Were- Wolves . 
35 
In the Middle Ages lycanthropy seems to have spread 
like an epidemic. In the year 1600 the inhabitants of 
the Jura were attacked by this disease, and numbers 
of men and women formed themselves into packs and 
hunted through the country, spreading terror and de¬ 
struction. This superstition lingers to-day among the 
ignorant peasantry in Southern France, where the “ loup 
garou ” is still an object of intense alarm to the belated 
traveller. A modified form of this disease still exists as 
hydrophobia. 
A curious account is given of the midnight meetings 
and orgies of were-wolves by the Norwegian chronicler, 
Olaus Magnus: — 
“ In the feasts of Christ’s nativity, in the night, at a certain place 
that they are resolved upon amongst themselves, there is gathered 
together such a huge multitude of wolves changed from men that dwell 
in divers places, which afterwards the same night doth so rage with 
wonderful fiercenesse, both against mankind and other creatures that 
are not fierce by nature, that the inhabitants of that country suffer 
more hurt from them than ever they do from true natural wolves. . . . 
They go into beer-cellars, and there they drink out some tuns of beer 
or mede, and they heap all the empty vessels one upon another in the 
midst of the cellar, and so leave them: wherein they differ from natural 
and true wolves. And it is constantly affirmed that amongst that 
multitude there are the great men and chiefest nobility of the land. 
The reason of this metamorphosis, that is exceeding contrary to nature, 
is given by one skilled in this witchcraft, by drinking to one in a cup 
of ale, and by mumbling certain words at the same time, so that he 
who is to be admitted into that unlawful society do accept it. Then, 
when he pleaseth, he may change his human form into the form of a 
wolf entirely. Again, he can alter the form he had before at his plea¬ 
sure. It is fresh in memory how the Duke of Prussia, giving small 
credit to such a witchcraft, compelled one who was cunning in this 
sorcery, whom he held in chains, to change himself into a wolf, and 
he did so. Yet, that he might not go unpunished for his idolatry, he 
afterwards caused him to be burnt.” (History of Scandinavia , p. 193.) 
The Norwegian word “ berserker,” meaning a man 
possessed of superhuman powers and subject to accesses 
