haunted.
An unsuccessful transformation into animal shape is the subject of
another wer-fox story. A man left his house one evening in order to do
some business in a neighbouring city, but to his wife's surprise he came
back accompanied by a servant long before he was due, saying that he had
accomplished his business satisfactorily. He was very tired and went to
bed at once, but an old woman-servant in the house warned her mistress,
saying that she had noticed something odd about the returned traveller,
who was blind in the left eye, while her master was blind in the right
eye. The wife then called to the sleeping man, saying she was ill, and
asking him to get her some medicine. He did so, grumbling, and to the
wife's astonishment, she saw that what the old woman said was true. Then
when he lay down to sleep again she stabbed him to death, and he cried
out like a fox, "kon, kon, kwai--kwai." Then they beat to death the
servant the wer-fox had brought with him, and found he was also a fox.
The one who had taken the shape of the master had not trained himself
carefully enough in the art of transformation.
A very uncanny fox and badger story comes from an old Japanese
source.[61] Kugano Kendo was a clever doctor who lived in Yeddo. One
day he was asked to go and see a patient in the country, and when he
reached the house in question, which he had never before visited, he
found that the master had gone out and he was asked to wait. A
page-boy offered him some refreshments after his long journey, and
when he was about to thank him for his attentions the boy turned away
and, to the doctor's astonishment, he saw the page's face had utterly
changed, becoming enormously long and narrow, with a small nose and
big mouth and only one eye in the centre of the forehead. Suddenly the
apparition vanished. Though courageous by nature this struck the
doctor as so extraordinary that he felt inclined to leave the strange
house at once. However, he mastered his fears and soon the owner of
the house returned. The doctor told him what he had seen and the
master burst out laughing and said, "Oh, that boy has been at it
again, has he? He always frightens strangers. Did he pull a face like
this?" and suiting his actions to his words the man imitated the
horrible expression, his face taking the same deformity of one eye in
the centre of his forehead, and a foxy snout.
This was too much for the doctor's equanimity. He ran to the front door
and called his servants to prepare for the journey home. Then he found
that all the servants had run away except one, and outside it was
pitch-dark. The remaining servant said he could find a lantern, and
presently he appeared out of the darkness with a light in his hand which
fell full upon his features. To Kendo's intense horror he noticed the
same transformation had taken place in the servant's countenance as had
appeared in the faces of the others, and this additional strain being
too much for his nerves, he cried out and fell into a swoon.
In the meantime the doctor's friends, growing anxious about his long
absence, despatched a search party to find him, and among those who
were sent were some of the servants who had accompanied him earlier in
the evening. To their surprise, instead of the fine house they had
already visited, they found only an old, dirty, tumbledown cottage,
which the neighbours told them was always desolate and only inhabited
by foxes and _tanuki_. Nobody dared to pass that way by night. After a
long search Doctor Kendo was found lying face downwards in a bamboo
grove. Weeks passed before he recovered from his adventure. This story
seems to throw a light on what may be called "the workings of
transformation," as though a partial change were brought about by some
hidden occult force glimmering through the human shape.
The "Roo chawa"[62] describes three kinds of strange wer-animals.
Firstly thin ones, with emaciated features, red eyes, long trunks,
legs the length of a horse, and a loud cry "like the tone of a bell."
These are _tanuki_. The second variety has a round face, sharp nose,
spotted skin and is blind in one eye. Thirdly, there are foxes with
large ears, round eyes, pointed cheeks, wide mouths, but _without a
right arm_! This sounds as though the description had been taken
during the process of metamorphosis.
The one-eyed beasts seem the most fearsome to encounter in the dark.
An ancient monastery was haunted by them. An old man, blind in one
eye, arrived there as the priest was murmuring his prayers. He came
near enough to stroke the devout man's face, but as he put out his
hand to do so the priest protected himself with a knife and chopped
off the arm, which proved to be the hairy leg of an old fox.
Another man who passed the night in the same monastery was disturbed
by a number of puppy-dogs which ran in and out of the cloisters.
Looking through a crack in an old door he saw a woman standing
outside. He pierced her through the breast with his sword and she
fled, bleeding profusely. A moment later a ball of light fell onto the
ground, and when the man ran to see what it was, he found the same old
witch. Again he struck at her with his sword and she fled, leaving
another pool of blood.
Next day an old one-eyed woman came to the monastery accompanied by a
little girl and asked the abbot to read a mass at the funeral of her
elder sister.
The abbot, believing all was not right with these people, chased away
the woman and child by threatening to strike them with a bamboo cane.
That night the village was lit by burning torches and a crowd
assembled to pray and read sutras. Temple gongs and kettle-drums
resounded, and everyone knew that some mysterious ceremony was being
held. The following morning the abbot sent to discover what had taken
place and an old dead _tanuki_, as big as a calf, was dug out of the
ground. It was found to be the witch that had been wounded in the
monastery. This may be compared with the witch-cat stories of England
in the following chapter.
Fox-possession and fox-familiars are common beliefs among the
Japanese; women, weak men, and even children suffering from the idea
of having been transformed into animals. They are cured by being made
to snuff up smoke from a heap of burning refuse, or by drinking weak
tea, or swallowing roasted leaves of a certain plant; all these things
being detested by foxes, and incidentally no doubt useful in cases of
ordinary hysteria. Foxes which take the form of men and women soon
resume vulpine shape when fumigated, bathed, or attacked by dogs. Even
in the present day, fox-possession has as great a hold on the
imagination as in earlier centuries, but it is more widely ascribed to
human sorcery. Certain sacred temples in Japan still attract crowds
of pilgrims who believe that they are possessed by foxes and who come
to these holy places to be cured. The bone of a tortoise's foot held
in the left hand is prescribed as a talisman against this fearsome
spell--probably also many other of the formulæ useful in cases of
witchcraft would be found efficacious.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] "The Pao Poh-tsze," chap, i, sect. 3.
