Page:Book of Were-wolves.djvu/132

Rh formed by his step-mother into a bear, fights with a knight:—

For 'tis she who hath bewitched me,

A woman false and fell,

Bound an iron girdle round me,

If thou can'st not break this belt,

Knight, I'll thee destroy!

The noble made the Christian sign,

The girdle snapped, the bear was changed,

And see! he was a lusty knight,

His father's realm regained.

Kjæmpeviser, p. 147.

When an old bear in Ofodens Præstegjeld was killed, after it had caused the death of six men and sixty horses, it was found to be girded with a similar girdle.

In Schleswig and Holstein they say that if the were-wolf be thrice addressed by his baptismal name, he resumes his human form.

On a hot harvest day some reapers lay down in the field to take their noontide sleep, when one who could not sleep observed that the fellow next to him rose softly, and having girded himself with a strap, became a were-wolf.

A young man belonging to Jägerup returning late one night from Billund, was attacked, when near Jägerup, by three were-wolves, and would probably