Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/372

364 a "war-wolf." He tried the experiment with success, much to his own delight. He fed on the daintiest human morsels; the fattest sheep, the tenderest lambs, the most succulent of pigs, were his by "hook or crook." So light and active was he that he distanced all pursuit, and the whole country-side went in dread of him. One day came by a silly ass, who, in an earlier state of existence, had been "a very perfect man in shape and skin." Witchcraft had wrought upon his externals, without diminishing the reason he had possessed as a biped. Him, the werwolf captured, and tugged towards its den, but, being just then without an appetite, the monster secured its prey in a natural meat-safe, a brake of briers and thorns, in which the poor brute's mane and tail soon became most satisfactorily tangled. Happily for him, at this juncture a bevy of men and women and "curs of various degree"— "Ball, Eatall, Cuttail, Blackfoot," and many more unnamed—came out with bills, bats, clubs, spits, fireforks, and much noise, to hunt for the terrible warwolf. He knowing what was happening, and "thinking this ass did nothing understand," went down into a spring hard by, and emerged therefrom in human form. He hid himself until part of the rabble had passed, and then contrived to join the crowd, assuming to be as anxious as anybody to find the enemy. The only game of moment that was discovered was the ass entangled in the briers, and entangled in so curious a manner that every one wondered how he came into such a plight. He could not speak, he could only kneel, cry, make inarticulate sounds and so forth to excite pity; and some of the spectators jumped to the conclusion that the animal had feeling and was longing to be set free. The first use he made of the liberty they gave him was to seek amongst the folk about him for the man who had been wolf, to fix his teeth in him when found, and to drag him to the magic spring. Then he pointed with his foot to it, and "with an ass-like noise" attempted to toll his