De Groot tells several stories about wer-foxes.[53] A man runs away from home and is found in an empty grave. His shape is quite that of a fox, and does not in any respect correspond to the human form. The only sound he utters is O-tsze (meaning red) which is the name for foxes. For ten days this wer-fox remains in a state of semi-consciousness, and then he awakens and gives the following account of himself: "When the fox came to me for the first time it assumed the shape of a lovely woman standing in a fowl-house in a hidden corner of my dwelling. She called me to her and told me she bore the name of O-tsze.[54] When she had called me many times I followed her and she became my wife. At night I frequently accompanied her to her dwelling, and we met without being perceived by the dogs."
No human animal is as seductive as the wer-vixen. Numerous stories occur in Eastern folklore of women in the shape of foxes and foxes in the shape of women leading men on through passion to their doom. Even male foxes take the shape of women to seduce men, but other harm than this they do not do them.[55]
Ono, an inhabitant of Mino (says an ancient Japanese legend of A.D. 545), spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty. He met her one evening on a vast moor and married her. Simultaneously with the birth of their son, Ono's dog was delivered of a pup which as it grew up became more and more hostile to the lady of the moors. She begged her husband to kill it, but he refused. At last one day the dog attacked her so furiously that she lost courage, resumed vulpine shape, leaped over a fence and fled.
"You may be a fox," Ono called after her, "but you are the mother of my son and I love you. Come back when you please; you will always be welcome."
So every evening she stole back and slept in his arms.[56]
The wer-fox has a strange manner of bringing about transformation. Roaming over a grassy plain, the animal picks up a skull, puts it on his head and, facing towards the north star, worships silently. At first he performs his religious genuflections and obeisances slowly and circumspectly, but by and by his motions become convulsively rapid and his leaps wondrously active. Yet, however high he jumps towards the star, he endeavours to keep his skull-crown immovable, and if after a hundred acts of worship he succeeds, he becomes capable of transforming himself into a human being. But if he desires to assume the shape of a beautiful maiden he must live in the vicinity of a graveyard.[57]
A monk who passed a moonlight night in a graveyard saw a fox placing withered bones and a skull upon its head, and as soon as the animal succeeded in moving its head without dropping its burden, it covered its body with grass and leaves, and changed into a beautiful woman. She sat by the roadside, and presently a man came riding by to whom she told a pitiable story about herself. Charmed with her appearance and sympathising with her forlorn condition, he was about to ask her to mount his horse with him, when the monk appeared from behind a gravestone and warned him that the woman was not what she appeared to be. Making the sign of the cross and uttering an incantation, the holy man caused the woman to fall down, and she turned into an old vixen and expired. Nothing remained but the dry bones with the skull, and the grass and the leaves on the dead body of the fox.
De Groot quotes the old Chinese saying that the wild fox bears the name of Tsze (Red). At night he strikes fire out of his tail. When he desires to appear as a spook he puts on a human skull and salutes the Great Bear constellation, and the transformation is brought about as soon as the skull ceases to fall.
One of the commonest stories of the fox, found in China and Japan, is that the fox as usual assumes the form of a lovely maiden, and weds a man. She dies and all that remains is the dead body of the fox. No more is heard of the woman.
The Eskimos have a similar story.