The two former were the common modes of transformation; at any rate, the sagas are full of illustrations of them; while illustrations of the third mode are comparatively rare. Nothing of the man remained unchanged except his eyes; by these only could he be recognized. Odin had, and freely exercised, the power of varying his shape. When men changed their shape to prey upon their kind, they always took the form of a wolf. It was believed that many had the power of this transforming themselves; and great was the popular dread of were-wolves. Perhaps the best stories of were-wolves which are to he found are contained in the northern sagas. Scarcely anywhere did the belief in them go so deep into the minds of the people as among the northern races. In con nectiou with it, notice may be taken of what is eallea the "Berserkr rage," whielt appears to have been a peculiar form of mania. The Berserkr yelped like dogs, or wolves rushing into conflict, bit their shields with their teeth, and committed terrible atrocities while the paroxysms of their disease were upon them. Berserkr has been rendered " bare-skinned ;" others make it mean " wolf-skin-coa ted " (why not " bear-skin-coated ?").
Olaus Magnus states that in Prussia, Lithuania, and Livonia, though wolves were very numerous and troublesome, the ravages of the were-wolves were regarded as much more serious. Every year at the feast of the nativity at night, the were-wolves assembled in great numbers at appointed places, and proceeded to look out for human beings, or tame animals, upon which they could glut their -appetites. If they found an isolated house, they entered it, and devoured every human being and tame animal it contained; after which---showing that they were not common wolves—they drank up all the beer or mead. Similar testimony with regard to Livonia is given by bishop 3fajolus, who adds, that the transformation into the wolf-form continued for twelve days.
Instances of persons being changed into wolves by way of punishment, were freely believed in the middle ages; for example, St. Patrick was believed to have changed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a wolf; and there was an illustrious Irish family which had incurred the curse of St. Natalis, every member of which, male and female, accord ing to the popular belief, had to take the shape of a wolf, and live the life of a wolf for seven years.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the belief in were-wolves was, throughout the con tinent of Europe, as general as the belief in witches, which it had then come to resemble in many respects. It gave rise to prosecutions almost as freouent as those for witchcraft (q.v.), and these usually ended in the confession of the accused, and his death by hang ing cud burning. It was calculated to inspire even greater terror than witchcraft, since it was believed that the were-wolves delighted in human flesh, and were constantly lying in wait for solitary travelers, and carrying off and eating little children. The were wolves, like the witches, were now regarded as servants of the devil, from whom they got the power—often exercised by arvinting with a salve—of assuming the wolf's form; and it was believed that great numbers of them trooped together to the devil's Sabbath. The stories of mutilations and other mishaps befalling them in the wolf-state, by which, when they resumed the human form, they were identified as were-wolves, exactly resemble the stories told of witches. In Sept., 1573, we find a court of parliament sit ting at Dole, in Franche-Comte, authorizing the country-people to take their weapons, and beat the woods for a were-wolf, who had already—thus went the recital—" carried off several little children, so that they had not since been heard of, and done injury to some horsemen, who kept him off only with great difficulty and danger to their persons."
Throughout Europe, the judicial cognizance of witchcraft and of lycanthropy ceased at ..the same time. In Great Britain, where wolves had early been exterminated, the were wolf was only known by rumors coming from abroad; but the belief that witches could transform themselves into cats and hares, which did prevail, was precisely analogous to the belief in were-wolves, especially in its later forms.
The later forms of this strange belief were obviously sophisticated. In its earlier shape, three things are to be noticed—the power ascribed to the were-wolf of transform ing himself, either by changing the shape of his own body, or projecting his spirit into another body; his appetite for human flesh; his taking the shape and nature of the ani mal held to be most malicious against man—the wolf. As to the first of these, all that can here be done is to point to its connection with the doctrine of transmigration (q.v.), and to add that it has been one of the commonest of human beliefs. As to the second, is it unlikely that in the early times in which the superstition had its origin, the appetite for human flesh may have been common enough to spread terror through whole tricts? It is, at least, not improbable that every race of men has had an experience of cannibalism; and it may well have been that, in occasional cases, especially under con ditions of disease, the taste for human flesh survived the general practice of using it. Modern Europe affords many unquestionable examples of this taste existing and being indulged in the midst of comparative civilization. There can be no doubt that some of the unhappy multitude put to death as were-wolves had really murdered and eaten the flesh of human beings. But secret murders, unaccompanied by cannabalism, would tend to support a popular belief in canttbalism. We have not to go out of our own age for proofs of the existence of men afflicted with a homicidal tendency; and in tunes when the means of detecting crimes were very imperfect, it is conceivable that the murders committed by one or two such persons would spread terror, and give support to a superstitious theory throughout a large district. The marechal de Retz, who lived In the time of our Henry VI., had caused to be stolen and put to death by torture, under the most inhuman circumstances, Many hundred children—lie confessed on his trial that he murdered 120 in a single. year. (A memoir of Gilles Laval, marechal de Retz, has been compiled from authentic documents by P. J. Lacroix, the eminent French anti quary.) Perhaps no society has ever been free from men similarly constituted, and acting similarly according to their opportunities. As to the third point, if it be granted that a certain practice of, or general suspicion of cannibalism existed among a people who believed in the power of transformation, it is easy to understand how the cannibal, get ting his victims by stealth, was to indulge his inhuman appetite under the guise of the animal most unfriendly to man. And the existence of a form of mania in which the madman bad the hallucination that he was changed into a wolf, yelled like a lived in many respects like a wolf, was calculated strongly to confirm the belief in omen-wolves. In conjunction with the mischief done by real wolves, this itself may be thought almost enough to have given origin to the superstition. The hallucination of having undergone transformation into a wolf from time to time, seems to have been one of the commonest by which weak and crazed brains Were possessed during the period when the hunt for were-wolves was kept up. The literature of this subject, though abundant, is for the most part fragmentary, and mixed up with other matters. A good account of the subject will be found in The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring Gould (bond. 1865).