Numbers of stories similar to these are given in the above-mentioned work; but these must suffice. Very curious are the accounts given of the different ways in which the same superstition existed in different countries.
"En Portugal les lubishomens passent pour des gens nés sous une mauvaise étoile, et condamnés par la fatalité au malheur; c'est a dire, a l'enfer. Quand il y a dans une famille sept fils ou sept filles, l'un d'eux appartient au Diable. Pendant le jour les lubishomens sont taciturnes et melancoliques; la nuit un penchant irresistible les porte a quitter leur demeures et a chercher les lieux les plus sauvages. Après s'etre depouillés de leur vêtemens ils se transforment en chevaux a la longue crinière, aux yeux ardents, franchissant les montagnes, les vallées et les fleuves, et parcourent ainsi un arc de quelques centaines de lieues; mais avant l'aube ils retournent au point de depart, reprennent leur vêtemens et redeviennent hommes. Il n'y a qu'un moyen de détruire l'influence diabolique a laquelle ils sont soumis; c'est d'avoir le courage de se mettre au devant d'eux et d'arrêter leur course fougeuse et de les blesser légèrement a la poitrine, dès que le sang coule à terre ils sont délivrés du Démon, et leur métamorphose cesse pour toujours."
"Cette tradition qui m'a été signalée par mon savant collegue, M. Depping, est rapportée dans les Lusitanian Sketches, et dans Le Portugal de M. Ferd. Denis."
"Autrefois la Prusse, la Lithuanie, la Livonie fourmillaient de Sorciers qui passaient pour se métamorphoser en loups quand ils vouloient."
In the same paper, "Recherches sur la Lycanthropie," we have a great deal more on the subject, too long to extract for this note. In the middle ages, it is stated that the laws were very strict and rigorous against all who were accused of this singular species of sorcery. They were feared and hated as the most dangerous and ferocious of murderers, and when taken were burnt alive. About 1436, at Berne, a great number of sorcerers were burnt alive, who confessed that they were obedient to the devil, and, by means of certain ointments, were able to transform themselves, and that they had devoured their own children. In 1574, before the Parliament of Dôle, a "Procès de Lycanthropie" was tried against Gilles Garnier, a sorcerer, of Lyons. He was condemned and burnt. The 3rd of December, 1573, the Parliament of Franche Comté issued an order for a "Chasse de Loups-garous." From 1596 to 1600, a great number of men and women suffered the punishment of fire as Lycanthropes and Demonolâtres. In the capacity of judge, Jean Boquet showed such intense zeal against them, that, at the close of his life, he boasted, says Voltaire, of having himself caused more than six hundred Lycanthropes to perish.—Boquet Disc. des Sorciers, &c. 1603. Voltaire, Œuvres completes. Ed. Baudmin, t. 39.
The subject was preached upon from the altar; learned dissertations were written and published as to whether the fact of men being able to transform themselves into beasts were true or no.
At the close of this paper the author gives his own opinion as to whether the transformation of men into beasts be admissible; and in all the facts produced by writers and preserved by tradition, how much is reality, trickery, or imagination. To the first question, we need hardly say, he answers in the negative; to the second, our answer is, that certain facts set down to Lycanthropy have been really accomplished by true wolves, or men in a state of savage nature; 2ndly, others have been contrived by popular imaginations, or by deceivers, whether to terrify or to delude; 3rdly, the greater number of the facts have been caused by affections of the brain in the pretended loups-garous, by that black melancholy already described by the physicians of antiquity—in a word, by madness.
[Note 3.] Page 103.
This is one of the mistakes Cervantes falls into: the story of no venomous creature being able to exist is told of Ireland, and not of England. "Bede writeth, that serpents conueid into Ireland did presently die, being touched with the smell of the land; that whatsoever came from Ireland was then of sovereigne virtue against poison."—Bede, lib. 1, Ang. Hist. cap. 1.
Saith Irenæus: "I am doone to understand by the report of diuerse, and also by Bede, that no poisoned or venemous thing is bred in that realme (Ireland), insomuch that the verie earth of that countrie, being brought to other realmes, killeth all venemous and poisoned wormes."