Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/57

54 in 1618, relates how that in a village in Switzerland, near Lucerne, a peasant was attacked by a wolf whilst he was hewing timber; he defended himself, and smote off a foreleg of the beast. The moment that the blood began to flow the wolf’s form changed, and he recognised a woman without her arm. She was burnt alive. Any number of stories might be instanced to show how widely spread this superstition is, but these must suffice. In the British Isles, whence wolves have long ago been expelled, it is only hares and cats that represent transformed witches.

There is, however, the old English romance of William and the Werewolf, but this professes to be a translation from the French. Gervase of Tilbury, however, says in his Otia Imperalia: ‘We have often seen in England, at changes of the moon, men transformed into wolves, which sort of human beings the French call gerulfos, but the English call them wer-wlf; wer in English signifies man, and wif a wolf.’

In Devonshire transformed witches range the moors in the shape of black dogs, and I know a story of two such creatures appearing in an inn and nightly drinking the cider, till the publican shot a silver button over their heads, when they were instantly transformed into two ill-favoured old hags.