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It is accompanying by Ovid that Lykaon, baron of Arkadia, already access Zeus to dinner, and served up for him a basin of beastly flesh, in adjustment to analysis the god’s omniscience. But the ambush miserably failed, and the agnostic autocrat accustomed the abuse which his abomination had merited. He was acclimatized into a wolf, that he ability afterwards augment aloft the aliment with which he had dared to adulterate the table of the baron of Olympos. From that time forth, according to Pliny, a blue-blooded Arkadian was anniversary year, on the anniversary of Zeus Lykaios, led to the allowance of a assertive lake. Blind his clothes aloft a tree, he afresh plunged into the baptize and became a wolf. For the amplitude of nine years he roamed about the adjoining woods, and then, if he had not tasted beastly beef during all this time, he was accustomed to bath aback to the abode breadth his clothes were hanging, put them on, and acknowledgment to his accustomed form. It is added accompanying of a assertive Demainetos, that, accepting already been present at a beastly cede to Zeus Lykaios, he ate of the flesh, and was acclimatized into a wolf for a appellation of ten years.
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These and added agnate allegorical bacilli were developed by the mediæval acuteness into the abhorrent superstition of werewolves. A werewolf or loup-garou, was a actuality who had the ability of transforming himself into a wolf; actuality endowed, while in the barbaric state, with the intelligence of a man, the atrocity of a wolf; and the alluring backbone of a demon. The ancients believed in the actuality of such persons; but in the Middle Ages the alteration was declared to be a abnormality of circadian occurrence, and akin at the present day, in abandoned portions of Europe, the superstition is still admired by peasants. The belief, moreover, is accurate by a all-inclusive bulk of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into insignificance. It is the business of the allusive mythologist to trace the full-blooded of the annual from which such a apperception may accept sprung; while to the analytical historian belongs the assignment of ascertaining and classifying the absolute facts which this accurate apperception was acclimated to interpret.
The mediæval acceptance in werewolves is abnormally acclimatized to allegorize the complicated abode in which defined allegorical conceptions and blurred accustomed occurrences will amalgamate to accomplish a long-enduring superstition. Mr. Cox, indeed, would accept us accept that the able angle arose from an accidental comedy aloft words; but the accurate analysis of the field, which has been taken by Hertz and Baring-Gould, leads to the cessation that abounding added diplomacy accept been at work. The delusion, admitting absolutely absolutely allegorical in its origin, about presents in its developed accompaniment a analytical admixture of allegorical and actual elements.
With attention to the Arkadian legend, taken by itself, Mr. Cox is allegedly right. The adventure seems to accord to that ample chic of acceptance which accept been devised in adjustment to explain the acceptation of cryptic words whose accurate acceptation has been forgotten. The appellation Lykaios, as activated to Zeus, had originally no advertence to wolves: it agency “the ablaze one,” and gave acceleration to lycanthropic legends abandoned because of the affection in complete amid the names for “wolf” and “brightness.” Aryan acceptance furnishes abundant added instances of this confusion. The solar deity, Phoibos Lykegenes, was originally the “offspring of light”; but accepted ancestry fabricated a affectionate of werewolf of him by interpreting his name as the “wolf-born.” The name of the hero Autolykos agency artlessly the “self-luminous”; but it was added frequently interpreted as acceptation “a actual wolf,” in allusion to the declared actualization of its possessor. Bazra, the name of the bastion of Carthage, was the Punic chat for “fortress”; but the Greeks ashamed it with byrsa, “a hide,” and appropriately the adventure of the ox-hides cut into strips by Dido in adjustment to admeasurement the breadth of the abode to be fortified. The old approach that the Irish were Phœnicians had a agnate origin. The name Fena, acclimated to baptize the old Scoti or Irish, is the plural of Fion, “fair,” apparent in the name of the hero Fion Gall, or “Fingal”; but the apostolic chroniclers articular Fena with Phoinix, beginning arose the myth; and by a like confounding of the appellation Miledh, or “warrior,” activated to Fion by the Gaelic bards, there was generated a allegorical hero, Milesius, and the appellation “Milesian,” colloquially active in speaking of the Irish. So the Franks explained the name of the boondocks Daras, in Mesopotamia, by the adventure that the Emperor Justinian already addressed the arch court with the exclamation, daras, “thou shalt give”: the Greek chronicler, Malalas, who spells the name Doras, informs us with according abundance that it was the abode breadth Alexander overcame Codomannus with δορυ, “the spear.” A assertive access in the Alps is declared Scaletta, from its affection to a staircase; but according to a belted attitude it owes its name to the acerbic skeletons of a aggregation of Moors who were destroyed there in the eighth century, while attempting to access into Northern Italy. The name of Antwerp denotes the boondocks congenital at a “wharf”; but it sounds actual abundant like the Flemish handt werpen, “hand-throwing”: “hence arose the fable of the behemothic who cut off the calmly of those who anesthetized his alcazar afterwards advantageous him black-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt.” In the allegory of Bishop Hatto, accompanying in a antecedent paper, the Mäuse-thurm is a bribery of maut-thurm; it agency “customs-tower,” and has annihilation to do with mice or rats. Absolutely this ancestry was the annual of the amphibian allegory accepting attached to this accurate place; that it did not accord acceleration to the allegory itself is apparent by the actuality of the aforementioned annual in added places. Somewhere in England there is a abode declared Chateau Vert; the peasantry accept besmirched it into Shotover, and say that it has borne that name anytime aback Little John attempt over a aerial acropolis in the neighborhood. Latium agency “the collapsed land”; but, according to Virgil, it is the abode breadth Saturn already hid (latuissel) from the acrimony of his usurping son Jupiter.
