WERWOLF, wer'wolf, or WEREWOLF, sette-willf, a human being transformed into a wolf, according to a belief which has prevailed in all ages and ignorant and superstitious com munities. Herodotus, with great naiveté, tells us that when he was in Scythia he heard of a people which once a year changed themselves into wolves, and then resumed their original Just; 'but,' adds he. 'they cannot make me believe such tales, although they not only tell them, but swear to them.' But the lycanthropes of the Middle Ages, or loupt-garous, as they mere called by the French, were sorcerers, who during their wolfhood had a most cannibal = lite for human flesh. The Germans called 14-'artvoife. Many marvelous stories are !old by the writers of the Middle Ages of these wolf-men or loupsgarona, and numerous au thentic narratives remain of victims committed to the flames for this imaginary crime, often Lin their own confessions.
It is certain that faith in the power of witches to assume the shape of animals, such as wolves, dogs, cats or horses, existed at a com paratively recent time, and is probably not ex tinguished yet in Western Europe. In the Balkan States, or part of them, belief in the werwolf flourishes to this day, along with the kindred vampire superstition. An old writer says that •the werewolves are certain sorcerers, win), having anointed their bodies with an oint ment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certain enchanted girdle, do not only unto the view of others seem as ooh es, hut to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle; and they do dispose of !bernselves as very wolves, in worrying and tolling. and most of human creatures.'
werwolves were said to have in some .nstan;es a special hatred of religion and its (vvotees. and this, coupled with the charge of devouring human flesh, left no doubt as to the fate of anyone who fell under suspicion of tictig a werwoli. The superstition itself was doubtless due in part to the brutal and savage aspect of human beings who, owing to melan cholia or other forms of insanity, went wild in the woods—an occurrence not infrequent in remote districts in the Middle Ages. It was also in all probability connected with the belief, which was a prominent feature of mythology, in the power of the gods and inferior spirits to enter the bodies of animals, and with the doc trine of transmigration of souls, common alike to the ancienttians, the followers of Pythagoras and See