The next day certain fishermen, coming back from sea with a boat full of fish, hauled their boat up on the beach and unloaded their fish into carts, to sell it by auction, cart by cart, in Heyst. They climbed up the road, strewn with broken shells, and found among the dunes a young girl stripped quite naked, even of her chemise, and blood around her. Coming near, they saw in her poor broken neck the marks of long, sharp teeth. Lying on her back, her eyes were open, staring at the sky, and her mouth was open, too, as if to cry out on death!
Covering the girl’s body with an opperst-kleed, they brought it to Heyst, to the Townhall. Thither speedily assembled the aldermen and the barber-surgeon, who declared that those long teeth were never wolf’s teeth as they were made by Nature, but belonged to some wicked and evil and infernal weer-wolf, and that it behoved all men to pray to God to deliver the land of Flanders.
And in all the country and especially at Damme, Heyst, and Knokke, were ordained prayers and orisons.
And the people, groaning, remained in the churches.
In the church of Heyst, where the corpse of the young girl was laid out and exposed, men and women wept, seeing her neck all bloody and torn. And the mother said in the very church:
“I will go to the weer-wolf and kill him with my teeth.”
And the women, weeping, egged her on to do this. And some said:
“Thou wilt never come back.”
And she went, with her husband and her two brothers well armed, to hunt for the wolf by beach, dune, and valley, but never found him. And her husband was obliged to take her home, for she had caught fever by reason of the night cold; and they watched beside her, mending their nets for the next fishing day.
The bailiff of Damme, bethinking himself that the weer-wolf is a beast that lives on blood and does not strip the dead, said that this one was doubtless followed by robbers wandering about the dunes seeking their evil gain. Wherefore he summoned by the sound of the church bell all and sundry, directing them to fall well armed and furnished with cudgels upon all beggars and tramping ruffians, to apprehend their persons and search them to see if they might not have in their satchels gold carolus or any portion of the victim’s raiment. And after this the able-bodied beggars and tramps should be taken to the king’s galleys. And the aged and infirm should be allowed to go their ways.