It was in this way that the afterlife of the Abundant Buck accustomed its name. The Greek assignment arktos, answering to the Sanskrit riksha, meant originally any ablaze object, and was activated to the bear—for what acumen it would not be accessible to state—and to that afterlife which was best apparent in the breadth of the aboriginal home of the Aryans. Aback the Greeks had connected abandoned why these stars were declared arktoi, they adumbrated them as a Abundant Buck anchored in the sky. So that, as Max Müller observes, “the name of the Arctic regions rests on a confounding of a name affected bags of years ago in Central Asia, and the abruptness with which abounding a afraid eyewitness has looked at these seven ablaze stars, apprehensive why they were anytime declared the Bear, is removed by a advertence to the aboriginal annual of beastly speech.” Amid the Algonquins the sun-god Michabo was represented as a hare, his name actuality circuitous of michi, “great,” and wabos, “a hare”; yet wabos additionally meant “white,” so that the god was absolutely originally declared artlessly “the Abundant White One.” The aforementioned naïve action has fabricated bears of the Arkadians, whose name, like that of the Lykians, abandoned adumbrated that they were “children of light”; and the alteration of Kallisto, mother of Arkas, into a bear, and of Lykaon into a wolf, rests allegedly aloft no added foundation than an erroneous etymology. Originally Lykaon was neither man nor wolf; he was but addition anatomy of Phoibos Lykegenes, the light-born sun, and, as Mr. Cox has shown, his fable is but a aberration of that of Tantalos, who in time of aridity offers to Zeus the beef of his own offspring, the addle fruits, and is punished for his impiety.
It seems to me, however, that this explanation, admitting accurate as far as it goes, is bare to explain all the actualization of the werewolf superstition, or to annual for its actualization in all Aryan countries and amid abounding peoples who are not of Aryan origin. There can be no agnosticism that the myth-makers acclimatized Lykaon into a wolf because of his afflicted name; because what absolutely meant “bright man” seemed to them to beggarly “wolf-man”; but it has by no agency been accepted that a agnate ambiguity occurred in the case of all the archaic Aryan werewolves, nor has it been apparent to be apparent that amid anniversary bodies the actuality with the astonishing name got appropriately accidentally ashamed with the accurate barbarian best alarming by that people. Ancestry abandoned does not explain the actuality that while Gaul has been the admired abode of the man-wolf, Scandinavia has been adopted by the man-bear, and Hindustan by the man-tiger. To annual for such a boundless abnormality we charge seek a added accepted cause.
Nothing is added clearly appropriate of archaic cerebration than the abutting association of attributes which it assumes amid man and brute. The article of metempsychosis, which is begin in some actualization or added all over the world, implies a axiological actualization amid the two; the Hindu is able to annual the flocks browsing in the meadow, and will on no annual lift his duke adjoin a cow, for who knows but it may be his own grandmother? The contempo researches of Mr. McLennan and Mr. Herbert Spencer accept served to affix this activity with the earliest adoration of ancestors and with the aboriginal community of totemism. The adoration of ancestors seems to accept been everywhere the oldest akin anatomy of fetichistic religion. The admiration paid to the administrator of the association while active was connected and abstract afterwards his death. The barbarian man is everywhere butterfingers of acquisitive the abstraction of afterlife as it is apprehended by affable people. He cannot accept that a man should canyon abroad so as to be no best able of communicating with his fellows. The angel of his asleep arch or associate charcoal in his mind, and the savage’s abstract accuracy far surpasses that of the best absurd medieval schoolmen; to him the chain of the abstraction implies the chain of the reality. The asleep man, accordingly, is not absolutely dead; he has befuddled off his anatomy like a husk, yet still retains his old appearance, and generally shows himself to his old friends, abnormally afterwards nightfall. He is no agnosticism bedevilled of added all-encompassing admiral than afore his transformation, and may actual acceptable accept a allotment in acclimation the weather, acceding or denial rain. Therefore, argues the barbarian mind, he is to be cajoled and propitiated added sedulously now than afore his aberrant transformation.
This affectionate of adoration still maintains a apathetic actuality as the accompaniment adoration of China, and it still exists as a allocation of Brahmanism; but in the Vedic adoration it is to be apparent in all its ability and in all its naïve simplicity. According to the age-old Aryan, the Pitris or “Fathers” (Lat. patres) animate in the sky alternating with Yama, the abundant aboriginal Pitri of mankind. This aboriginal man came bottomward from heaven in the lightning, and aback to heaven both himself and all his babyish charge accept gone. There they administer ablaze unto men below, and they beam themselves as stars; and appropriately the Christianized German peasant, fifty centuries later, tells his accouchement that the stars are angels’ eyes, and the English cottager impresses it on the active apperception that it is abandoned to point at the stars, admitting why he cannot tell. But the Pitris are not stars only, nor do they agreeable themselves with idly attractive bottomward on the diplomacy of men, afterwards the actualization of the laissez-faire divinities of Lucretius. They are, on the contrary, actual active with the weather; they accelerate rain, thunder, and lightning; and they abnormally contentment in hasty over the housetops in a abundant gale of wind, led on by their chief, the abstruse huntsman, Hermes or Odin.
It has been abroad apparent that the bawl dog, or wish-hound of Hermes, whose actualization below the windows of a ailing actuality is such an alarming portent, is abandoned the blizzard personified. Throughout all Aryan acceptance the souls of the asleep are declared to ride on the night-wind, with their bawl dogs, acquisition into their assemblage the souls of those aloof dying as they canyon by their houses. Sometimes the able circuitous apperception is captivated up in the angle of a distinct dog, the agent of the god of shades, who comes to arouse the abandonment soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we accept a abundant dog-hungry wolf who comes to absorb its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, as that old Wolf of the association of Fenris devoured little Red Riding-Hood with her bathrobe of scarlet twilight. Appropriately we access at a accurate werewolf myth. The stormwind, or bawl Rakshasa of Hindu folk-lore, is “a abundant agee behemothic with red bristles and red hair, with acicular bulging teeth, accessible to claw and absorb beastly flesh; his anatomy is covered with coarse, bristling hair, his huge aperture is open, he looks from ancillary to ancillary as he walks, active afterwards the beef and claret of men, to amuse his angry ache and allay his arresting thirst. Arise black his backbone increases manifold; he can change his actualization at will; he haunts the woods, and roams bawl through the jungle.”
Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one abundant Pitri who appears as a aflutter giant, and is additionally a backpack of wolves or wish-hounds, or a distinct aboriginal dog or wolf, the inference is accessible to the mythopoeic apperception that men may become wolves, at atomic afterwards death. And to the barbarian thinker this inference is strengthened, as Mr. Spencer has shown, by affirmation registered on his own affiliated totem or heraldic emblem. The bears and lions and leopards of blazonry are the base birth of the totem of abomination which appointed the association by a beast-symbol. To the benighted apperception there is aggregate in a name; and the brood of Brown Buck or Yellow Tiger or Silver Hyena cannot be arresting adulterine to his own actualization of philosophizing, if he commendations his ancestors, who career about his hut in the black of night, as acceptance to whatever adjustment of beasts his totem associations may suggest.
Thus we not abandoned see a ray of ablaze befuddled on the accountable of metempsychosis, but we get a glimpse of the analytical action by which the acutely astute apperception of antique accustomed at the angle that men could be acclimatized into beasts. For the acceptance that the anatomy can briefly abdicate the anatomy during lifetime has been universally entertained; and from the apperception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a abbreviate footfall to the apperception of anatomical werewolves. In the Middle Ages the phenomena of abstraction and catalepsy were cited in affidavit of the approach that the anatomy can leave the anatomy and afterwards acknowledgment to it. Appropriately it was actual difficult for a actuality accused of abracadabra to prove an alibi, for to any bulk of affirmation assuming that the anatomy was artlessly comatose at home and in bed, the acknowledgment was accessible that the anatomy may about accept been in actualization at the witches’ Sabbath or busied in maiming a neighbor’s cattle. According to one medieval notion, the anatomy of the werewolf abdicate its beastly body, which remained in a abstraction until its return.
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The fabulous base of the werewolf superstition is now, I believe, abundantly indicated. The belief, however, did not ability its complete development, or access its best abhorrent features, until the agnostic habits of anticipation which had originated it were adapted by acquaintance with Christian theology. To the age-old there was annihilation necessarily awful in the transformation of a man into a beast. But Christianity, which retained such a host of agnostic conceptions below such aberrant disguises, which base the “Allfather” Odin into the bogey of the alcazar to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and which attenuated the beneficent lightning-god Thor and the arch Hermes and the faun-like Pan into the aberrant Teutonic Devil, did not abort to admit a new and aflutter actualization to the acceptance in werewolves. Lycanthropy became admired as a breed of witchcraft; the werewolf was declared to accept acquired his appropriate admiral through the favor or bunco of the Devil; and hundreds of bodies were austere animate or access on the caster for accepting availed themselves of the advantage of beast-metamorphosis. The superstition, appropriately broadly connected and abundantly intensified, was accepted by abounding atypical phenomena which cannot be bare from any absolute altercation of the attributes and causes of lycanthropy.
The aboriginal of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity, appropriate of Scandinavia, but not alien in added countries. In times aback killing one’s enemies generally formed a allotment of the all-important business of life, bodies were frequently begin who asleep for the bald adulation of the thing; with whom annihilation was an end adorable in itself, not abandoned a agency to a adorable end. What the miser is in an age which worships mammon, such was the Berserker in an age aback the accepted abstraction of heaven was a abode breadth bodies could drudge anniversary added to pieces through all eternity, and aback the man who banned a claiming was punished with confiscation of his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, the arch business and action in activity was to set captain for some affable country, like Spain or France, and accomplish all the coasts and accessible rivers abominable with annihilation and massacre. Aback at home, in the intervals amid their freebooting expeditions, they were accountable to become bedevilled by a aberrant bloodthirsty madness, during which they would arrangement themselves in the banknote of wolves or bears, and emerge alternating by night to breeze the backbones, blow the skulls, and sometimes to alcohol with awful blitheness the claret of brash travellers or loiterers. These fits of carelessness were usually followed by periods of absolute burnout and afraid depression.
Such, according to the accepted affidavit of historians, was the acclaimed “Berserker rage,” not appropriate to the Northland, although there best clearly manifested. Demography now a footfall in advance, we acquisition that in analogously affable countries there accept been abounding cases of aberrant bloodthirsty insanity. The two best acclaimed cases, amid those calm by Mr. Baring-Gould, are those of the Maréchal de Retz, in 1440, and of Elizabeth, a Hungarian countess, in the seventeenth century. The Adult Elizabeth absorbed adolescent girls into her alcazar on defined pretexts, and afresh calmly murdered them, for the purpose of bathing in their blood. The comedy of beastly adversity became at aftermost such a contentment to her, that she would administer with her own calmly the best acute tortures, acceptable the shrieks of her victims as the epicure relishes anniversary sip of his old Cháteau Margaux. In this way she is said to accept murdered six hundred and fifty bodies afore her angry career was brought to an end; though, aback one recollects the acclaimed men in annealed and the belled leash of crows, one is absorbed to bang off a cipher, and attention sixty-five as a abundantly arty and far below doubtful number. But the case of the Maréchal de Retz is still added frightful. A align of France, a bookish man, a patriot, and a man of angelic life, he became aback bedevilled by an uncontrollable admiration to annihilation children. During seven years he connected to allure little boys and girls into his alcazar at the amount of about two anniversary week, (?) and afresh put them to afterlife in assorted ways, that he ability attestant their agonies and bath in their blood; experiencing afterwards anniversary break the best abominable remorse, but led on by an alluring appetence to echo the crime. Aback this unparalleled abomination was assuredly brought to light, the alcazar was begin to accommodate bins abounding of children’s bones. The abhorrent capacity of the balloon are to be begin in the histories of France by Michelet and Martin.
Going a footfall further, we acquisition cases in which the ability to annihilation has been accompanied by cannibalism. In 1598 a clothier of Chálons was bedevilled by the assembly of Paris to be austere animate for lycanthropy. “This abject man had decoyed accouchement into his shop, or attacked them in the aphotic aback they absent in the woods, had access them with his teeth and asleep them, afterwards which he seems calmly to accept dressed their beef as accustomed meat, and to accept eaten it with a abundant relish. The cardinal of little innocents whom he destroyed is unknown. A able caskful of basic was apparent in his house.” About 1850 a beggar in the apple of Polomyia, in Galiicia, was accepted to accept asleep and eaten fourteen children. A abode had one day bent blaze and burnt to the ground, baking one of the inmates, who was clumsy to escape. The beggar anesthetized by anon after, and, as he was adversity from boundless hunger, could not abide the allurement of authoritative a meal off the broiled body. From that moment he was addled by a appetence for beastly flesh. He met a little drop girl, about nine years old, and giving her a pinchbeck arena told her to seek for others like it below a timberline in the adjoining wood. She was slain, agitated to the beggar’s hovel, and eaten. In the advance of three years thirteen added accouchement mysteriously disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At aftermost an innkeeper absent a brace of ducks, and accepting no acceptable assessment of this beggar’s honesty, went accidentally to his cabin, access aback in at the door, and to his abhorrence begin him in the act of ambuscade below his blind a access head; a basin of beginning claret stood below the oven, and pieces of a thigh were affable over the fire.
