One case upon which the Doctor insisted, was that of an Italian peasant near Pavia, who in the year 1541, was seized with this madness, and fancying himself to be a wolf, attacked several persons in the fields and killed some of them. He was taken at last, but not without great difficulty; and when in the hands of his captors he declared that he was a wolf, however much they might doubt the avowal, and that the only difference between him and other wolves was, that they had their fur on the outside of the skin, but his was between the skin and the flesh. The madman asserted this so positively that some of the party, trop inhumains et loups par effect, as Simon Goulart says with a humanity above the standard of his age, determined to see, and made several slashes in his arms and legs. Repenting of their cruelty, when they had convinced themselves by this experiment that the poor wretch was really insane, they put him under the care of a surgeon; and he died in the course of a few days under his hands. “Now” said the Doctor “if this were a solitary case, it would evidently be a case of madness; but as lycanthropy is recognized by physicians of different times and countries, as a specific and well known affection of the human mind, can it be so satisfactorily explained in any other manner, as by the theory of progressive existence,—by the resurrection of a habit belonging to the preceding stage of the individual's progress?”
The superstition was not disbelieved by Bishop Hall. In the account of what he observed in the Netherlands, he says of Spa, “the wide deserts on which it borders are haunted with three kinds of ill cattle, free booters, wolves, and witches, though these two last are often one.”
When Spenser tells us it was said of the Irish, as of the Scythians, how they were once a year turned into wolves, “though Master Camden in a better sense doth suppose it was the disease called Lycanthropia,”—he adds these remarkable words, “yet some of the Irish do use to make the wolf their gossip.” Now it must be observed that gossip is not here used in its secondary meaning of a talking, tattling, or tippling companion, but in its original import, though wickedly detorted here: “Our Christian ancestors,” says Verstegan, “understanding a spiritual affinity to grow between the parents and such as undertook for the child at baptism, called each other by the name of God-sib, which is as much as to say as that they were sib together, that is, of kin together, through God.” The Limerick schoolmaster whose words are transcribed by Camden, says, “they receive wolves as gossips, calling them Chari-Christ, praying for them, and wishing them happy; upon which account they are not afraid of them.” There was great store of wolves in Ireland at that time; and the Doctor asked whether so strange a custom could be satisfactorily explained in any way but by a blind consciousness of physical affinity,—by supposing that those who chose wolves to be godfathers and godmothers for their children, had in the preceding stage of their own existence been wolves themselves?
How triumphantly would he have appealed to a story which Captain Beaver relates in his African Memoranda. “In the evening” says that most enterprising, resolute, able, and right minded man, “two or three of the grumetas came to me and said that Francisco, one of their party, was not a good man: that he wanted to eat one of them, John Basse, who had been this day taken very ill. As I could not comprehend what they meant by saying that one of them wanted to eat another, I sent for Johnson to explain. He said that the man accused of eating the other was a witch, and that he was the cause of John Basse's illness, by sucking his blood with his infernal witchcraft; and that these people had come to request that I would let them tie him to a tree and flog him, after they had finished their work. I told them that there was no such thing as a witch; that it was impossible for this man to suck the blood of another, by any art which he could possibly possess; that he could not be the cause of another man's illness by such means; and that with respect to flogging, no one punished on the island but myself. Johnson who is as bigotted in this instance as any of them, says that he is well known to be a witch; that he has killed many people with his infernal art, and that this is the cause of his leaving his own country, where if he should ever be caught, he would be sold as a slave; and that he with difficulty had prevented the other grumetas from throwing him overboard on their passage from Bissao hither. Johnson moreover told me that there was another witch among the grumetas, who had the power of changing himself into an alligator, and that he also had killed many people by his witchcraft, and was consequently obliged to run from his country. They therefore most earnestly entreated me to let them punish them, country-fashion, and they promised not to kill either of them. Astonished at the assurance that neither of them should be killed if they were permitted to punish them, I told Johnson that if such a thing should occur, I would immediately hang all those concerned in it, and then endeavoured to reason them out of their foolish notions respecting these two poor men. Johnson replied, that it was the custom of the country for white men never to interfere in these cases, and that at Bissao the governor never took notice of their thus punishing one another according to their own country fashion, and that they expected the same indulgence here; for that if these people were in their own country, they would either be killed or sold, as witchcraft was never forgiven and its professors never suffered to remain in their own country when once found out. I had now all the grumetas round me, among whom were the accused themselves, and endeavoured again to convince them of the innocence of these people, by pointing out the impossibility of their hurting others by any magic or spell, or of transforming themselves into any other shape. When many of them said this man had often avowed his turning himself into an alligator to devour people: ‘How say you Corasmo, said I, did you ever say so to any of these people?’ ‘Yes,’ was his reply. ‘What do you mean? do you mean to say that you ever transformed yourself into any other shape than that which you now bear?’ ‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘Now, Corasmo, you know that white man knows every thing; you cannot deceive me; therefore avow to those people, that you never changed yourself into an alligator, and that these are all lies.’ ‘No,’ was his reply,—who can believe it? ‘I can change myself into an alligator, and have often done it.’ This was such an incorrigible witch that I immediately gave him up to the grumetas to punish him, but desired them to be merciful.—It is scarcely credible that a man can so work upon his own weak imagination as to believe, which I doubt not this man did, its own fanciful creations to be realities.—After the grumetas had left me last night I regretted having delivered up to them the two poor miserable wretches accused of witchcraft. From ten till twelve at night their cries were most piteous and loud, and though distant a full half mile, were distinctly heard. This morning they cannot move.”
There was a Mr. William Wright of Saham Tony in Norfolk who used to cast his skin every year, sometimes once, sometimes twice; it was an uneasy and distressing effort of nature, preceded by itching, red spots and swellings; the fingers became stiff, hard, and painful at the ends, and about the nails the pain was exquisite. The whole process of changing was completed in from ten to twelve days, but it was about six months before the nails were perfectly renewed. From the hands the skin came off whole like a glove: and a print representing one of these gloves is given with the account of the case in the Gentleman's Magazine.
When this was related to the Doctor it perplexed him. The habit was evidently that of a snake; and it did not agree with his theory to suppose that the Archeus would pass, as it were per saltum, from so low a stage of existence to the human form. But upon reading the account himself he was completely satisfied as soon as he found that the subject was an Attorney.
He did not know, because it was not known till Mr. Wilkin published his excellent edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, that that Philosopher sent to his son Dr. Edward Browne “the skin of the palm of a woman's hand, cast off at the end of a fever, or in the declination thereof. I called it,” he says, “exuvium palmæ muliebris, the Latin word being exuvia in the plural, but I named it exuvium, or exuvia in the singular number. It is neat, and worthy to be shown when you speak of the skin. Snakes and lizards and divers insects cast their skins, and they are very neat ones: men also in some diseases, by pieces, but I have not met with any so neat as this: a palmister might read a lecture of it. The whole soles of the feet came off, and I have one.” If the Doctor had heard of this case, and had not suspected the woman of having once belonged to a generation of vipers, or some snekki-famili as the words are rendered in the Talkee-talkee version, he would have derived her from an eel, and expressed a charitable hope that she might not still be a slippery subject.
CHAPTER CXXIX.
WHEREIN THE AUTHOR SPEAKS OF A TRAGEDY FOR THE LADIES, AND INTRODUCES ONE OF WILLIAM DOVE'S STORIES FOR CHILDREN.