“For Heaven’s sake,” he cried, “what is it? What’s the matter?”
White as death again, Nina pointed a finger, and Von Grumboldt, looking in the direction she indicated, saw—not Nippo, but an awful-looking thing in Nippo’s place—a big black object, partly dog and partly some other animal, that grew and grew until, within a few seconds, it had grown to at least thrice Nippo’s size. With a hideous howl it rushed at Von Grumboldt. The latter, though a strong athletic young man, was speedily overcome, and being dashed to the ground, would soon have been torn to pieces had not Nina, recovering from a temporary helplessness, come to the rescue.
Catching hold of the girdle round the creature’s body, she unclasped the buckle, and in a trice the evil thing had vanished; and there was Nippo, his own self, standing before them.
“It is a werwolf belt!” Nina exclaimed, throwing it away from her. “You see, I was right; it is devilish, and no doubt belongs to some one near here who practises Black Magic—Mad Valerie, perhaps. This cross that I wear round my neck, which is made of yew, no doubt warned me of this danger and so saved me from an awful fate. You smile!—but I am certain of it. The yew-tree is just as efficacious in the case of evil spirits as the ash!”
“What shall we do with the beastly thing?” Von Grumboldt asked. “It doesn’t seem right to leave it here, in case some one else, with less sense than you, should find it and a dreadful catastrophe result.”
“We must burn it,” Nina said. “That’s the only way of getting rid of the evil influence. Let us do so at once.”
Von Grumboldt was nothing loath, and in a few minutes all that remained of the lycanthropous girdle was a tiny heap of ashes.
To burn the object to which the lycanthropous property is attached is the only recognized method of destroying that property. I have had many proofs, too, of the efficacy of burning in the case of superphysical influences other than lycanthropy; such, for example, as haunted furniture, trees, and buildings; and I am quite sure the one and only way to get rid of an occult presence attached to any particular object is to burn that object.
I have been told of “burning” having been successfully practised in the following cases:—
Case No. 1.—A barrow in the North of England that had long been haunted by a Barrowian order of Elemental. (The barrow was excavated, and when the remains therein had been burnt, the hauntings ceased.)
Case No. 2.—A cave in Wales haunted by the phantasm of a horse, though, whether the real spirit of the horse or merely an Elemental I cannot say. (On the soil in the cave being excavated, and the several skeletons, presumably of prehistoric animals, found being burnt, there were no longer any disturbances.)
Case No. 3.—A house in London containing an oak chest, attached to which was the phantasm of an old woman, who used to disturb the inmates of the place nightly. (On the chest being burnt she was seen no more.)
Case No. 4.—A tree in Ireland, haunted every night by a Vagrarian. (Immediately after the tree had been burnt the manifestations ceased.)
Burial is a great mistake. As long as a single bone remains, the spirit of the dead person may still be attracted to it, and consequently remain earthbound; but when the corpse is cremated, and the ashes scattered abroad, then the spirit is set free. And, for this reason alone, I advocate cremation as the best method possible of dealing with a corpse.
Before concluding this chapter on the werwolf in Belgium, let me add that werwolfery was not the only form of lycanthropy in that country. According to Grimm, in his “Deutsche Sagen,” two warlocks who were executed in the year 1810 at Liége for having, under the form of werwolves, killed and eaten several children, had as their colleague a boy of twelve years of age. The boy, in the form of a raven, consumed those portions of the prey which the warlocks left.
Werwolves in the Netherlands
Cases of werwolves are of less frequent occurrence in Holland than in either France or Belgium. Also, they are almost entirely restricted to the male sex.
Exorcism here is seldom practised, the working of a spell being the usual means employed for getting rid of the evil property. The procedure in working the spell is as follows:—
First of all, a night when the moon is in the full is selected. Then at twelve o’clock the werwolf is seized, securely bound, and taken to an isolated spot. Here, a circle of about seven feet in diameter is carefully inscribed on the ground, and in the exact centre of it the werwolf is placed, and so fastened that he cannot possibly get away. Then three girls—always girls—come forward armed with ash twigs with which they flog him most unmercifully, calling out as they do so:—
“Greywolf ugly, greywolf old,
Do at once as you are told.
Leave this man and fly away—
Right away, far away,
Where ’tis night and never day.”
They keep on repeating these words and whipping him; and it is not until the face, back, and limbs of the werwolf are covered with blood that they desist.
The oldest person present then comes forward and gives the werwolf a hearty kick, saying as he (or she) does so:—
“Go, fly, away to the sky;
Devil of greywolf, thee we defy.
Out, out, with a howl and yell,
‘Twill carry thee faster and surer to hell.”
Every one present then dips a cup or mug in a concoction of sulphur, tar, vinegar, and castoreum, just removed from boiling-point, and, forming a circle round the werwolf, they souse him all over with this unpleasant and painfully hot mixture, calling out as they do so:—
“Away, away, shoo, shoo, shoo!
Do you think we care a jot for you?
We’ll whip thee again, with a crack, crack, crack!