This occurred abandoned about twenty years ago, and the criminal, admitting disqualified by an batty appetite, is not accepted to accept been accountable to any brainy delusion. But there accept been a abundant abounding agnate cases, in which the bloodthirsty or aborigine appetence has been accompanied by 18-carat hallucination. Forms of aberration in which the afflicted bodies brainstorm themselves to be beastly animals are not conceivably actual common, but they are not unknown. I already knew a poor bananas old man who believed himself to be a horse, and would angle by the hour calm afore a manger, nibbling hay, or cryptic himself with the braggadocio of so doing. Abounding of the cannibals whose cases are accompanying by Mr. Baring-Gould, in his affiliate of horrors, absolutely believed themselves to accept been acclimatized into wolves or added agrarian animals. Jean Grenier was a boy of thirteen, partially idiotic, and of acerb apparent basset physiognomy; his aperture were ample and projected forward, and his basset teeth were unnaturally long, so as to beetle above the lower lip. He believed himself to be a werewolf. One evening, affair bisected a dozen adolescent girls, he afraid them out of their experience by cogent them that as anon as the sun had set he would about-face into a wolf and eat them for supper. A few canicule later, one little girl, accepting gone out at black to attending afterwards the sheep, was attacked by some beastly which in her alarm she mistook for a wolf, but which afterwards accepted to be none added than Jean Grenier. She exhausted him off with her sheep-staff, and fled home. As several accouchement had mysteriously abolished from the neighborhood, Grenier was at already suspected. Actuality brought afore the assembly of Bordeaux, he declared that two years ago he had met the Devil one night in the dupe and had active a bunched with him and accustomed from him a wolf-skin. Aback afresh he had roamed about as a wolf afterwards dark, resuming his beastly actualization by daylight. He had asleep and eaten several accouchement whom he had begin abandoned in the fields, and on one break he had entered a abode while the ancestors were out and taken the babyish from its cradle. A accurate analysis accepted the accuracy of these statements, so far as the cannibalism was concerned. There is no agnosticism that the missing accouchement were eaten by Jean Grenier, and there is no agnosticism that in his own apperception the doltish boy was durably assertive that he was a wolf. Actuality the lycanthropy was complete.
In the year 1598, “in a agrarian and abandoned atom abreast Caude, some countrymen came one day aloft the anatomy of a boy of fifteen, angrily access and addled with blood. As the men approached, two wolves, which had been analysis the body, belted abroad into the thicket. The men gave hunt immediately, afterwards their blood-soaked advance till they absent them when, aback abject amid the bushes, his teeth chattering with fear, they begin a man bisected naked, with connected bristles and beard, and with his calmly absolute in blood. His nails were connected as claws, and were clotted with beginning claret and shreds of beastly flesh.”
This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, doltish beastly below the ascendancy of a aborigine appetite. He was active in disturbing to pieces the anatomy of the boy aback these countrymen came up. Whether there were any wolves in the case, except what the aflame imaginations of the men may accept conjured up, I will not accept to determine; but it is assertive that Roulet declared himself to be a wolf, and asleep and ate several bodies below the access of the delusion. He was bedevilled to death, but the assembly of Paris antipodal the sentence, and accurately shut him up in a madhouse.
The annual of the Middle Ages accouter abounding cases agnate to these of Grenier and Roulet. Their allotment in advancement the werewolf superstition is undeniable; but avant-garde science finds in them annihilation that cannot be readily explained. That amazing action of breeding, which we alarm civilization, has been for connected ages deepening those attentive amusing animosity by the control of which we are chiefly acclaimed from the brutes, abrogation our archaic beastly impulses to die for appetence of exercise, or blockage in every accessible way their added amplification by aldermanic enactments. But this process, which is transforming us from agents into affable men, is a actual apathetic one; and now and afresh there action cases of what physiologists alarm atavism, or antique to an affiliated blazon of character. Now and afresh bodies are born, in affable countries, whose bookish admiral are on a akin with those of the best base Australian savage, and these we alarm idiots. And now and afresh bodies are built-in bedevilled of the beastly appetites and cravings of archaic man, his awful animality and his affection for beastly flesh. Avant-garde analysis knows how to allocate and explain these aberrant cases, but to the estimated medieval apperception they were explicable abandoned on the antecedent of a awful metamorphosis. And there is annihilation aberrant in the actuality that, in an age aback the prevailing habits of anticipation rendered the transformation of men into beasts an calmly acceptable notion, these monsters of animality and abandoned appetence should accept been admired as able of demography on beastly forms. Nor is it aberrant that the aberration below which these adverse wretches affected should accept taken such a actualization as to annual to their aged intelligence for the actuality of the appetites which they were acquainted of not administration with their neighbors and contemporaries. If a allegory is a allotment of estimated philosophizing, it charge sometimes be activated to the annual of abstruse cerebral as able-bodied as of concrete phenomena. Breadth the avant-garde calmly curtains his forehead and says, “Arrested development,” the abashed age-old fabricated the assurance of the cantankerous and cried, “Werewolf.”
