In the war of the French Revolution, the _Hermione_ frigate was commanded by Capt. Pigot, a harsh man and a severe commander. His crew mutinied, and carried the ship into an enemy’s port, having murdered the captain and several of the officers, under circumstances of extreme barbarity. One midshipman escaped, by whom many of the criminals, who were afterwards taken and delivered over to justice, one by one, were identified. Mr. Finlayson, the Government actuary, who at that time held an official situation in the Admiralty, states:—“In my own experience I have known, on separate occasions, _more than six sailors_ who voluntarily confessed to having struck the first blow at Capt. Pigot. These men detailed all the horrid circumstances of the mutiny with extreme minuteness and perfect accuracy; nevertheless, not one of them had ever been in the ship, nor had so much as seen Capt. Pigot in their lives. They had obtained by tradition, from their messmates, the particulars of the story. When long on a foreign station, hungering and thirsting for home, their minds became enfeebled; at length they actually believed themselves guilty of the crime over which they had so long brooded, and submitted with a gloomy pleasure to being sent to England in irons, for judgment. At the Admiralty we were always able to detect and establish their innocence, in defiance of their own solemn asseverations.”—(_London Judicial Gazette_, January, 1803.) CHAPTER X. MYTHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE WERE-WOLF MYTH. Metempsychosis—Sympathy between Men and Beasts—Finnbog and the Bear—Osage and the Beaver—The Connexion of Soul and Body—Buddism—Case of Mr. Holloway—Popular ideas concerning the Body—The derivation of the German Leichnam—Feather Dresses—Transmigration of Souls—A Basque Story—Story from the Pantschatantra—Savage ideas regarding Natural Phenomena—Thunder, Lightning, and Cloud—The origin of the Dragon—John of Bromton’s Dragon a Waterspout—The Legend of Typhoeus—Allegorizing of the Effects of a Hurricane—Anthropomorphosis—The Cirrus Cloud, a Heavenly Swan—Urvaci—The Storm-cloud a Daemon—Vritra and Rakschasas—Story of a Brahmin and a Rakschasas Transformation into beasts forms an integral portion of all mythological systems. The gods of Greece were wont to change themselves into animals in order to carry out their designs with greater speed, security, and secrecy, than in human forms. In Scandinavian mythology, Odin changed himself into the shape of an eagle, Loki into that of a salmon. Eastern religions abound in stories of transformation. The line of demarcation between this and the translation of a beast’s soul into man, or a man’s soul into a beast’s (metempsychosis) is very narrow.