Scourge thee and beat thee till thou art black;
Fool of a greywolf, we have thee at last,
Back to thy hell home, out of him fast—
Fast, fast, fast!
Our patience won’t last.
We’ll scratch thee, we’ll prick thee,
We’ll prod thee, we’ll scald thee.
Fast, fast, out of him, fast!”
They keep on shouting these words over and over again till the liquid has given out and the clock strikes one; when, with a final blow or kick at the prostrate werwolf, they run away.
The evil spirit is then said to leave the man, who quickly recovers his proper shape, and with a loud cry of joy rushes after his friends and relations.
When the Spaniards invaded Holland they resorted to a surer, if a somewhat more drastic, mode of getting rid of lycanthropy—they burned the subject possessed of it.
One of the best known cases of a werwolf in the Netherlands is as follows:—
A young man, whilst on his way to a shooting match at Rousse, was suddenly startled by hearing loud screams for help proceeding from a field a few yards distant. To jump a dike and scramble over a low wall was but the work of a few seconds, and in less time than it takes to tell, the young man, whose name was Van Renner, found himself face to face with a huge grey wolf. Quick as thought, he fitted an arrow to his bow, and shot. The missile struck the wolf in the side, and with a howl of pain the wounded creature turned tail and fled for his life.
All might now have ended like some delightful romance, for the rescued one proved to be an exceedingly attractive maiden, with bright yellow hair and big blue eyes; but unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, who knows?—the girl had a husband, and Van Renner a wife; and so, instead of the incident being the prelude to a love affair, it was merely an occasion for grateful acknowledgment—and—farewell. On his return home that evening Van Renner was met with an urgent request to visit his friend, the Burgomaster. He hastened to obey the summons, and found the Burgomaster in bed, suffering agonies of pain from a wound which he had received in hi
s side some hours previously.
“I can’t die without telling you,” he whispered, clutching Van Renner by the hand. “God help me, I’m a werwolf! I’ve always been one. It’s in my family—it’s hereditary. It was your arrow that has wounded me fatally.”
Van Renner was too aghast to speak. He was really fond of the Burgomaster, and to think of him a werwolf—well! it was too dreadful to contemplate. The dying man gazed eagerly, hungrily, piteously into his friend’s face.
“Don’t say you hate me,” he cried. “There is little hope for me, if any, in the next world; and in all probability I shall either go direct to hell or remain earthbound; but, for God’s sake, let me die in the knowledge that I leave behind me at least one friend!”
Van Renner tried hard to speak; he made every effort to speak; his lungs swelled, his tongue wobbled, the muscles of his lips twitched; but not a syllable could he utter—and the Burgomaster died.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WERWOLVES AND MARAS OF DENMARK
SINCE so much has already been written upon the subject of werwolves in Denmark, it is my intention only to touch upon it briefly. It is, I believe, generally acknowledged that, at one time, werwolves were to be met with almost daily in Denmark, and that they were almost always of the male sex; but I can find no records of any particular form of exorcism practised by the Danes with the object of getting rid of the werwolf, nor of any spell used by them for the same purpose; neither does there appear to be, amongst their traditions, any reference to a lycanthropous flower or stream. Opinions differ as to whether werwolves are yet to be found in Denmark, but, from all I have heard, I am inclined to think that they still exist in the more remote districts of that country.
The following case may be regarded as illustrative of a typical Danish werwolf:—
The Case of Peter Andersen, Werwolf
Peter Andersen, who was a werwolf by descent, his ancestors having been werwolves for countless generations, fell in love with a beautiful young girl named Elisa, and without telling her he was a werwolf, for fear that she would give him up, married her.
Shortly after his marriage, he was returning home one evening with Elisa from a neighbouring fair, where there had been much merrymaking, when, suddenly feeling that the metamorphosis was coming on, he got down from the cart in which they were driving, and said to his wife, very earnestly, “If anything comes towards you, do not be afraid, and do not hurt it; merely strike it with your apron.” He then ran off at a great rate into the fields, leaving Elisa very much surprised and impressed. A few minutes afterwards she heard the howl of a wild animal, and, while she was holding in the horse and endeavouring to pacify it, a huge grey wolf suddenly leaped into the road and sprang at her.
Recollecting what her husband had told her, with wonderful presence of mind she whipped off her apron and struck the wolf in the face with it. The animal tore at the apron, and biting a piece out of it, turned tail and ran away. Some time afterwards Andersen returned, and holding out to Elisa the missing piece of her apron, asked if she guessed how he came by it.
“Good God, man!” Elisa cried, the pupils of her eyes dilating with terror, “it was you! I know it by the expression in your face. Heaven preserve me! You’re a werwolf!”
“I was a werwolf,” Peter said, “but thanks to your brave action in throwing the apron in my face, I am one no longer. I know I did wrong in not telling you of my misfortune before we were married, but I dreaded the idea of losing you. Forgive me, forgive me, I implore you!” and Elisa, after some slight hesitation, granted his request.
This method of getting rid of the lycanthropous spirit seems to have been (and still to be) the one most in vogue in Denmark.