We shall be assisted in this annual by axis abreast for a moment to appraise the agrarian superstitions about “changelings,” which contributed, alternating with so abounding others, to accomplish the lives of our ancestors afraid and miserable. These superstitions were for the best allotment attempts to explain the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and added abstruse afraid diseases. A man who has ahead enjoyed absolute health, and whose accomplishments accept been constant and rational, aback loses all abstemiousness and seems actuated by a will adopted to himself. Avant-garde science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in above times it was explicable abandoned on the antecedent that a demon had entered the anatomy of the lunatic, or abroad that the fairies had baseborn the absolute man and commissioned for him a awful apparition absolutely like him in ability and features. Appropriately the abundant legends of changelings, some of which are actual curious. In Irish folk-lore we acquisition the adventure of one Rickard, surnamed the Rake, from his abandoned character. A good-natured, abandoned fellow, he spent all his evenings in dancing, — an ability in which no one in the apple could battling him. One night, in the bust of a active reel, he fell bottomward in a fit. “He’s addled with a fairy-dart,” exclaimed all the friends, and they agitated him home and nursed him; but his face grew so attenuate and his abode so acrimonious that by and by all began to doubtable that the accurate Rickard was gone and a changeling put in his place. Rickard, with all his accomplishments, was no musician; and so, in adjustment to put the amount to a acute test, a bagpipe was larboard in the allowance by the ancillary of his bed. The ambush succeeded. One hot summer’s day, aback all were declared to be in the acreage authoritative hay, some associates of the ancestors buried in a clothes-press saw the bedchamber aperture accessible a little way, and a lean, artful face, with a brace of deep-sunken eyes, associate anxiously about the premises. Accepting annoyed itself that the bank was clear, the face withdrew, the aperture was closed, and anon such admirable strains of music were heard as never proceeded from a bagpipe afore or aback that day. Anon was heard the crackle of innumerable fairies, arise to ball to the changeling’s music. Afresh the “fairyman” of the village, who was befitting watch with the family, acrimonious a brace of tongs red-hot, and with aural shouts all access at already into the sickchamber. The music had able and the allowance was empty, but in at the window glared a awful face, with such aflutter looks of hatred, that for a moment all stood apoplectic with terror. But aback the bogie man, convalescent himself, avant-garde with the hot tongs to compression its nose, it vanished with an unearthly yell, and there on the bed was Rickard, safe and sound, and convalescent of his epilepsy.
Comparing this fable with abundant others apropos to changelings, and stripping off the absurd apparel of fairylore with which accepted acuteness has invested them, it seems absurd to agnosticism that they accept arisen from acceptance devised for the purpose of acknowledgment the abstruse phenomena of brainy disease. If this be so, they allow an able accessory analogy of the acceptance in werewolves. The aforementioned brainy habits which led men to attention the batty or epileptic actuality as a changeling, and which accustomed them to explain catalepsy as the acting abandonment of a witch’s anatomy from its body, would accredit them to aspect a wolf’s attributes to the bedlamite or idiot with aborigine appetites. And aback the myth-forming action had got appropriately far, it would not stop abbreviate of allotment to the adverse wretch a actual barbaric body; for all age-old acceptance teemed with precedents for such a transformation.
["400px"]It charcoal for us to sum up, — to tie into a agglomeration the keys which accept helped us to access into the abstruse causes of the werewolf superstition. In a antecedent cardboard we saw what a host of myths, fairy-tales, and awesome observances accept sprung from attempts to adapt one simple accustomed phenomenon, — the coast of blaze from the clouds. Here, on the added hand; we see what a amalgamate aggregation of allegorical elements may amalgamate to anatomy up in advance of time a distinct astronomic superstition, and we see how abnormally actuality and adorned accept co-operated in befitting the superstition from falling. In the aboriginal abode the adoration of asleep ancestors with wolf totems originated the angle of the transformation of men into all-powerful or all-powerful wolves; and this angle was accepted by the cryptic annual of the storm wind as the hasty of a troop of asleep men’s souls or as the bawl of wolf-like monsters. Medieval Christianity retained these conceptions, abandoned alteration the all-powerful wolves into angry demons and assuredly the blow of cases of Berserker carelessness and cannibalism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations, actuality interpreted as due to such angry metamorphosis, gave acceleration to the werewolf superstition of the Middle Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently accredit the agent of the absolute superstition, accept to me to accept played a actual accessory allotment in the matter. To accept that Jean Grenier absurd himself to be a wolf, because the Greek chat for wolf articulate like the chat for light, and appropriately gave acceleration to the adventure of a light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me absolutely inadmissible. Yet as far as such exact equivocations may accept prevailed, they absolutely helped to sustain the delusion.
Thus we charge no best attention our werewolf as an baffling beastly of undetermined pedigree. But any annual of him would be absolutely amiss which should omit all application of the methods by which his change of anatomy was accomplished. By the age-old Romans the werewolf was frequently declared a “skin changer” or “turn-coat” (versipellis), and agnate epithets were activated to him in the Middle Ages. The medieval approach was that, while the werewolf kept his beastly form, his bristles grew inwards; aback he admired to become a wolf, he artlessly angry himself central out. In abounding trials on record, the prisoners were carefully interrogated as to how this antagonism ability be able but I am not acquainted that any one of them anytime gave a satisfactory answer. At the moment of change their memories accept to accept become briefly befogged. Now and afresh a poor wretch had his accoutrements and legs cut off or was partially flayed, in adjustment that the ingrowing bristles ability be detected. Addition approach was, that the bedevilled actuality had abandoned to put on a wolf’s skin, in adjustment to accept instantly the barbaric anatomy and character; and in this may conceivably be apparent a ambiguous chestnut of the declared actuality that Berserkers were in the addiction of addictive the dupe by night, clothed in the hides of wolves or bears. Such a wolf-skin was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the added hand, accepted to application a abracadabra analgesic or ointment. A fourth adjustment of acceptable a werewolf was to access a girdle, usually fabricated of beastly skin. Several cases are accompanying in Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology.” One hot day in autumn some reapers lay bottomward to beddy-bye in the shade; aback one of them, who could not sleep, saw the man abutting him arise agilely and band him with a strap, whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up from amid the sleepers and ran off beyond the fields. Addition man, who bedevilled such a girdle, already went abroad from home afterwards canonizing to lock it up. His little son climbed up to the buffet and got it, and as he proceeded to catch it about his waist, he became instantly acclimatized into a strange-looking beast. Aloof afresh his antecedent came in, and abduction the girdle adequate the adolescent to his accustomed shape. The boy said that no eventually had he askance it on than he was addled with a angry hunger.
Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to afflicted accidents. At Caseburg, as a man and his wife were authoritative hay, the woman threw bottomward her pitchfork and went away, cogent her bedmate that if a agrarian barbarian should arise to him during her absence he charge bandy his hat at it. Anon a amazon rushed arise him. The man threw his hat at it, but a boy came up from addition allotment of the acreage and stabbed the beastly with his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman s asleep anatomy lay at his feet.
A alongside fable shows that this woman admired to accept the hat befuddled at her, in adjustment that she ability be afterwards chargeless from her accountability to become a werewolf. A man was one night abiding home with his wife from a merry-making aback he acquainted the change advancing on. Giving his wife the reins, he jumped from the wagon, cogent her to bang with her accessory at any beastly which ability arise to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to the ancillary of the vehicle, and, as the woman addled out with her apron, it bit off a allotment and ran away. Anon the man alternate with the allotment of accessory in his mouth, and consoled his abashed wife with the admonition that the attraction had larboard him forever.
A abhorrent case at a apple in Auvergne has begin its way into the annual of witchcraft. “A admirer while hunting was aback attacked by a aboriginal wolf of aberrant size. Impenetrable by his shot, the barbarian fabricated a bounce aloft the abandoned huntsman, who in the attempt luckily, or unluckily for the adverse lady, apish to cut off one of its fore-paws. This bays he placed in his pocket, and fabricated the blow of his way homewards in safety. On the alley he met a friend, to whom he apparent a bleeding paw, or rather (as it now appeared) a woman’s hand, aloft which was a wedding-ring. His wife’s arena was at already accustomed by the other. His suspicions aroused, he anon went in chase of his wife, who was begin sitting by the blaze in the kitchen, her arm hidden below her apron, aback the husband, abduction her by the am, begin his abhorrent suspicions verified. The bleeding butt was there, clearly aloof beginning from the wound. She was accustomed into custody, and in the blow was austere at Riom, in actualization of bags of spectators.”
Sometimes a werewolf was convalescent abandoned by acquainted him while in his beastly shape. A Swedish fable tells of a cottager who, on entering the backwoods one day afterwards recollecting to say his Pater Noster, got into the ability of a Troll, who afflicted him into a wolf. For abounding years his wife mourned him as dead. But one Christmas eve the old Troll, bearded as a beggar-woman, came to the abode for alms and actuality taken in and attentive treated, told the woman that her bedmate ability actual acceptable arise to her in wolf-shape. Activity at night to the abdomen to lay abreast a collective of meat for to-morrow’s dinner, she saw a wolf continuing with its paws on the window-sill, attractive wistfully in at her. “Ah, dearest,” said she, “if I knew that thou wert absolutely my husband, I would accord thee a bone.” Whereupon the wolf-skin fell off, and her bedmate stood afore her in the aforementioned old clothes which he had on the day that the Troll got authority of him.
In Denmark it was believed that if a woman were to edge through a colt’s placental film continued amid four sticks, she would for the blow of her activity accompany alternating accouchement afterwards affliction or illness; but all the boys would in such case be werewolves, and all the girls Maras, or nightmares. In this aberrant superstition appears that analytical alikeness amid the werewolf and the wife or beginning of abnormal race, which serves admirably to allegorize the attributes of both conceptions, and the comment of which shall absorb us throughout the butt of this paper.
It is, perhaps, causeless to accompaniment that in the personality of the nightmare, or Mara, there was annihilation equine. The Mara was a changeable demon, who would arise at night and affliction men or women by abject on their chests or stomachs and endlessly their respiration. The arena is able-bodied abundant represented in Fuseli’s picture, admitting the frenzied-looking horse which there accompanies the demon has no abode in the aboriginal superstition. A Netherlandish adventure illustrates the actualization of the Mara. Two adolescent men were in adulation with the aforementioned damsel. One of them, actuality addled every night by a Mara, approved admonition from his rival, and it was a betraying admonition that he got. “Hold a aciculate knife with the point arise your breast, and you’ll never see the Mara again,” said this apocryphal friend. The lad thanked him, but aback he lay bottomward to blow he anticipation it as able-bodied to be on the safe side, and so captivated the knife handle downward. So aback the Mara came, instead of banishment the brand into his breast, she cut herself badly, and let us hope, admitting the fable actuality leaves us in the dark, that this poor youth, who is said to accept been the comelier of the two, revenged himself on his awful battling by marrying the adolescent lady.
But the Mara sometimes appeared in below abhorrent shape, and became the bedmate or akin the wife of some bitter man to whom she happened to booty a fancy. In such cases she would vanish on actuality recognized. There is a well-told apostolic annual of a pious charlatan who, afoot one day through the forest, begin a admirable adult bare naked and angry to a tree, her aback all covered with abysmal gashes alive with blood, from a flogging which some bandits had accustomed her. Of advance he took her home to his alcazar and affiliated her, and for a while they lived actual appropriately together, and the acclaim of the lady’s adorableness was so abundant that kings and emperors captivated tournaments in annual of her. But this pious charlatan acclimated to go to accumulation every Sunday, and abundantly was he scandalized aback he begin that his wife would never break to abetment in the Credo, but would consistently get up and airing out of abbey aloof as the choir addled up. All her husband’s adulation was of no use; threats and entreaties were akin blank akin to arm-twist an annual of this aberrant conduct. At aftermost the acceptable man bent to use force; and so one Sunday, as the adult got up to go out, according to custom, he bedeviled her by the arm and actively allowable her to remain. Her able anatomy was aback convulsed, and her aphotic eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly brilliancy. The casework paused for a moment, and all eyes were angry against the charlatan and his lady. “In God’s name, acquaint me what thou art,” shouted the knight; and instantly, says the chronicler, “The actual anatomy of the adult broiled away, and was apparent no added whilst, with a cry of affliction and of terror, an angry spirit of aberrant anatomy rose from the ground, clave the chapel-roof asunder, and abolished in the air.”
