well instanced in the history of a widespread belief, extending through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and mediæval life, and surviving to this day in European superstition. This belief, which may be conveniently called the Doctrine of Werewolves, is that certain men, by natural gift or magic art, can turn for a time into ravening wild beasts. The origin of this idea is by no means sufficiently explained. What we are especially concerned with is the fact of its prevalence in the world. It may be noticed that such a notion is quite consistent with the animistic theory that a man's soul may go out of his body and enter that of a beast or bird, and also with the opinion that men may be transformed into animals; both these ideas having an important place in the belief of mankind, from savagery onward. The doctrine of werewolves is substantially that of a temporary metempsychosis or metamorphosis. Now it really occurs that, in various forms of mental disease, patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and even fancy themselves transformed into wild beasts. Belief in the possibility of such transformation may have been the very suggesting cause which led the patient to imagine it taking place in his own person. But at any rate such insane delusions do occur, and physicians apply to them the mythologic term of lycanthropy. The belief in men being werewolves, man-tigers, and the like, may thus have the strong support of the very witnesses who believe themselves to be such creatures. Moreover, professional sorcerers have taken up the idea, as they do any morbid delusion, and pretend to turn themselves and others into beasts by magic art. Through the mass of ethnographic details relating to this subject, there is manifest a remarkable uniformity of principle. Among the non-Aryan indigenes of India, the tribes of the Garo Hills describe as 'transformation into a tiger' a kind of temporary madness, apparently of the nature of delirium. tremens, in which the patient walks like a tiger, shunning society.1 The Khonds of Orissa say that some among them 1 Eliot in 'As. Res.' vol. iii. p. 32. have the art of 'mleepa,' and by the aid of a god become 'mleepa' tigers for the purpose of killing enemies, one of the man's four souls going out to animate the bestial form. Natural tigers, say the Khonds, kill game to benefit men, who find it half devoured and share it, whereas man-killing tigers are either incarnations of the wrathful Earth-goddess, or they are transformed men.1 Thus the notion of mantigers serves, as similar notions do elsewhere, to account for the fact that certain individual wild beasts show a peculiar hostility to man. Among the Ho of Singbhoom it is related, as an example of similar belief, that a man named Mora saw his wife killed by a tiger, and followed the beast till it led him to the house of a man named Poosa. Telling Poosa's relatives of what had occurred, they replied that they were aware that he had the power of becoming a tiger, and accordingly they brought him out bound, and Mora deliberately killed him. Inquisition being made by the authorities, the family deposed, in explanation of their belief, that Poosa had one night devoured an entire goat, roaring like a tiger whilst eating it, and that on another occasion he told his friends he had a longing to eat a particular bullock, and that very night that very bullock was killed and devoured by a tiger.2 South-eastern Asia is not less familiar with the idea of sorcerers turning into man-tigers and wandering after prey; thus the Jakuns of the Malay Peninsula believe that when a man becomes a tiger to revenge himself on his enemies, the transformation happens just before he springs, and has been seen to take place.3 How vividly the imagination of an excited tribe, once inoculated with a belief like this, can realize it into an event, is graphically told by Dobrizhoffer among the Abipones of South America. When a sorcerer, to get the better of an enemy, threatens to change himself into a tiger and tear his 1 Macpherson, 'India,' pp. 92, 99, 108. 2 Dalton, 'Kols of Chota-Nagpore' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 32. 3 J. Cameron, Malayan India,' p. 393; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 119; vol. iii. pp. 261, 273; 'As. Res.' vol. vi. p. 173. tribesmen to pieces, no sooner does he begin to roar, than all the neighbours fly to a distance; but still they hear the feigned sounds. 'Alas!' they cry, 'his whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger-spots!' 'Look, his nails are growing!' the fear-struck women exclaim, although they cannot see the rogue, who is concealed within his tent, but distracted fear presents things to their eyes which have no real existence. 'You daily kill tigers in the plain without dread,' said the missionary; 'why then should you weakly fear a false imaginary tiger in the town?' 