The Book of Were-Wolves, Sabine Baring-Gould [chapter books to read to 5 year olds txt] 📗
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that it is quite possible for a human being to be possessed of a
depraved appetite for rending corpses, is proved by an extraordinary
case brought before a court-martial in Paris, so late as July 10th,
1849.
The details are given with fulness in the _Annales
Medico-psychologiques_ for that month and year. They are too revolting
for reproduction. I will, however, give an outline of this remarkable
case.
In the autumn of 1848, several of the cemeteries in the neighbourhood
of Paris were found to have been entered during the night, and graves
to have been rifled. The deeds were not those of medical students, for
the bodies had not been carried of, but were found lying about the
tombs in fragments. It was at first supposed that the perpetration of
these outrages must have been a wild beast, but footprints in the soft
earth left no doubt that it was a man. Close watch was kept at Père la
Chaise; but after a few corpses had been mangled there, the outrages
ceased.
In the winter, another cemetery was ravaged, and it was not till March
in 1849, that a spring gun which had been set in the cemetery of S.
Parnasse, went off during the night, and warned the guardians of the
place that the mysterious visitor had fallen into their trap. They
rushed to the spot, only to see a dark figure in a military mantle
leap the wall, and disappear in the gloom. Marks of blood, however,
gave evidence that he had been hit by the gun when it had discharged.
At the same time, a fragment of blue cloth, torn from the mantle, was
obtained, and afforded a clue towards the identification of the
ravisher of the tombs.
On the following day, the police went from barrack to barrack,
inquiring whether officer or man were suffering from a gun-shot wound.
By this means they discovered the person. He was a junior officer in
the 1st Infantry regiment, of the name of Bertrand.
He was taken to the hospital to be cured of his wound, and on his
recovery, he was tried by court-martial.
His history was this.
He had been educated in the theological seminary of Langres, till, at
the age of twenty, he entered the army. He was a young man of retiring
habits, frank and cheerful to his comrades, so as to be greatly
beloved by them, of feminine delicacy and refinement, and subject to
fits of depression and melancholy. In February, 1847, as he was
walking with a friend in the country, he came to a churchyard, the
gate of which stood open. The day before a woman had been buried, but
the sexton had not completed filling in the grave, and he had been
engaged upon it on the present occasion, when a storm of rain had
driven him to shelter. Bertrand noticed the spade and pick lying
beside the grave, and—to use his own words:—“A cette vue des idées
noires me vinrent, j’eus comme un violent mal de tête, mon cur battait
avec force, je no me possédais plus.” He managed by some excuse to get
rid of his companion, and then returning to the churchyard, he caught
up a spade and began to dig into the grave. “Soon I dragged the corpse
out of the earth, and I began to hash it with the spade, without well
knowing what I was about. A labourer saw me, and I laid myself flat on
the ground till he was out of sight, and then I cast the body back
into the grave. I then went away, bathed in a cold sweat, to a little
grove, where I reposed for several hours, notwithstanding the cold
rain which fell, in a condition of complete exhaustion. When I rose,
my limbs were as if broken, and my head weak. The same prostration and
sensation followed each attack.
Two days after, I returned to the cemetery, and opened the grave with
my hands. My hands bled, but I did not feel the pain; I tore the
corpse to shreds, and flung it back into the pit.”
He had no further attack for four months, till his regiment came to
Paris. As he was one day walking in the gloomy, shadowy, alleys of
Père la Chaise, the same feeling came over him like a flood. In the
night he climbed the wall, and dug up a little girl of seven years
old. He tore her in half. A few days later, he opened the grave of a
woman who had died in childbirth, and had lain in the grave for
thirteen days. On the 16th November, he dug up an old woman of fifty,
and, ripping her to pieces, rolled among the fragments. He did the
same to another corpse on the 12th December. These are only a few of
the numerous cases of violation of tombs to which he owned. It was on
the night of the 15th March that the spring-gun shot him.
Bertrand declared at his trial, that whilst he was in the hospital he
had not felt any desire to renew his attempts, and that he considered
himself cured of his horrible propensities, for he had seen men dying
in the beds around him, and now: “Je suis guéri, car aujourd’hui j’ai
peur d’un mort.”
The fits of exhaustion which followed his accesses are very
remarkable, as they precisely resemble those which followed the
berserkir rages of the Northmen, and the expeditions of the
Lycanthropists.
The case of M. Bertrand is indubitably most singular and anomalous; it
scarcely bears the character of insanity, but seems to point rather to
a species of diabolical possession. At first the accesses chiefly
followed upon his drinking wine, but after a while they came upon him
without exciting cause. The manner in which he mutilated the dead was
different. Some he chopped with the spade, others he tore and ripped
with his teeth and nails. Sometimes he tore the mouth open and rent
the face back to the ears, he opened the stomachs, and pulled off the
limbs. Although he dug up the bodies of several men he felt no
inclination to mutilate them, whereas he delighted in rending female
corpses. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.
