Wer-wolves (loup-garou) appear to have been particularly active in France during the 16th century, but by the middle of it the true nature of the malady was recognized. In the cases of Roulet tried at Angers in 1598 and of Jean Grenier in 1603 at Bordeaux the accused, though convicted, were treated as insane. The description given of Roulet is not unlike those given of the "wolf children" who turn up from time to time in India, and in the latter case the wer-wolf asserted that he became a lycan thropist under the bidding of a supernatural being who came to him in the forest, an account identical with that given by Sema wer-leopards in Assam. Cases of cannibalism are recorded in Scotland in the 15th century, but the cannibals do not seem to have been even accused of being wer-wolves, though the belief lingered, and Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1625), says of wer-wolves that they "doe not onely unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their owne thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves . . . and dispose themselves as very wolves." In Asia Minor we find the belief in Armenia, where sinful women are punished by becoming lycanthropists at the bidding of a spirit who brings them a wolf skin. They eat their own children. Herodotus mentions the Neuri, a Scythian tribe, as lycanthropists who changed into wolf form annually, and associates them with head-hunters; and in Assam we still find head-hunting Nagas subject to lycanthropy individually and believing that there are neighbouring tribes who are wer-tigers communally. The belief in lycanthropy is current in India in connection with both the wolf and the tiger. Both sexes of the Kols of Central India are believed to turn into tigers, and Dalton reports a case of a Kol tried for murder who had followed the tiger, which had devoured his wife, to the house of another Kol named Pusa. This man's own relations said he had long been sus pected of such malpractices and abetted the killing of him, and explained that they had known of his devouring an entire goat one night and that he had roared like a tiger while doing so, and that on another occasion he had expressed a longing for a particu lar bullock, and the same night the bullock was killed by a tiger.
The "wolf children" who appear periodically, whether or not they have actually been suckled by wild animals, often display symptoms of a depraved appetite similar to those of lycanthropy.
A case occurred in Bhagalpur between 1912 and 1919 in which one Rupa Sao, a shop-keeper, attacked and killed a little girl by biting her throat. He was convicted of murder, but the High Court, on a reference, ordered him to be confined as a lunatic. In Assam some tribes are lycanthropic while their neighbours are not ; thus the Garos are, but not the pure Khasi ; the Sema Nagas are, but not the Angami Nagas; while among many tribes such as the Kachari there are clans claiming descent from or relationship with tigers (cf. CYNOTHERAPY). The Angami regard lycanthropy as due to drinking from a certain well ; but the Sema, who are subject to it, both men and women, regard it as involuntary and acquired normally under supernatural influence. The body is not transformed, but falls into a mild cataleptic fit during which the soul is inhabiting the body of a real leopard. Apparently some sympathetic association is set up between the human being and a wild animal, as in the Ao Naga tribe a relationship of this kind is set up without any lycanthropic symptoms on the part of the human being (see Mills, The Ao Nagas, pp. 25o seq.). The Lhota Naga medicine men have leopard familiars, but generally the Naga idea of lycanthropy rather suggests the central American idea of the Nagual or bush soul. Wer-tigers are believed in in Burma, where Tamans of the Chindwin valley are reputed to trans form themselves into tiger form by rolling on earth on which they have micturated. In Malaya lycanthropy is common and is
associated with latah, as it appears to be a regular amusement to hypnotize a boy subject to this disorder and to cause him to think he is a civet cat and behave as such, running on all fours and devouring live chickens. Skeat (Malay Magic, p. 16o-163) mentions the case of one Haji 'Abdallah caught naked in a tiger trap in Sumatra, but the wer-tigers of the Malay Peninsula are thought invulnerable in their transformed state—a curious ex ception to the almost universal belief that a wound on the animal causes a corresponding injury on the human form. In the Celebes the Toradja belief approximates to that of the Naga hills, the soul, lamboyo, which undergoes transformation, being apparently identical with the anoana of the Poso-Alfures (see METEM PSYCHOSIS). As in the Naga hills the lycanthropic habit may be acquired by eating food left by a lycanthropist. In Java the prac tice may be voluntary, acquired by spells, etc., or may be inher ited, as in Assam, and this view has no doubt some pathological justification. As by the Khonds of India, the transformation is sought in Java for purposes of revenge, or to guard the crops, as in Yucatan, which possibly brings lycanthropy into connection with fertility cults, as does the use of an animal form and the as sociation with witches in Europe.
In Africa the leopard and the hyaena are the animals usually connected with lycanthropists, who are generally women in Abyssinia, where the lycanthropist is regarded as possessed and belongs as a rule to the blacksmith class. The Bondas, however, claim actual transformation, which is reported to have been wit nessed by a European who also claims to have shot hyaenas with gold ear-rings in their ears. In West Africa an intimate relation is created by a blood bond between a man and an animal, and, as in the Naga bills, if the latter die the former will also die, though in the Naga hills it is (significantly) not until he hears of the death of the leopard. The Bori dancing of Nigeria also seems to con nect in some respects with the latch of Malaya. How strong the instinct of the beast may be can be judged from Tremearne's ac count of a child of one of the cannibal tribes found in the biish and brought up in an institution where, having heard of the death of another child, he managed to get at the corpse and eat its face (Tailed Head-Hunters of Nigeria, p. 584). The societies of "human leopards" and "human alligators" in West Africa ap pear to be organized manifestations of a depraved taste for human flesh like that displayed in the hyaena forms of lycanthropy combined with ideas akin to those underlying head-hunting (q.v.), and ghouls in Syria have also been associated with temporary wolf or hyaena forms. That this propensity is not entirely destroyed by civilization is shown by a case which occurred in 1849 in Paris, when an officer was convicted of digging up and mutilating corpses in cemeteries under pathological conditions suggesting lycan thropy. The outbreaks of cattle-maiming that occur from time to time in Great Britain are probably likewise attributable to a survival of the lycanthropic instinct.
371 (1910). (J. H. H.)