THE SPIRITS OF WERWOLVES
It seems that there is a disposition in certain minds to associate
lycanthropy with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. A brief
examination of the latter will, however, suffice to show there is very
little analogy between the two.
Transmigration of souls, a metempsychosis, deals solely with the passing
of the soul after death into another mortal form. Lycanthropy confines
itself to the metamorphosis of physical man to animal form only during
man's physical lifetime.
Metempsychosis is a change of condition dependent on the principle of
evolution (_i.e._ evolution upward and retrogressive). Lycanthropy is a
change of condition relative to a property, entirely independent of
evolution. The one is wholly determined by man's spiritual state at the
time of his physical dissolution; the other is simply a faculty of
sense, either handed down to man by his forefathers or acquired by man,
during his lifetime, through the knowledge and practice of magic.
There are absolutely no grounds, other than purely hypothetical ones,
for supposing a werwolf to be a reincarnation; but on the other hand
there is reason to believe that the wolf personality of the werwolf, at
the latter's physical dissolution, remains earthbound in the form of a
lupine phantasm. So that although there is nothing to associate
lycanthropy with metempsychosis, there is, at all events, something in
common between lycanthropy and animism. Animism, be it understood, holds
that every living thing, whether man, beast, reptile, insect, or
vegetable, has a representative spirit.
As an example of a lupine phantasm representing the personality of the
werwolf, I will quote a case, reported to me some years ago as having
occurred in Estonia, on the shores of the Baltic. A gentleman and his
sister, whom I will call Stanislaus and Anno D'Adhemar, were invited to
spend a few weeks with their old friends, the Baron and Baroness Von
A----, at their country home in Estonia. On the day arranged, they set
out for their friends' house, and alighting at a little station, within
twenty miles of their destination, were met by the Baron's droshky. It
was one of those exquisite evenings--a night light without moon, a day
shady without clouds--peculiar to that clime. Indeed, it seemed as if
the last glow of the evening and the first grey of the morning had
melted together, and as if all the luminaries of the sky merely rested
their beams without withdrawing them. To Stanislaus and Anno, jaded with
the wear and tear of life in a big city, the calm and quiet of the
country-side was most refreshing, and they heaved great sighs of
contentment as they leaned far back amid the luxurious upholstery of the
carriage, and drew in deep breaths of the smokeless, pure, scented air.
Their surroundings modelled their thoughts. Instead of discussing
monetary matters, which had so long been uppermost in their minds, they
discoursed on the wonderful economy of happiness in a world full of toil
and struggle; the fewer the joys, they argued, the higher the enjoyment,
till the last and highest joy of all, true peace of mind, _i.e._,
content, was the one joy found to contain every other joy. Occasionally
they paused to remark on the brilliant lustre of the stars, and, not
infrequently, alluded to the Creator's graciousness in allowing them to
behold such beauty. Occasionally, too, they would break off in the midst
of their conversation to listen to the plaintive utterings of some night
bird or the shrill cry of a startled hare. The rate at which they were
progressing--for the horses were young and fresh--speedily brought them
to an end of the open country, and they found themselves suddenly
immersed in the deepening gloom of a dense and extensive forest of
pines. The track now was not quite so smooth; here and there were big
ruts, and Stanislaus and his sister were subjected to such a vigorous
bumping that they had to hold on to the sides of the droshky, and to one
another. In the altered conditions of their travel, conversation was
well-nigh impossible. The little they attempted was unceremoniously
jerked out of them, and the nature of it--I am loath to admit--had
somewhat deteriorated. It had, in fact, in accordance with their
surroundings, undergone a considerable change.
"What a vile road!" Stanislaus exclaimed, clutching the side of the
droshky with both hands to save himself from being precipitated into
space.
"Yes--isn't--it?" gasped Anno, as she lunged forward, and in a vain
attempt to regain her seat fell on their handbag, which gave an ominous
squish. "I declare there--there--will be--nothing left of me--by the--by
the time we get there. Oh dear! Whatever shall I do? Wherever have you
got to, Stanislaus?"
The upper half of Stanislaus was nowhere to be seen! His lower half,
however, was discovered by his sister convulsively pressed against the
side of the droshky. In another moment this, too, would undoubtedly have
disappeared, and the lower extremities would have gone in pursuit of the
upper, had not Anno with admirable presence of mind effected a rescue.
She tugged at her brother's coat-tails in the very nick of time, with
the result that his whole body once again hove into view.
Just then a bird sang its final song before retiring for the night, and
Stanislaus, hot and trembling all over, shouted out: "What a hideous
noise! I declare it quite frightened me"; whilst Anno shuddered and put
her fingers in her ears. They once more abused the road; then the trees.
"Great ugly things," they said; "they shut out all the light." And then
they abused the driver for not looking out where he was going, and
finally they began to abuse one another. Anno abused Stanislaus, because
he had disarranged her hat and hair, and Stanislaus, Anno, because he
couldn't hear all she said, and because what he did hear was silly. Then
the Stygian darkness of the great pines grew; and the silence of wonder
fell on the two quarrellers. On, on, on rolled the droshky, a monotonous
rumble, rumble, that sounded very loud amid the intense hush that had
suddenly fallen on the forest. Stanislaus and Anno grew drowsy; the cold
night air, crowning their exertions of the day, induced sleep, and they
were soon very much in the land of nods: Stanislaus with his head thrust
back as far as it would go, and Anno with her head leaning slightly
forward and her chin deeply rooted in the silvery recesses of her rich
fur coat.