'You fathers don't understand these matters,' they reply with a smile. We never fear, but kill tigers in the plain, because we can see them. Artificial tigers we do fear, because they can neither be seen nor killed by us.'1 The sorcerers who induced assemblies of credulous savages to believe in this monstrous imposture, were also the professional spiritualistic mediums of the tribes, whose business it was to hold intercourse with the spirits of the dead, causing them to appear visibly, or carrying on audible dialogues with them behind a curtain. Africa is especially rich in myths of man-lions, man-leopards, man-hyænas. In the Kanuri language of Bornu, there is grammatically formed from the word 'bultu,' a hyæna, the verb 'bultungin,' meaning 'I transform myself into a hyæna;' and the natives maintain that there is a town called Kabutiloa, where every man possesses this faculty. The tribe of Budas in Abyssinia, iron-workers and potters, are believed to combine with these civilized avocations the gift of the evil eye and the power of turning into hyænas, wherefore they are excluded from society and the Christian sacrament. In the 'Life of Nathaniel Pearce,' the testimony of one Mr. Coffin is printed. A young Buda, his servant, came for leave of absence, which was granted; but scarcely was Mr. Coffin's head turned to his other 1 Dobrizhoffer, 'Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 77. See J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 63; Martius, ' Ethn. Amer.' vol. i. p. 652; Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' p. 229; Piedrahita, 'Nuevo Reyno de Granada,' part i. lib. i. c. 3. 2 Kölle, Afr. Lit. and Kanuri Vocab.' p. 275. 6 servants, when some of them called out, pointing in the direction the Buda had taken, 'Look, look, he is turning himself into a hyæna.' Mr. Coffin instantly looked round, the young man had vanished, and a large hyæna was running off at about a hundred paces' distance, in full light on the open plain, without tree or bush to intercept the view. The Buda came back next morning, and as usual rather affected to countenance than deny the prodigy. Coffin says, moreover, that the Budas wear a peculiar gold earring, and this he has frequently seen in the ears of hyænas shot in traps, or speared by himself and others; the Budas are dreaded for their magical arts, and the editor of the book suggests that they put ear-rings in hyænas' ears to encourage a profitable superstition.1 Mr. Mansfield Parkyns' more recent account shows how thoroughly this belief is part and parcel of Abyssinian spiritualism. Hysterics, lethargy, morbid insensibility to pain, and the demoniacal possession,' in which the patient speaks in the name and language of an intruding spirit, are all ascribed to the spiritual agency of the Budas. Among the cases described by Mr. Parkyns was that of a servant-woman of his, whose illness was set down to the influence of one of these blacksmith-hyænas, who wanted to get her out into the forest and devour her. One night, a hyæna having been heard howling and laughing near the village, the woman was bound hand and foot and closely guarded in the hut, when suddenly, the hyæna calling close by, her master, to his astonishment, saw her rise 'without her bonds' like a Davenport Brother, and try to escape. In Ashango-land, M. Du Chaillu tells the following suggestive story. He was informed that a leopard had killed two men, and many palavers were held to settle the affair; but this was no ordinary leopard, but a transformed man. Two of Akondogo's men had disappeared, and only 1 'Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearce' (1810-9), ed. by J. J. Halls, London, 1831, vol. i. p. 286; also 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 288; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 504. 2 Parkyns, 'Life in Abyssinia' (1853), vol. ii. p. 146. their blood was found, so a great doctor was sent for, who said it was Akondogo's own nephew and heir Akosho. The lad was sent for, and when asked by the chief, answered that it was truly he who had committed the murders, that he could not help it, for he had turned into a leopard, and his heart longed for blood, and after each deed he had turned into a man again. Akondogo loved the boy so much that he would not believe his confession, till Akosho took him to a place in the forest, where lay the mangled bodies of the two men, whom he had really murdered under the influence of this morbid imagination. He was slowly burnt to death, all the people standing by.1 Brief mention is enough for the comparatively wellknown European representatives of these beliefs. What with the mere continuance of old tradition, what with the tricks of magicians, and what with cases of patients under delusion believing themselves to have suffered transformation, of which a number are on record, the European series of details from ancient to modern ages is very complete. Virgil in the Bucolics shows the popular opinion of his time that the arts of the werewolf, the necromancer or 'medium,' and the witch, were different branches of one craft, where he tells of Moris as turning into a wolf by the use of poisonous herbs, as calling up souls from the tombs, and as bewitching away crops : 'Has herbas, atque haec Ponto mihi lecta venena Of the classic accounts, one of the most remarkable is Petronius Arbiter's story of the transformation of a 'versipellis' or 'turnskin;' this contains the episode of the 1 Du Chaillu, 'Ashango-land,' p. 52. For other African details, see Waitz, vol. ii. p. 343; J. L. Wilson, W. Afr.' pp. 222, 365, 398; Burton, 'E. Afr.' p. 57; Livingstone, 'S. Afr.' pp. 615, 642; Magyar, ‘S. Afr.' p. 136. 2 Virg. Bucol. ecl. viii. 95. |