A bachelor coming home in the evening finds his hut tidied. One day, returning prematurely, he sees a woman at work straightening his things. He falls in love with her and marries her, only to discover that she is a fox in disguise, and when his jealous cousin mentions the tabooed subject of the smell of a fox, she runs away, never to return.
Under the T'ang dynasty the belief in wer-vixens, who changed into fascinating women to tempt men, was prevalent.
"When a fox is fifty years old, it can transform itself into a woman; when a hundred years old, it becomes a beautiful female or sorceress termed wu. Such enchanted beings possess a knowledge of what is happening more than a thousand miles away. They can poison men by sorcery or possess and bewilder them so that they lose their memory or even their reason. When a fox reaches the age of a thousand it goes to paradise and becomes a celestial creature."[58]
The wer-vixen in the next story had not attained to this privilege, she belonged to a far different region.
A captain in the Imperial Guard met a beautiful lady in the moonlight and began to talk to her. While she was speaking to him she kept her face hidden behind a fan. As they came to the palace the man remembered that wer-vixens were dangerous beings to deal with and he wanted to find out whether the woman was genuine or an animal in human shape, so he drew his sword, seized her by the hair, pushed her against one of the pillars in front of the palace and threatened to kill her. She struggled and jumped about violently, sending forth so pungent an odour that he could not hold her, and as he let her go she turned into a fox and ran off shrieking "ko, ko!" The captain did not in the least regret the rough handling he had given the supposed beautiful lady; he only wished he had killed her on the spot.
Fox demons are said to cause disease and madness, and sometimes they act in a spirit of revenge, more often from unprovoked malice. The "Huen Chung ki" mentions that foxes sometimes take the shape of Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. Another mystic idea about wer-foxes is that they are believed to possess a mysterious pearl which represents their soul. They hold this pearl in their mouths and any man who gets possession of it becomes a favourite throughout the world. In Japan some people think that foxes have a luminous pearl in their tail. Whether this is connected with the soul or whether it is a talisman of power it is difficult to say.
Wer-foxes in the shape of human beings can be made to resume their animal forms by wounding or slaying them or by setting dogs upon them. Incantations, argument if they appear in the shape of scholars, poisonous food, written charms, or cutting off the caudal appendage if they show signs of one, are also effective means of making them declare themselves in their true colours.
If a person is possessed by a wer-fox he can have the evil spirit transferred to a woman in a similar manner to that practised by the Boudas of Abyssinia in the case of those possessed by hyænas. In one instance the evil spirit spoke from the scape-woman's mouth as follows:—
"I am a fox. I have not come to do evil, but only to have a look round, because I thought there was plenty of food at a place like this. Then I found that I (the patient) was kept indoors." Thus speaking, she took from her bosom a white gem, the size of a small orange. Throwing this into the air, she caught it again, and those who saw it said, "What a strange gem; she keeps it in her pocket for the purpose of deluding people." A young man cleverly caught the gem as the woman threw it up and put it in his pocket. The demon fox begged him to give it back to her but he refused. She then burst into tears and said, "My gem is of no value to you for you do not know how to use it. If you do not give it back to me I will be your enemy for ever, but if you do, I will be your friend and protect you like a god." At these words the young man returned the gem.