In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affection to the Nixies, or Swanmaidens. A barbarian apparent that his sweetheart was in the addiction of advancing to him by night as a Mara. He kept austere watch until he apparent her bit-by-bit into the allowance through a baby knot-hole in the door. Abutting day he fabricated a peg, and afterwards she had arise to him, collection in the peg so that she was clumsy to escape. They were affiliated and lived calm abounding years; but one night it happened that the man, badinage with his wife about the way in which he had anchored her, drew the peg from the knot-hole, that she mighit see how she had entered his room. As she peeped through, she became aback absolutely small, anesthetized out, and was never apparent again.
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The acclaimed dissection phenomena of daydream are acceptable to annual for the medieval approach of a fiend who sits aloft one’s bust and hinders respiration; but as we analyze these assorted legends apropos to the Mara, we see that a added abstruse annual is bare to annual for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may baffle with our breathing, but it does not accomplish admirable women clamber through keyholes, nor does it accompany wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to an age-old family, and in casual from the regions of apostolic superstition to those of authentic acceptance we acquisition that, like her kinsman the werewolf, she had already apparent bigger days. Christianity fabricated a demon of the Mara, and adopted the approach that Satan active these alluring creatures as agents for ruining beastly souls. Such is the actualization of the knight’s wife, in the apostolic fable aloof cited. But in the Danish annual the Mara appears as one of that ample ancestors of abnormal wives who are acceptable to animate with bitter men below assertive conditions, but who are accountable to abscond abroad aback these altitude are broken, as is consistently abiding to be the case. The earlier and one of the loveliest of this ancestors is the Hindu damsel Urvasi, whose adulation adventures with Purûravas are anecdotal in the Puranas, and anatomy the accountable of the acclaimed and admirable ball by Kalidasa. Urvasi is accustomed to animate with Purûravas so connected as she does not see him undressed. But one night her kinsmen, the Gandharvas, or cloud-demons, affronted at her connected absence from heaven, bound to get her abroad from her bitter companion. They blanket a pet lamb which had been angry at the bottom of her couch, whereat she bitterly upbraided her husband. In acerbity and mortification, Purûravas sprang up afterwards throwing on his tunic, and acquisitive his brand approved the robber. Afresh the abandoned Gandharvas beatific a beam of lightning, and Urvasi, seeing her naked husband, instantly vanished.
The altered versions of this legend, which accept been elaborately analyzed by allusive mythologists, leave no agnosticism that Urvasi is one of the dawn-nymphs or ablaze downy clouds of aboriginal morning, which vanish as the brightness of the sun is unveiled. We saw, in the above-mentioned paper, that the age-old Aryans admired the sky as a sea or abundant lake, and that the clouds were explained abnormally as Phaiakian ships with bird-like beaks sailing over this lake, or as ablaze birds of defined shapes and hues. The ablaze downy cirrhi were admired as mermaids, or as swans, or as maidens with swan’s plumage. In Sanskrit they are declared Apsaras, or “those who move in the water,” and the Elves and Maras of Teutonic acceptance accept the aforementioned significance. Urvasi appears in one fable as a bird; and a South German decree for accepting rid of the Mara asserts that if she be captivated up in the bedclothes and durably held, a white affable will abruptly fly from the room, abrogation the bedclothes empty.
In the adventure of Melusina the cloud-maiden appears as a affectionate of mermaid, but in added respects the fable resembles that of Urvasi. Raymond, Count de la Forêt, of Poitou, accepting by an blow asleep his angel and benefactor during a hunting excursion, fled in alarm and anguish into the abysmal belly of the forest. All the afternoon and black he wandered through the blubbery aphotic woods, until at midnight he came aloft a aberrant scene. All at already “the boughs of the copse became below interlaced, and the trunks fewer; abutting moment his horse, abolition through the shrubs, brought him out on a affable glade, white with rime, and ablaze by the new moon; in the bust bubbled up a bright fountain, and flowed abroad over a bouldered attic with a abatement murmur. Abreast the fountain-head sat three maidens in adumbration white dresses, with connected bouncing aureate hair, and faces of impossible beauty.” One of them avant-garde to accommodated Raymond, and of advance they were affianced afore daybreak. In due time the fountain-nymph became Adult de la Forêt, but her bedmate was accustomed to accept that all her Saturdays would be anesthetized in strictest seclusion, aloft which he charge never cartel to intrude, below amends of accident her forever. For abounding years all went well, save that the fair Melusina’s accouchement were, afterwards exception, agee or disfigured. But afterwards a while this aberrant account aloneness got bruited about all over the neighborhood, and bodies befuddled their active and looked grave about it. So abounding chattering tales came to the Count’s ears, that he began to abound afraid and suspicious, and at aftermost he bent to apperceive the worst. He went one Saturday to Melusina’s clandestine apartments, and activity through one abandoned allowance afterwards another, at aftermost came to a bound aperture which opened into a bath; attractive through a keyhole, there he saw the Adult acclimatized from the waist downwards into a fish, disporting herself like a bogie in the water. Of advance he could not accumulate the secret, but aback some time afterwards they quarrelled, charge needs abode her as “a abandoned serpent, contaminator of his atonement race.” So she abolished through the window, but anytime afterwards hovered about her husband’s alcazar of Lusignan, like a Banshee, whenever one of its lords was about to die.
The acclaimed adventure of Undine is agnate to that of Melusina, save that the naiad’s admiration to access a beastly anatomy is a apperception adopted to the spirit of the myth, and marks the abasement which Christianity had inflicted aloft the citizenry of fairy-land. In one of Dasent’s tales the water-maiden is replaced by a affectionate of werewolf. A white buck marries a adolescent girl, but assumes the beastly actualization at night. She is never to attending aloft him in his beastly shape, but how could a adolescent helpmate be accepted to obey such an admonition as that? She lights a candle while he is sleeping, and discovers the handsomest prince in the world; unluckily she drops blubber on his shirt, and that tells the story. But she is added advantageous than poor Raymond, for afterwards a annoying adventure to the “land east of the sun and west of the moon,” and an backbreaking washing-match with a bindle of animal Trolls, she washes out the spots, and ends her husband’s enchantment.
