40 THE WOLF. 



In " Vertigan's Antiquities" published in the year 1634, 

 the following passage, illustrative of these superstitions, 

 is found : 



" The Were- Wolves," says he, " are certain sorcerers, 

 who, having annoynted their bodies with an oyntment 

 which they make by the instinct of the divell, and putting 

 in a certayne inchaunted girdle, doe not only to the view 

 of others, seeme as wolves, but to their own thinking have 

 both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear 

 the sayd girdle ; and they doe dispose themselves as very 

 wolves, in worrying, and killing, most of human creatures. 

 Of such, sundry have been taken, and executed in sundry 

 parts of Germany, and the Netherlands. One Peter Stump, 

 for being a Were- Wolf, and having killed thirteen children, 

 two women, and one man, was at Bedlin, not farre from 

 Cullen, in the yeere 1589, put unto a very terrible death. 

 The flesh of divers parts of his 'body was pulled out with 

 hot iron tongs, his armes, thighes, and legges broken on 

 a wheele, and his body lastly burnt. He dyed with very 

 great remorse, desiring that his body might not be spared 

 from any torment, so his soule might be saved." 



We have occasional accounts of the terror which this 

 animal has excited, and of the destruction he has commit- 

 ted among women and children in France. To such a 

 degree did his ravages excite terror, in 1764, that prayers 

 are said to have been offered for his destruction. How 

 numerous these animals were formerly in Britain, we may 

 infer from the laws of King Edgar, who attempted to extir- 

 pate them by commuting the punishment for certain crimes 

 into the acceptance of a number of wolves' tongues from 

 each criminal; in Wales, by converting the tax of gold 

 and silver into an annual tribute of three hundred wolves' 

 heads. In succeeding times, their destruction was pro- 

 moted by certain rewards ; and some lands were held on 

 condition of destroying the wolves which infested those 

 parts of the kingdom. 