[53] "Religious System of China."
[54] The legend says that a lady of light morals lived in the remotest
times and bore the name of O-tsze. She adopted the fox shape, and
hence it is that such spooks often call themselves O-tsze.
[55] "Wuh tsah tsu," by Sie Chao chi.
[56] Brinkley, F., "Japan," 1902, Vol. V, p. 197.
[57] _Ibid._, p. 198.
[58] The "Huen Chung ki."
[59] 1908, pp. 21-3.
[60] _See_ Visser, M. W. de, "The Fox and Badger in Japanese
Folklore," 1908.
[61] The "Kwaidan toshiotoko," 1749.
[62] 1742.
CHAPTER XII
WITCHES
Amongst the powers with which witches have been credited from time
immemorial are those of transforming themselves into various kinds of
animals, of transforming other people into animals and of sending
forth so-called familiars in various animal shapes. Whether witches
can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question
which has exercised the minds of hundreds of writers on demonology and
witchcraft, amongst them, to mention a few at random, Bodin, Boguet,
James I, Glanvill, Dr. Webster, Reginald Scott, his more famous
namesake Sir Walter, and Charles Lamb. The last-named, in his essay on
the subject, tells us that he was extremely inquisitive from his
childhood about witches and witch-stories, and that it should cause no
wonder if the wicked, having been symbolised by a goat, should come
sometimes in that body and "assert his metaphor."[63]
In the Middle Ages witches who were condemned to the stake, confessed
to having taken the shapes of cats, hares, dogs, horses, and many
other animals, being prompted to such changes by the devil, with whom
they were in league.
A witch trial took place at Lancaster on the 10th of February, 1633,
in which a batch of witches was accused of such dealings.
Evidence was given by Edmund Robinson, son of Edmund Robinson, of Pendle
forest, eleven years of age, at Padham, before Richard Shuttleworth and
John Starkey, Justices of the Peace, "who upon oath informeth, being
examined concerning the great meeting of the witches of Pendle, saith
that upon All Saints-day last past, he, this informer being with one
Henry Parker a near door-neighbour to him in Wheatley Cave, desired the
said Parker to give him leave to gather some bulloes, which he did. In
gathering whereof he saw two greyhounds, namely a black and a brown; one
came running over the next field towards him, he verily thinking the one
of them to be Mr. Nutter's and the other to be Mr. Robinson's, the said
gentlemen then having suchlike. And saith the said greyhounds came to
him, and fawned on him, they having about their necks either of them a
collar, unto which was tied a string: which collars (as this informant
affirmeth) did shine like gold. And he was thinking that some either of
Mr. Nutter's or Mr. Robinson's family should have followed them, yet
seeing nobody to follow them, he took the same greyhounds thinking to
course with them. And presently a hare did rise very near before him. At
the sight whereof he cried 'Loo, Loo, Loo,' but the dogs would not run.
Whereupon he being very angry took them and with the strings that were
about their collars, tied them to a little bush at the next hedge, and,
with a switch that he had in his hand, he beat them. And instead of the
black greyhound Dickenson's wife stood up, a neighbour whom this
informer knoweth. And instead of the brown one a little boy whom this
informant knoweth not. At which sight this informer being afraid,
endeavoured to run away; and being stayed by the woman, namely
Dickenson's wife, she put her hand into her pocket, and pulled forth a
piece of silver much like to a fair shilling, and offered to give it him
to hold his tongue and not tell: which he refused saying, 'Nay, thou art
a witch.' Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket again, and pulled
out a thing like unto a bridle that jingled, which she put on the little
boy's head; which said boy stood up in the likeness of a white horse,
and in the brown greyhound's stead. Then immediately Dickenson's wife
took the informer before her upon the said horse and carried him to a
new house called Hearthstones, being about a quarter of a mile off."
Here the boy, Edmund Robinson, was witness to the extraordinary
incidents of a feast of witches, all of which he recounted before the
judges, and then his father, being called, gave evidence that he had
sent his son to fetch home two kine, and as he did not return he went to
seek him, finding him eventually "so affrighted and distracted that he
neither knew his father, nor did he know where he was, and so continued
very nearly a quarter of an hour before he came to himself, when he told
the above curious happenings."[64]
The seventeen Pendle forest witches condemned in Lancashire obtained a
reprieve and were sent to London, where they were examined by His
Majesty himself and the Council.
A witch called Julian Cox, aged about seventy years, was indicted at
Taunton, in Somerset, in 1663, for transforming herself into a hare
and for other sorcery.
The evidence given to prove that she was a witch was embodied in a
narrative deposed to by Mr. Pool, a servant and officer in the court
to Judge Archer, then Judge of Assizes at Taunton.
"The first witness was a huntsman, who swore that he went out with a
pack of hounds to hunt a hare, and not far from Julian Cox her house,
he at last started a hare. The dogs hunted her very close, and the
third ring hunted her in view, till at last the huntsman perceiving
the hare almost spent, and making toward a great bush he ran on the
other side of the bush to take her up, and preserve her from the dogs.
But as soon as he laid hands on her, it proved to be Julian Cox, who
had her head grovelling on the ground and her globes (as he expressed
it) upward. He knowing her, was so affrighted that his hair on his
head stood on end, and yet spake to her and asked her wh
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