to such demoniacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle Ages. The theory that if one put on a wolf’s skin he became a werewolf, is perhaps a reminiscence of the fact alleged of Berserkers haunting the woods by _night_, clothed in hides of wolves or bears. A permanent cure was effected by burning the werewolf’s sack, unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. Primitively, to become incarnated into any creature, the soul had only to put on the outward integument of the creature. The original werewolf is the night-wind—a kind of leader of departed souls, howling in the wintry blasts. Encyc. Brit, under Lycanthropy:—The Berserkir of Iceland dressed in the skins of bears and wolves, and further on: “Beastform is in mythology proper far oftener assumed for malignant than for benignant ends.” The starting point of the whole superstition of the harmful werewolf is the disguising as some common animal by members of savage races when abroad as foragers or scouts, in order to escape detection by the enemy. Like wolves they roamed the land in search of food. As stated above,[103] later fabulous report would represent them as possessing in their disguise the attributes of the animal they impersonated,[104] and finally even of actually taking on animal form, either wholly or in part,[105] for longer or shorter periods of time. Some of the North American Indian transformation stories represent men as having only the head, hands and feet of a wolf.[106] The transformation into a werewolf in Germanic lands is caused merely by a shirt or girdle made of wolf-skin.[107] This shirt or girdle of wolf-skin of the Germanic werewolf is the survival of the robe or mantle originally disguising the entire body. It would be but a step further to represent a person as rendering himself invisible by putting on any other article of apparel, such as the Tarnkappe.[108] The stories especially in Europe were of the _were-wolf_ rather than _were-bear_ or other animal, because the wolf was the commonest of the larger wild animals.[109] It was the stories of the commonest animal, the wolf, which crystallized into the household werewolf or transformation tales.[110] [103] Ante p. 22. [104] Note 57. [105] Close note 65. [106] Grinnell; and Ethn. Rep. 1888-89, p. 737.