[3] WYNTOUN’S _Chronicle_, ii. 236.
We have only to compare these two cases with those recorded in the last
two chapters, and we see at once how the popular mind in Great Britain
had lost the idea of connecting change of form with cannibalism. A man
guilty of the crimes committed by the Angus brigand, or the carle of
Perth, would have been regarded as a were-wolf in France or Germany,
and would have been tried for Lycanthropy.
S. Jerome, by the way, brought a sweeping charge against the Scots. He
visited Gaul in his youth, about 880, and he writes:—“When I was a
young man in Gaul, I may have seen the Attacotti, a British people who
live upon human flesh; and when they find herds of pigs, droves of
cattle, or flocks of sheep in the woods, they cut off the haunches of
the men and the breasts of the women, and these they regard as great
dainties;” in other words they prefer the shepherd to his flock. Gibbon
who quotes this passage says on it: “If in the neighbourhood of the
commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has really
existed, we may contemplate, in the period of the Scottish history, the
opposite extremes of savage and civilized life. Such reflections tend
to enlarge the circle of our ideas, and to encourage the pleasing hope
that New Zealand may produce in a future age, the Hume of the Southern
hemisphere.”
If traditions of were-wolves are scanty in England, it is quite the
reverse if we cross the water.
In the south of France, it is still believed that fate has destined
certain men to be lycanthropists—that they are transformed into wolves
at full moon. The desire to run comes upon them at night. They leave
their beds, jump out of a window, and plunge into a fountain. After the
bath, they come out covered with dense fur, walking on all fours, and
commence a raid over fields and meadows, through woods and villages,
biting all beasts and human beings that come in their way. At the
approach of dawn, they return to the spring, plunge into it, lose their
furry skins, and regain their deserted beds. Sometimes the loup-garou
is said to appear under the form of a white dog, or to be loaded with
chains; but there is probably a confusion of ideas between the
were-wolf and the church-dog, bar-ghest, pad-foit, wush-hound, or by
whatever name the animal supposed to haunt a churchyard is designated.
In the Périgord, the were-wolf is called louléerou. Certain men,
especially bastards, are obliged at each full moon to transform
themselves into these diabolic beasts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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