The driver stopped for a moment. He had to attend to his lights, which,
he reflected, were behaving in rather an odd manner. Then, scratching
his head thoughtfully, he cracked his whip and drove hurriedly on. Once
again, rumble, rumble, rumble; and no other sounds but far away echoes
and the gentle cooing of a soft night breeze through the forked and
ragged branches of the sad and stately pines. On, on, on, the light
uncertain and the horses brisk. Suddenly the driver hears something--he
strains his ears to catch the meaning of the sounds--a peculiar, quick
patter, patter--coming from far away in the droshky's wake. There is
something--he can't exactly tell what--in those sounds he doesn't like;
they are human, and yet not human; they may proceed from some one
running--some one tall and lithe, with an unusually long stride. They
may--and he casts a shuddering look over his shoulder as the thought
strikes him--they may be nothing human--they may be the patter of a
wolf! A huge, gaunt, hungry wolf! an abnormally big wolf! a wolf with a
gallop like that of a horse! The driver was new to these parts; he had
but lately come from the Baron's establishment in St. Petersburg. He had
never been in this wood after dark, and he had never seen a wolf save in
the Zoological Gardens. The atmosphere now began to sharpen. From being
merely cold it became positively icy, and muttering, "I never felt
anything like this in St. Petersburg," the driver shrank into the depths
of his furs, and tried to settle himself more comfortably in his seat.
The horses, too, four in number, were strangers in Estonia, the Baron
having only recently paid a heavy price for them in Nava on account of
their beauty. Not that they were merely handsome; despite their small
and graceful build, and the glossy sleekness of their coats, they were
both strong and spirited, and could cover twenty-five versts without a
pause. But now they, too, heard the sounds--there was no doubt of
that--and felt the cold. At first they shivered, then whined, and then
came to an abrupt halt; and then, without the slightest warning, tore
the shifting tag and rag tight around them, and bounding forward, were
off like the wind. Then, away in their rear, and plainly audible above
the thunder of their hoofs, came a moaning, snarling, drawn-out cry,
which was almost instantly repeated, not once, but again and again.
Stanislaus and Anno, who had been rudely awakened from their slumbers by
the unusual behaviour of the horses, were now on the _qui vive_.
"Good heavens! What's that?" they cried in chorus.
"What's that, coachman?" shrieked Anno, digging the shivering driver in
the back.
"Volki, mistress, volki!" was the reply, and on flew the droshky faster,
faster, faster!
To Stanislaus and Anno the word "wolves" came as a stunning shock. All
the tales they had ever heard of these ferocious beasts crowded their
minds at once. Wolves! was it possible that those dreadful bogies of
their childhood--those grim and awful creatures, grotesquely but none
the less vividly portrayed in their imagination by horror-loving
nurses--were actually close at hand! Supposing the brutes caught them,
who would be eaten first? Anno, Stanislaus, or the driver? Would they
devour them with their clothes on? If not, how would they get them off?
Then, filled with morbid curiosity, they strained their ears and
listened. Again--this time nearer, much nearer--came that cry, dismal,
protracted, nerve-racking. Nor was that all, for they could now discern
the pat-pat, pat-pat of footsteps--long, soft, loping footsteps, as of
huge furry paws or naked human feet. However, they could see
nothing--nothing but blackness, intensified by the feeble flickering of
the droshky's lanterns.
"Faster! drive faster!" Anno shouted, turning round and poking the
coachman in the ribs with her umbrella. "Do you want us all to be
eaten?"
"I can't mistress, I can't!" the man expostulated; "the horses are
outstripping the wind as it is. They can't go quicker." And the driver,
consigning Stanislaus and his sister to the innermost recesses of hell,
prayed to the Virgin to save him.
Nearer and nearer drew the steps, and again a cry--a cry close behind
them, perhaps fifty yards--fifty yards at the most. And as they were
trying to locate it there burst into view a gigantic figure--nude and
luminous, a figure that glowed like a glow-worm and bent slightly
forward as it ran. It covered the ground with long, easy, swinging
strides, without any apparent effort. In general form its body was like
that of a man, saving that the limbs were longer and covered with short
hair, and the feet and hands, besides being larger as a whole, had
longer toes and fingers. Its head was partly human, partly lupine--the
skull, ears, teeth, and eyes were those of a wolf, whilst the remaining
features were those of a man. Its complexion was devoid of colour,
startlingly white; its eyes green and lurid, its expression hellish.
Stanislaus and Anno did not know what to make of it. Was it some
terrible monstrosity that had escaped from a show, or something that was
peculiar to the forest itself, something generated by the giant trees
and dark, silent road? In their sublime terror they shrieked aloud, beat
the air with their hands to ward it off, and finally left their seats to
cling on to the back of the driver's box.
But it came nearer, nearer, and nearer, until they were almost within
reach of its arms. They read death in the glinting greenness of its eyes
and in the flashing of its long bared teeth. The climax of their agony,
they argued, could no longer be postponed. The thing had only to make a
grab at them and they would die of horror--die even before it touched
them. But this was not to be.
They were still staring into the pale malevolent face drawing nearer and
nearer, and wondering when the long twitching fingers would catch them
by the throats, when the droshky with a mad swirl forward cleared the
forest, and they found themselves gazing wildly into empty moonlit
space, with no sign of their pursuer anywhere.
An hour later they narrated their adventure to the Baron. Nothing could
have exceeded his distress. "My dear friends!" he said, "I owe you a
profound apology. I ought to have told my man to choose any other road
rather than that through the forest, which is well known to be haunted.
According to rumour, a werwolf--we have good reason to believe in
werwolfs here--was killed there many years ago."