“In those that are possess’d with’t there o’erflows Such melancholy humour they imagine Themselves to be transform’d into woolves; Steale forth to churchyards in the dead of night, And dig dead bodies up; as, two nights since One met the Duke ’bout midnight, in a lane Behind St. Markes Church, with the leg of a man Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearfully; Said he was a woolfe; only the difference Was, a woolfes skinne is hairy on the outside, His on the inside, bade them take their swords, Rip up his flesh and try. Straight I was sent for; And, having ministered unto him, found his Grace Very well recover’d.” Some commentators have held that Nebuchadnezzar, when driven from the presence of man, was suffering from a like form of madness, and fancying himself to be a beast. It was a common belief in ancient times that the wehr-wolf simply effected the change from man to beast by turning his skin inside out, hence he was sometimes called Versipellis, a term equivalent to skin-turner. In mediæval days it was thought that the wolf’s skin was beneath the human, and any unfortunate individual who was suspected of lycanthropy was very likely to find himself being hacked at by seekers after truth in search of this inner hairy covering. Olaus Magnus,[32] in the early part of the sixteenth century, tells us a story of a nobleman and his retinue who lost their way in journeying through a wild forest and presently found themselves hopelessly foodless and shelterless. In the urgency of their need, one of his servants disclosed to him in confidence that he had the power of turning himself at will into a wolf, and doubted not but that, if his master would kindly excuse him awhile, he would be able to find the party some provision. Permission being given, the man disappeared into the forest under semblance of a wolf, and very quickly returned with a lamb in his mouth, and then, having fulfilled his mission, resumed his human shape. The forest would provide unlimited fuel, while their knives would supply the cutlery. Some member of the party, it is to be hoped, had a tinder-box, or the repast after all would have to consist of cold raw lamb. As hunger is proverbially said to be the best sauce, the absence of mint would be of little moment at this vulpine banquet. The belief in man’s power thus to change his form and nature is obviously derived from the widely-spread doctrine of metempsychosis, the passing of the soul after the human life is ended into an animal, or a series of animals. This change is ordinarily in harmony with the character of the deceased, the timid nervous folk reappearing on earth as hares and such-like creatures, the gluttonous as swine or vultures and other foul-feeders. Thus the soul, the eternal principle, in the words of the poet: