simply hungry, poor, and cruel, like the Hermit
of St. Bonnot, it was not at all an impossible
way of supplying their wants; for cannibalism,
though infinitely revolting, is by no means
out of course, as we all know. Brutalised by
poverty and ignorance, almost out of all physical
likeness to men, certainly out of all moral
resemblance, we cannot wonder what the starving
human animals of lone neglected districts will
do. As well wonder at the instincts of lions
and tigers, snakes and monkeys! For what
is man without reason and education but a wild
animal like the rest? The only marvel is, the
active imagination of these degraded wretches,
and how they were able to make up such
connected stories, and give their falsehoods such an
air of reality. All that can be said is, that
superstitions are like diseases—epidemic and
infectious; and that wild ideas once uttered,
propagate themselves like measles or small-pox.

Then there is the instinct of cruelty to be
considered, and how some people, else sane
enough, have a morbid desire to inflict pain and
witness agony. Horrible stories to this effect
are given in the Book of Were-Wolves, specially
the well-known story of Maréchal de Retz; and
that other still more ghastly, because not so
intensely mad and exaggerated, telling how
Andreas Bichel was wont to entice young women
to his house on pretence of showing them their
future husbands in a magic mirror, simply for the
pleasure of killing them and watching their
dying agonies. The details of this demon's
pleasures are unspeakably revolting. The case
of Dumollard and his wife, which must be fresh
in the memory of the readers of All the
Year Round, is another case in point; though
here, the miserable small gain to be had from the
clothes and little savings of the poor victims,
may be put forth as an incentive of equal force
with that of mere cruelty. The story of the
Hungarian lady who killed and tortured,
sometimes with her own hand, young women, that
she might bathe in their blood, and so make
herself beautiful for ever, is also one of composite
motives—sanity here sharing with cruelty. But
the awful story of Gilles de Laval, Maréchal de
Retz, before alluded to, reveals nothing but the
frenzy of madness, and the demoniacal power of
evil passions unrestrained.

The Gallician beggar Swietek, murderer and
cannibal, would have figured as a were-wolf if he
had lived a few centuries ago. Popular
superstition and terror and disgust would have found
expression in the belief that so much cruelty
and crime could only belong to a man sold
to the Evil One, and who had exchanged his
human nature, with his form, for that of a
ravening beast. He is horrible enough for
any amount of after-exaggeration to gather
round his name, and crystallise it into an
enduring word of reproach and dread; while the
mania of M. Bertrand, a French gentleman
and an officer of singularly amiable disposition
and gentle manners, which found expression in
his delight at digging up dead bodies and hewing
and hacking them to pieces, was simply a
case of partial insanity—a form of diseased
brain, which medicines and regimen might have
cured, and ultimately did cure. These creatures,
and several others mentioned in this book, were
monsters in the psychological sense of the word;
but they were not man-wolves—they were not
"as big as a calf, with tongues hanging out,
and eyes glaring like marsh-fires," as said the
terrified inhabitants of the French hamlet, when
the young Englishman proposed to walk across
the swampy flats after sunset, and they tried to
dissuade him by frightful pictures of the loups-
garoux about. They were criminals, more or
less fearful and disgusting according to the
nature of their crimes, and the amount of moral
responsibility still retained; but they were not
lycanthropists of the old school—they had not
the paws, and hair, and muzzle of a wolf, and
they walked on two legs, not on four.

Witches had the power of transforming into
animals not only themselves at pleasure, but
any one of their enemies whom they wished
to punish or disgrace. As asses bridled and
saddled and carried to market—as ugly
monsters, like the dear old Beast in the nursery tale—
the enemies of a witch had a bad time of it, and
many and grave were the troubles besetting
them and the pitfals dug for their ruin.
"According to a Polish story, if a witch lays a
girdle of human skin on the threshold of a house
in which a marriage is being celebrated, the
bride and bridegroom, and bridesmaids and
groomsmen, should they step across it, are
transformed into wolves. After three years,
however, the witch will cover them with skins
with the hair turned outward; immediately
they will receive their natural form. On one
occasion a witch cast a skin of too scanty
dimensions over the bridegroom, so that his
tail was left uncovered: he resumed his human
form, but retained his lupine caudal appendage."
A belt of human skin about three fingers broad
was a powerful engine of witchcraft in most
places, and the Hand of Glory was a lantern by
no means confined to the English gallows.

The Russians call the were-wolf Oborot, or
"one transformed," and a man can make
himself into an Oborot by very simple and inexpensive
means. All he has to do, is, to find in the
forest a tree that has been felled, stab it with a
small copper knife, and walk round it, repeating
an incantation, which, being long and rather
pointless and stupid, need not be quoted here. Then
he springs thrice over the tree, and runs into the
forest transformed into a wolf. In East Friesland
it is still believed that when seven sisters
succeed each other in one family, with never a
break and never a boy, one of the seven is of
necessity a wolf-maiden: wherefore young men
are slow in seeking one of seven sisters in
marriage; as the were-wolf may be his wife,
to the general discomfort of his household.
And even as his sister-in-law, it would not
be a very desirable relationship, all things
considered. The Serbs believe that the power to
become a were-wolf is obtained by drinking the
water which settles in a footprint left in the clay