A GALICIAN WERE-WOLF.
The Inhabitants of Austrian Galicia—The Hamlet of Polomyja—Summer
Evening in the Forest—The Beggar Swiatek—A Girl disappears—A School-boy
vanishes—A Servant-girl lost—Another Boy carried of—The Discovery made
by the Publican of Polomyja—Swiatek locked up—Brought to Dabkow—Commits
suicide.
The inhabitants of Austrian Galicia are quiet, inoffensive people, take
them as a whole. The Jews, who number a twelfth of the population, are
the most intelligent, energetic, and certainly the most money-making
individuals in the province, though the Poles proper, or Mazurs, are
not devoid of natural parts.
Perhaps as remarkable a phenomenon as any other in that kingdom—for
kingdom of Waldimir it was—is the enormous numerical preponderance of
the nobility over the untitled. In 1837 the proportions stood thus:
32,190 nobles to 2,076 tradesmen.
The average of execution for crime is nine a year, out of a population
of four and a half millions,—by no means a high figure, considering the
peremptory way in which justice is dealt forth in that province. Yet,
in the most quiet and well-disposed neighbourhoods, occasionally the
most startling atrocities are committed, occurring when least expected,
and sometimes perpetrated by the very person who is least suspected.
Just sixteen years ago there happened in the circle of Tornow, in
Western Galicia-the province is divided into nine circles-a
circumstance which will probably furnish the grandames with a story for
their firesides, during their bitter Galician winters, for many a long
year.
In the circle of Tornow, in the lordship of Parkost, is a little hamlet
called Polomyja, consisting of eight hovels and a Jewish tavern. The
inhabitants are mostly woodcutters, hewing down the firs of the dense
forest in which their village is situated, and conveying them to the
nearest water, down which they are floated to the Vistula. Each tenant
pays no rent for his cottage and pitch of field, but is bound to work a
fixed number of days for his landlord: a practice universal in Galicia,
and often productive of much discontent and injustice, as the
proprietor exacts labour from his tenant on those days when the harvest
has to be got in, or the land is m best condition for tillage, and just
when the peasant would gladly be engaged upon his own small plot. Money
is scarce in the province, and this is accordingly the only way in
which the landlord can be sure of his dues.
Most of the villagers of Polomyja are miserably poor; but by
cultivating a little maize, and keeping a few fowls or a pig, they
scrape together sufficient to sustain life. During the summer the men
collect resin from the pines, from each of which, once in twelve Years,
they strip a slip of bark, leaving the resin to exude and trickle into
a small earthenware jar at its roots; and, during the winter, as
already stated, they fell the trees and roll them down to the river.
Polomyja is not a cheerful spot—nested among dense masses of pine,
which shed a gloom over the little hamlet; yet, on a fine day, it is
pleasant enough for the old women to sit at their cottage doors,
scenting that matchless pine fragrance, sweeter than the balm of the
Spice Islands, for there is nothing cloying in that exquisite and
exhilarating odour; listening to the harp-like thrill of the breeze in
the old grey tree-tops, and knitting quietly at long stockings, whilst
their little grandchildren romp in the heather and tufted fern.
Towards evening, too, there is something indescribably beautiful in the
firwood. The sun dives among the trees, and paints their boles with
patches of luminous saffron, or falling over a level clearing,
glorifies it with its orange dye, so visibly contrasting with the
blue-purple shadow on the western rim of unreclaimed forest, deep and
luscious as the bloom on a plum. The birds then are hastening to their
nests, a ger-falcon, high overhead, is kindled with sunlight; capering
and gambolling among the branches, the merry squirrel skips home for
the night.
The sun goes down, but the sky is still shining with twilight. The wild
cat begins to hiss and squall in the forest, the heron to flap hastily
by, the stork on the top of the tavern chimney to poise itself on one
leg for sleep. To-whoo! an owl begins to wake up. Hark! the woodcutters
are coming home with a song.
Such is Polomyja in summer time, and much resembling it are the hamlets
scattered about the forest, at intervals of a few miles; in each, the
public-house being the most commodious and best-built edifice, the
church, whenever there is one, not remarkable for anything but its
bulbous steeple.
You would hardly believe that amidst all this poverty a beggar could
have picked up any subsistence, and yet, a few years ago, Sunday after
Sunday, there sat a white-bearded venerable man at the church door,
asking alms.
Poor people are proverbially compassionate and liberal, so that the old
man generally got a few coppers, and often some good woman bade him
come into her cottage, and let him have some food.
Occasionally Swiatek—that was the beggar’s name, went his rounds
selling small pinchbeck ornaments and beads; generally, however, only
appealing to charity.
One Sunday, after church, a Mazur and his wife invited the old man into
their hut and gave him a crust of pie and some meat. There were several
children about, but a little girl, of nine or ten, attracted the old
man’s attention by her artless tricks.
Swiatek felt in his pocket and produced a ring, enclosing a piece of
coloured glass set over foil. This he presented to the child, who ran
off delighted to show her acquisition to her companions.
“Is that little maid your daughter?” asked the beggar.
“No,” answered the house-wife, “she is an orphan; there was a widow in
this place who died, leaving the child, and I have taken charge of her;
one mouth more will not matter much, and the good God will bless us.”
“Ay, ay! to be sure He will; the orphans and fatherless are under His
own peculiar care.”
“She’s a good little thing, and gives no trouble,” observed the woman.
“You go back to Polomyja tonight, I reckon.”
“I do—ah!” exclaimed Swiatek, as the little girl ran up to him. You
like the ring, is it not beautiful? I found it under a big fir to the
left of the churchyard,there may be dozens there. You must turn round
three times, bow to the moon, and say, ‘Zaboï!’ then look among the
tree-roots till you find one.”
“Come along!” screamed the child to its comrades; “we will go and look
for rings.”
“You must seek separately,” said Swiatek.
The children scampered off into the wood.
“I have done one good thing for you,” laughed the beggar, “in ridding
you, for a time, of the noise of those children.”
“I am glad of a little quiet now and then,” said the woman; “the
children will not let the baby sleep at times with their clatter. Are
you going?”
“Yes; I must reach Polomyja to-night. I am old and very feeble, and
poor”—he began to fall into his customary whine— very poor, but I thank
and pray to God for you.”
Swiatek left the cottage.
_That little orphan was never seen again._
The Austrian Government has, of late years, been vigorously advancing
education among the lower orders, and establishing schools throughout
the province.
The children were returning from class one day, and were scattered
among the trees, some pursuing a field-mouse, others collecting
juniper-berries, and some sauntering with their hands in their pockets,
whistling.
“Where’s Peter?” asked one little boy of another who was beside him.
“We three go home the same way, let us go together.”
“Peter!” shouted the lad.
“Here I am!” was the answer from among the trees; “I’ll be with you
directly.”
“Oh, I see him!” said the elder boy. “There is some one talking to
him.”
“Where?”
“Yonder, among the pines. Ah! they have gone further into the shadow,
and I cannot see them any more. I wonder who was with him; a man, I
think.”
The boys waited till they were tired, and then they sauntered home,
determined to thrash Peter for having kept them waiting. _But Peter was
never seen again._
Some time after this a servant-girl, belonging to a small store kept by
a Russian, disappeared from a village five miles from Polomyja. She had
been sent with a parcel of grocery to a cottage at no very great
distance, but lying apart from the main cluster of hovels, and
surrounded by trees.
The day closed in, and her master waited her return anxiously, but as
several hours elapsed without any sign of her, he—assisted by the
neighbours—went in search of her.
A slight powdering of snow covered the ground, and her footsteps could
be traced at intervals where she had diverged from the beaten track. In
that part of the road where the trees were thickest, there were marks
of two pair of feet leaving the path; but owing to the density of the
trees at that spot and to the slightness of the fall of snow, which did
not reach the soil, where shaded by the pines, the footprints were
immediately lost. By the following morning a heavy fall had obliterated
any further traces which day-light might have discovered.