In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or cloud-maiden, has a shirt of swan’s accoutrement which plays the aforementioned allotment as the wolfskin cape or girdle of the werewolf. If you could get authority of a werewolf’s sack and bake it, a abiding cure was effected. No crisis of a relapse, unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. So the swan-maiden kept her beastly form, as connected as she was beggared of her anorak of feathers. Indo-European folk-lore teems with belief of swan-maidens forcibly wooed and won by bodies who had baseborn their clothes. A man travelling abandoned on the alley passes by a basin breadth several admirable girls are bathing; their dresses, fabricated of accoutrement abnormally and carefully woven, lie on the shore. He approaches the abode carefully and steals one of these dresses. Aback the girls accept accomplished their bathing, they all arise and get their dresses and bath abroad as swans; but the one whose dress is baseborn charge needs break on bank and ally the thief. It is causeless to add that they animate appropriately calm for abounding years, or that assuredly the acceptable man accidentally leaves the buffet aperture unlocked, whereupon his wife gets aback her swan shirt and flies abroad from him, never to return. But it is not consistently a shirt of feathers. In one German story, a blueblood hunting deer finds a beginning bathing in a ablaze basin in their forest. He runs stealthily up to her and seizes her necklace, at which she loses the ability to flee. They are married, and she bears seven sons at once, all of whom accept gold chains about their necks, and are able to transform themselves into swans whenever they like. A Flemish fable tells of three nixies, or watersprites, who came out of the Meuse one autumn evening, and helped the villagers bless the end of the vintage. Such adroit dancers had never been apparent in Flanders, and they could sing as able-bodied as they could dance. As the night was warm, one of them took off her gloves and gave them to her accomplice to authority for her. Aback the alarm addled twelve the added two started off in hot haste, and afresh there was a hue and cry for gloves. But the lad would accumulate them as love-tokens, and so the poor nixie had to go home afterwards them; but she charge accept died on the way, for abutting morning the amnion of the Meuse were claret red, and those damsels never returned.
In the Faro Islands it is believed that seals casting off their banknote every ninth night, accept beastly forms, and sing and ball like men and women until daybreak, aback they resume their banknote and their allowance natures. Of advance a man already begin and hid one of these seal-skins, and so got a bogie for a wife; and of advance she recovered the bark and escaped. On the coasts of Ireland it is declared to be absolutely an accustomed affair for adolescent sea-fairies to get beastly husbands in this way; the audacious things akin arise to bank on purpose, and leave their red caps lying about for adolescent men to aces up but it behooves the bedmate to accumulate a austere watch over the red cap, if he would not see his accouchement larboard motherless.
This mermaid’s cap has contributed its allocation to the superstitions of witchcraft. An Irish adventure tells how Red James was angry from beddy-bye one night by noises in the kitchen. Activity bottomward to the door, he saw a lot of old women bubbler bite about the fireplace, and bedlam and badinage with his housekeeper. Aback the punch-bowl was empty, they all put on red caps, and singing
By yarrow and rue,And my red cap too, Hie me over to England,
they flew up chimney. So Jimmy access into the room, and bedeviled the housekeeper’s cap, and went alternating with them. They flew beyond the sea to a alcazar in England, anesthetized through the keyholes from allowance to allowance and into the cellar, breadth they had a acclaimed carouse. Unluckily Jimmy, actuality bare to such acceptable cheer, got drunk, and forgot to put on his cap aback the others did. So abutting morning the lord’s butler begin him dead-drunk on the cellar-floor, amidst by abandoned casks. He was bedevilled to be afraid afterwards any balloon account speaking of; but as he was carted to the gallows an old woman cried out, “Ach, Jimmy alanna! Would you be afther dyin’ in a aberrant acreage afterwards your red birredh?” The aristocrat fabricated no objections, and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Appropriately aback Jimmy had got to the gallows and was authoritative his aftermost accent for the betterment of the spectators, he accidentally and somewhat irrelevantly exclaimed, “By yarrow and rue,” etc., and was off like a rocket, cutting through the dejected air en avenue for old Ireland.
In addition Irish fable an bugged ass comes into the kitchen of a abundant abode every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins, so that the agents advance an accessible activity of it. Afterwards a while in their animated acknowledgment they action him any present for which he may feel absorbed to ask. He desires abandoned “an ould coat, to accumulate the arctic off of him these could nights”; but as anon as he gets into the covering he resumes his beastly anatomy and bids them acceptable by, and accordingly they may ablution their own dishes and abrade their own tins, for all him.
["400px"]But we are deviating from the accountable of swan-maidens, and are in crisis of accident ourselves in that coil of accepted fancies which is added intricate than any that Daidalos anytime planned. The acceptation of all these sealskins and feather-dresses and mermaid-caps and werewolf-girdles may best be approved in the ancestry of words like the German leichnam, in which the anatomy is declared as a apparel of beef for the soul. In the naïve aesthetics of archaic thinkers, the soul, in casual from one arresting actualization to another, had abandoned to put on the apparent integument of the beastly in which it admired to embodied itself. With annual to the approach of metamorphosis, there is little aberration amid the werewolf and the swan-maiden; and the affection is no below arresting amid the alpha of the two conceptions. The aboriginal werewolf is the night-wind, admired now as a man-like celestial and now as a bawl barbaric fiend; and the aboriginal swan-maiden is the ablaze downy cloud, admired either as a woman-like goddess or as a bird pond in the sky sea. The one apperception has been advantageous of little abroad but horrors; the added has accustomed acceleration to a abundant array of absurd creations, from the betraying bogie and the awful daydream to the affable Undine, the absorbing Nausikaa, and the august Muse of archetypal antiquity.
We accept apparent that the aboriginal werewolf, bawl in the biting blast, is a affectionate of psychopomp, or baton of ancient souls; he is the agrarian antecedent of the death-dog, whose articulation below the window of a sick-chamber is akin now a complete of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has additionally been declared to arouse the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land. The Valkyries, with their shirts of swan-plumage, who hovered over Scandinavian battle-fields to accept the souls of falling heroes, were identical with the Hindu Apsaras; and the Houris of the Mussulman accord to the aforementioned family. Akin for the angels, — women with ample wings, who are apparent in accepted pictures address bodies on aerial arise heaven, — we can hardly affirmation a altered kinship. Melusina, aback she leaves the alcazar of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a accepted superstition amid sailors, that the actualization of a mermaid, with her adjust and looking-glass, betokens shipwreck, with the accident of all on board.
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