Another well-known story, of a similar kind, is to the effect that while a party of haymakers were at work in a field, a man, who, like Andersen, had kept the fact of his being a werwolf from his family, feeling that he was about to be transmuted, gave his son injunctions that if an animal approached him he was on no account to hurt it, but merely to throw his hat at it. The boy promising to obey, the father hastily left the field. Some minutes later a grey wolf appeared, swimming a stream. It rushed at the boy, who, mad with terror, forgot his father’s instructions, and struck at it with a pitchfork.
The prongs of the fork, entering the wolf’s side, pierced its heart; and transmutation again taking place, to the horror of all present there lay on the ground, not the body of a beast, but the corpse of the boy’s father.
In Denmark it is said that if a woman stretches between four sticks the membrane of a newly born foal, and creeps through it naked, she will bring forth children without pain, but all the boys will be werwolves and the girls maras.
As is the case with the werwolf of other countries, the Danish werwolf retains its human form by day; but after sunset, unlike the werwolf of any other nationality, it sometimes adopts the shape of a dog on three legs before it finally metamorphoses into a wolf.
In addition to these methods (alluded to above) of expelling a lycanthropous spirit in Denmark, there may be added that of addressing the obsessed person as a werwolf and reproaching him roundly. But as I have no proof of the effectiveness of this crude mode of exorcism, I cannot commit myself to any verdict with regard to it.
Maras
The mara, to which I have briefly alluded in a foregoing chapter, is to be met with in Denmark almost as often as the werwolf; and the superphysical property, characteristic of the mara no less than of the werwolf, justifies me in a somewhat detailed description of the former here.
A mara is popularly understood to be a woman by day and at night a spirit that torments human beings and horses by sitting astride them and causing them nightmare.
In the main I agree with this definition; though I am inclined to think that the mara is, in reality, less hoydenish and more subtle and complex than public opinion would have us believe. In all probability maras are women who have either inherited or, by the practice of Black Magic, acquired the faculty of a certain species of projection—differing from the projection which is common to both sexes in the following points, viz., that it can always be accomplished (during certain hours) at will; that it is invariably practised with the sole desire to do ill; that the projected spirit is fully conscious of all that is happening around it; and that it possesses most—if not all—of the faculties, motives, and nervous susceptibilities of the physical body.
Whatever may be the character of the mara by day, she is essentially mischievous by night—owing, no doubt, to the fact that this faculty of projection has come to her through the occult powers inimical to man.
From the complexity of their nature, maras present the same difficulty of classification as werwolves—both are human, both are Elemental, and consequently both are an anomaly.
The belief in maras is still prevalent in all parts of Scandinavia, including Jutland, whence comes the following case which I quote for the purpose of comparison.
A Case of a Mara in Jutland
Some reapers in a field, near a village in Jutland, came one evening upon a naked woman lying under a hedge, apparently asleep. Much surprised, they regarded her closely, and at length coming to the conclusion that her sleep was not natural, they summoned a shepherd who was generally regarded as very intelligent. On seeing the woman the shepherd at once said, “She is not a real person, though she looks like one. She is a mara, and has stripped for the purpose of riding some one to-night.” At this there was loud laughter, and the reapers said, “Tell us another, Eric. A mara indeed! If this isn’t a woman, our mothers are not women, for she is just as much of flesh and blood as they are.” “All right,” the shepherd replied, “wait and see.” And bending over her, he whispered something in her ear, whereupon a queer little animal about two inches long came out of the grass, and running up her body, disappeared in her mouth. Then Eric pushed her, and she rolled over t
hree times, then sprang to her feet, and with a wild startled cry leaped a high bush and disappeared. Nor could they, when they ran to the other side of the bush, find any traces of her.
Another recorded case is the following:
The Mara of Vilvorde
Christine Jansen had two lovers—Nielsen and Osdeven. Nielsen, who was a very good-looking young man, began to suffer from nightmare. He had the most appalling dreams of being strangled and suffocated, and they at last grew so frightful, and proved such a strain on his nerves, that he was forced to consult a doctor. The doctor attributed the cause to indigestion, and prescribed a special diet for him. But it was all of no avail; the bad dreams still continued, and Nielsen’s health became more and more impaired.
At length, when he was almost worn out, having spent the greater part of many nights reading instead of sleeping, in order to avoid the frightful visions, he happened to mention his insufferable condition to Osdeven. Far from ridiculing his rival, Osdeven, with great earnestness, encouraged him to relate everything that had happened to him in his sleep; and when Nielsen had done so, exclaimed, “I’ll tell you what it is—these dreams you have are not ordinary nightmares; they are due to a mara—I know their type well.”
“To a mara!” Nielsen cried; “how ridiculous! Why not say to a mise—or—grim? It would be equally sensible; they are all idle superstitions.”
“So you say now,” Osdeven rejoined, “but wait! When you get into bed to-night, lie on your back, and in your right hand hold a sharp knife on your breast, the point upwards. Remain in this attitude from between eleven o’clock till two, and see what happens.”
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 140