_The servant-girl also was never seen again._
During the winter of 1849 the wolves were supposed to have been
particularly ravenous, for thus alone did people account for the
mysterious disappearances of children.
A little boy had been sent to a fountain to fetch water; the pitcher
was found standing by the well, but _the boy had vanished_. The
villagers turned out, and those wolves which could be found were
despatched.
We have already introduced our readers to Polomyja, although the
occurrences above related did not take place among those eight hovels,
but in neighbouring villages. The reason for our having given a more
detailed account of this cluster of houses—rude cabins they were—will
now become apparent.
In May, 1849, the innkeeper of Polomyja missed a couple of ducks, and
his suspicions fell upon the beggar who lived there, and whom he held
in no esteem, as he himself was a hard-working industrious man, whilst
Swiatek maintained himself, his wife, and children by mendicity,
although possessed of sufficient arable land to yield an excellent crop
of maize, and produce vegetables, if tilled with ordinary care.
As the publican approached the cottage a fragrant whiff of roast
greeted his nostrils.
“I’ll catch the fellow in the act,” said the innkeeper to himself,
stealing up to the door, and taking good care not to be observed.
As he threw open the door, he saw the mendicant hurriedly shuffle
something under his feet, and conceal it beneath his long clothes. The
publican was on him in an instant, had him by the throat, charged him
with theft, and dragged him from his seat. Judge of his sickening
horror when from beneath the pauper’s clothes rolled forth the head of
a girl about the age of fourteen or fifteen years, carefully separated
from the trunk.
In a short while the neighbours came up. The venerable Swiatek was
locked up, along with his wife, his daughter—a girl of sixteen—and a
son, aged five.
The hut was thoroughly examined, and the mutilated remains of the poor
girl discovered. In a vat were found the legs and thighs, partly raw,
partly stewed or roasted. In a chest were the heart, liver, and
entrails, all prepared and cleaned, as neatly as though done by a
skilful butcher; and, finally, under the oven was a bowl full of fresh
blood. On his way to the magistrate of the district. the wretched man
flung himself repeatedly on the ground, struggled with his guards, and
endeavoured to suffocate himself by gulping clown clods of earth and
stones, but was prevented by his conductors.
When taken before the Protokoll at Dabkow, he stated that he had
already killed and—assisted by his family—eaten six persons: his
children, however, asserted most positively that the number was much
greater than he had represented, and their testimony is borne out by
the fact, that the remains of _fourteen_ different caps and suits of
clothes, male as well as female, were found in his house.
The origin of this horrible and depraved taste was as follows,
according to Swiatek’s own confession:—
In 1846, three years previous, a Jewish tavern in the neighbourhood had
been burned down, and the host had himself perished in the flames.
Swiatek, whilst examining the ruins, had found the half-roasted corpse
of the publican among the charred rafters of the house. At that time
the old man was craving with hunger, having been destitute of food for
some time. The scent and the sight of the roasted flesh inspired him
with an uncontrollable desire to taste of it. He tore off a portion of
the carcase and satiated his hunger upon it, and at the same time he
conceived such a liking for it, that he could feel no rest till he had
tasted again. His second victim was the orphan above alluded to; since
then—that is, during the period of no less than three years—he had
frequently subsisted in the same manner, and had actually grown sleek
and fat upon his frightful meals.
The excitement roused by the discovery of these atrocities was intense;
several poor mothers who had bewailed the loss of their little ones,
felt their wounds reopened agonisingly. Popular indignation rose to the
highest pitch: there was some fear lest the criminal should be torn in
pieces himself by the enraged people, as soon as he was brought to
trial: but he saved the necessity of precautions being taken to ensure
his safety, for, on the first night of his confinement, he hanged
himself from the bars of the prison-window.