There is a German story of a joiner at Bühl, who, being troubled with the nightmare, saw the elf enter his room, through a hole, in the shape of a cat. He caught the animal and nailed one of its paws to the floor. In the morning he was surprised to find his feline prisoner transformed into a handsome young woman perfectly naked. He married her, however; but, after they had had three children, she disappeared suddenly, in the form of a cat, through the hole by which she had entered, her husband having inadvertently removed the material with which he had blocked it up.
In East Prussia, they have a story of a girl, who, without her knowledge, was every evening transformed into a cat, and awoke much fatigued. One night her lover caught a cat, which had regularly tormented and scratched him at night, and secured it in a sack. The next morning he found the cat transformed into his naked sweetheart. The story adds she was cured by the parson of the parish.
In 1633, a "second batch" of Lancashire witches was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death, at Lancaster; but after more elaborate investigation into the circumstances, first at Chester, under the presidency of the bishop, and afterwards at London, by the physicians and surgeons to the king, and again by the king himself, Charles I., fully convinced of their innocence, extended to them his royal pardon. The deposition of the principal witness, "Edward Robinson, sonne of Edmond Robinson, of Pendle Forest, mason, taken at Padiham, before Richard Shuttleworth and John Starkey, Esquires, two of his Majestie's Justices of Peace," affords curious evidence of the strength of this superstition little more than two centuries ago. The deponent sayeth that at the time he was occupied in "gettinge Bullas hee sawe two grey hounds, vizt., a blacke and a browne one, come runninge over the next field towards him. He verilie thinketh the one to be Mr. Butters and the other to be Mr. Robinsons, the said Mr. Butter and Mr. Robinson then havinge such like. And the said Grey Hounds came and fawned on him, they having about their necks either of them a Coller, to either of which Collers was tyed a strynge, which Collers, as this Informer affirmeth, did shine like gold, and he thinkinge that some either of Mr. Butters or Mr. Robinsons familie should have followed them, but seeinge noe bodie to followe them, hee tooke the said Grey-hounds thinkinge to hunte with them, and presentlie a hare did rise verie neere before him, at the sight whereof he cried 'Loo, loo, loo,' but the doggs would not runn, wherevpon hee beinge verie angrie tooke them, and with the string that were at their Collers tyed either of them to a little bush at the next hedge, and with a rodd that he had in his hand hee beate them, and instead of the blacke grey-hound one Dickensons wife stud vpp, a neighbour whom this Informer knoweth, and instead of the browne Greyhound a little Boy, whom this Informer knoweth not, at which sight this Informer being afrayd, endeavoured to runn awaie, but beinge stayed by the woeman, vizt., Dickensons wife, shee put her hand into her pocket, and pulled forth a piece of silver much like to a fayre shillinge, and offered to give it him to hold his tongue, and not to tell, which hee refused, sayinge, 'nay, thou art a witch,' wherevpon shee put her hand into her pocket againe, and pulled out a thing like unto a bridle that gingled, which shee put on the little Boyes head which stood vpp in the browne greyhounds stead, wherevpon the said Boye stood vpp a white horse. Then ymmediatlie the said Dickensons wife tooke this Informer before her vpon the said horse." As in the case previously referred to, the party galloped off to a feast of witches. It is true Dr. Webster, who carefully examined the witness, informs us, in his "Display of Witchcraft," that "the boy Robinson, in more mature years, acknowledged that he had been instructed and suborned to make these accusations by his father and others, and that, of course, the whole was a fraud." Nevertheless, the belief in the probability of such transformations must have been very general and deeply rooted, otherwise such impostors could not have practised their villainy with the impunity they did. Witches, we have previously seen, were often transformed into hares. Margery Grant, the recently deceased Scotch witch, referred to in a previous chapter, "believed herself to be transmutable, and avers that she was, at times, actually changed by evil-disposed persons into a pony or a hare, and rode for great distances, or hunted by dogs, as the case might be."
Mr. A. Russel Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," says that it is yet "universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations." He adds that the islands of Bali and Lombock, situated to the east of Java, "are the only islands in the whole Archipelago in which the Hindoo religion still maintains itself—and they form the extreme point of the two great zoological divisions of the Eastern hemisphere."
The owl and the eagle, both lightning birds of the Aryan mythology, received divine honours from the Greeks. The eagle was Jove's emblem, the owl that of Pallas, or Athenê. The latter was sometimes called Glaucopis, or "owl-eyed," significant of the supernatural light which was presumed to radiate from her lightning orbs.
The owl is not the only bird that is believed to have been transformed into a human being skilled in the art of baking bread. The cuckoo and the woodpecker have been subjected to a similar metamorphosis. The legend of the owl and the baker's daughter appears to be still popular in Gloucestershire. The story is generally told with a view to prevent children and others from indulging in harsh conduct towards the poor. Douce relates the legend in the following terms:—
"Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat: the mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size; the dough, however, immediately began to swell, and presently became a most enormous size, whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, 'Heugh, heugh, heugh!' which owl-like noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into that bird for her wickedness."
Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," gives a very minute version of this tradition, in which the purely heathen superstition is related with the nomenclature modernised. The names, however, are its only Christian attributes. It markedly exhibits the tendency of the vulgar to confound one mystery or tradition with another, to which I have previously referred. Dasent gives the story as follows:—
"In those days, when our Lord and St. Peter wandered upon earth, they came once to an old wife's house, who sat baking. Her name was Gertrude, and she had a red mutch on her head. They had walked a long way, and were both hungry, and our Lord begged hard for a bannock to stay their hunger. Yes, they should have it. So she took a little tiny piece of dough and rolled it out, but as she rolled it, it grew until it covered the whole griddle.
"Nay, that was too big; they couldn't have that. So she took a tinier bit still; but when that was rolled out it covered the whole griddle just the same, and that bannock was too big, she said; they couldn't have that either.