CHAPTER XVI.
A SERMON ON WEREWOLVES.
THE following curious specimen of a late mediæval sermon is taken from
the old German edition of the discourses of Dr. Johann Geiler von
Keysersperg, a famous preacher in Strasbourg. The volume is entitled:
“Die Emeis. Dis ist das Büch von der Omeissen, und durch Herr der
Künnig ich diente gern. Und sagt von Eigenschafft der Omeissen, und
gibt underweisung von der Unholden oder Hexen, und von Gespenst, der
Geist, und von dem Wütenden Heer Wunderbarlich.”
This strange series of sermons was preached at Strasbourg in the year
1508, and was taken down and written out by a barefooted friar, Johann
Pauli, and by him published in 1517. The doctor died on Mid-Lent
Sunday, 1510. There is a Latin edition of his sermons, but whether of
the same series or not I cannot tell, as I have been unable to obtain
a sight of the volume. The German edition is illustrated with bold and
clever woodcuts. Among other, there are representations of the
Witches’ Sabbath, the Wild Huntsman, and a Werewolf attacking a Man.
The sermon was preached on the third Sunday in Lent. No text is given,
but there is a general reference to the gospel for the day. This is
the discourse:— [1]
[1. Headed thus:—“Am drittë sontag à fastê, occuli, predigt dé doctor
vô dê Werwölffenn.”]
“What shall we say about werewolves? for there are werewolves which
run about the villages devouring men and children. As men say about
them, they run about full gallop, injuring men, and are called
ber-wölff, or wer-wölff. Do you ask me if I know aught about them? I
answer, Yes. They are apparently wolves which cat men and children,
and that happens on seven accounts:—
1. Esuriem Hunger.
2. Rabiem Savageness.
3. Senectutem Old age.
4. Experientiam Experience.
5. Insaniem Madness.
6. Diabolum The Devil.
7. Deum God.
The first happens through hunger; when the wolves find nothing to eat
in the woods, they must come to people and eat men when hunger drives
them to it. You see well, when it is very cold, that the stags come in
search of food up to the villages, and the birds actually into the
dining-room in search of victuals.
“Under the second head, wolves eat children through their innate
savageness, because they are savage, and that is (propter locum coitum
ferum). Their savageness arises first from their condition. Wolves
which live in cold places are smaller on that account, and more savage
than other wolves. Secondly, their savageness depends on the season;
they are more savage about Candlemas than at any other time of the
year, and men must be more on their guard against them then than at
other times. It is a proverb, ‘He who seeks a wolf at Candlemas, a
peasant on Shrove Tuesday, and a parson in Lent, is a man of pluck.’ .
. . Thirdly, their savageness depends on their having young. When the
wolves have young, they are more savage than when they have not. You
see it so in all beasts. A wild duck, when it has young poults, you
see what an uproar it makes. A cat fights for its young kittens; the
wolves do ditto.
“Under the third head, the wolves do injury on account of their age.
When a wolf is old, it is weak and feeble in its leas, so it can’t ran
fast enough to catch stags, and therefore it rends a man, whom it can
catch easier than a wild animal. It also tears children and men easier
than wild animals, because of its teeth, for its teeth break off when
it is very old; you see it well in old women: how the last teeth
wobble, and they have scarcely a tooth left in their heads, and they
open their mouths for men to feed them with mash and stewed
substances.
“Under the fourth head, the injury the werewolves do arises from
experience. It is said that human flesh is far sweeter than other
flesh; so when a wolf has once tasted human flesh, he desires to taste
it again. So he acts like old topers, who, when they know the best
wine, will not be put off with inferior quality.
“Under the fifth head, the injury arises from ignorance. A dog when it
is mad is also inconsiderate, and it bites any man; it does not
recognize its own lord: and what is a wolf but a wild dog which is mad
and inconsiderate, so that it regards no man.
“Under the sixth head, the injury comes of the Devil, who transforms
himself, and takes on him the form of a wolf So writes Vincentius in
his Speculum Historiale. And he has taken it from Valerius Maximus
in the Punic war. When the Romans fought against the men of Africa,
when the captain lay asleep, there came a wolf and drew his sword, and
carried it off. That was the Devil in a, wolf’s form. The like writes
William of Paris,—that a wolf will kill and devour children, and do
the greatest mischief. There was a man who had the phantasy that he
himself was a wolf. And afterwards he was found lying in the wood, and
he was dead out of sheer hunger.
“Under the seventh head, the injury comes of God’s ordinance. For God
will sometimes punish certain lands and villages with wolves. So we
read of Elisha,—that when Elisha wanted to go up a mountain out
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