114 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



were a salmon when he came into the fresh water, and his not 

 returning into the sea hath altered him to another color or kind, 



To charm with mystic chaunt the bright moon's change. 

 And as a wolf the midnight wild to range. 



Lucian and Apuleius, in their Golden Ass, attribute the same habits of 

 turning themselves into various animals to magicians then, that modern 

 superstition ascribes to the professors of the black art. Pliny, HiM. JVat. 

 (ix., 22), though he accounts it fabulous, narrates of a people among the 

 Arcadians, who used to hang their clothes upon an oak, and, changed into 

 wolves, roam the wilds for nine years, after which, if they had not touched 

 human flesh, they were restored to human shape. St. Augustine, De Civi- 

 tate Dei (xviii., IS), is not decided whether to believe in such metamor- 

 phoses or not : " Vel falsa, vel inusituta, ut merito non credantur." 



During the middle ages, and even later, lycanthropic mania prevailed in 

 parts of France, Germany, and, according to Olaus Magnus, in Hungary. 

 Delrio, Disquisitiones MagiccB (v. 9), does not doubt an instance of lycan- 

 thropy in Westphalia. Ficelius relates another near Pavia, in 1541. Two 

 men, according to Wierus, De Prcestigiis Dcemonum (Opera Omnia, p. 494), 

 were burnt alive as loups-garoux, at Poligny, 1521. In Franche Compte, 

 1573, the peasants were authorized by the parliament to hunt down and 

 kill loups-garoux ; and in 1574, one was burnt alive for having killed four 

 children and eaten their flesh. In 1599 lycanthropy was epidemic in the 

 Jura, and the Parliament of Bordeaux ordered Boguet, Grand Judge, to pur- 

 sue the loups-garoux ; and so well did he do it, according to Voltaire 

 {(Euvres, torn. 39, ed. Baudouin), that GOO suffered death. It prevailed 

 also to a great extent in Brittany, and the reader may find it popularly 

 illustrated by a clever tale of Henry Neale's in tlie Romance of History, 

 " The Man-wolf." The Germans also pursued the TF a A r Wolf in the 

 same manner, and lycanthropy was among the crimes taken notice of by the 

 Fefim Gerichte (Berck's Geschichte der Westphulischeii Fehm Gerichte). 

 It has also been the subject of several tales. 



The lycanthrope lost the power of speech, and howled like a wolf, 

 roamed the country at night, tore the dead from tlieir graves to feed upon 

 their flesh, and killed children to eat them. He was considered in league 

 with the devil, and burnt alive when discovered. The madness was a 

 sufficient ground of divorce, which doubtless led to many persecutions. 



It is difficult to account for the superstition, except that it was handed 

 down from remote antiquity ; and that it prevailed, as in the case of Ly- 

 caon, the Neuri and the more modern cases, among mountainous districts 

 thinly peopled and abounding with wolves. Perhaps, as some have 

 thought, it arose from savage marauders roaming the country clad in wolf 

 skins ; though Larcher, in his notes on the places cited from Herodotus, 

 rejects that theory without giving a better ; perhaps it was assumed by- 

 evil disposed persons to terrify their neighbors ; but there can be no que«- 



