[8] Supplement III. _Curieuser_ und nutzbarer Anmerkungen von Natur
und Kunstgeschichten, gesammelt von Kanold. 1728.
“1. They execute as wolves certain acts, such as seizing a sheep, or
destroying cattle, &c., not changed into wolves, which no scientific
man in Courland believes, but in their human frames, and with their
human limbs, yet in such a state of phantasy and hallucination, that
they believe themselves transformed into wolves, and are regarded as
such by others suffering under similar hallucination, and in this
manner run these people in packs as wolves, though not true wolves.
“2. They imagine, in deep sleep or dream, that they injure the cattle,
and this without leaving their conch; but it is their master who does,
in their stead, what their fancy points out, or suggests to him.
“3. The evil one drives natural wolves to do some act, and then
pictures it so well to the sleeper, immovable in his place, both in
dreams and at awaking, that he believes the act to have been committed
by himself.”
Rhanæus, under these heads, relates three stories, which he believes be
has on good authority. The first is of a gentleman starting on a
journey, who came upon a wolf engaged in the act of seizing a sheep in
his own flock; he fired at it, and wounded it, so that it fled howling
to the thicket. When the gentleman returned from his expedition he
found the whole neighbourhood impressed with the belief that he had, on
a given day and hour, shot at one of his tenants, a publican, Mickel.
On inquiry, the man’s Wife, called Lebba, related the following
circumstances, which were fully corroborated by numerous
witnesses:—When her husband had sown his rye he had consulted with his
wife how he was to get some meat, so as to have a good feast. The woman
urged him on no account to steal from his landlord’s flock, because it
was guarded by fierce dogs. He, however, rejected her advice, and
Mickel fell upon his landlord’s sheep, but he had suffered and had come
limping home, and in his rage at the ill success of his attempt, had
fallen upon his own horse and had bitten its throat completely through.
This took place in the year 1684.
In 1684, a man was about to fire upon a pack of wolves, when he heard
from among the troop a voice exclaiming—“Gossip! Gossip! don’t fire. No
good will come of it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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