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And he saw her and changed himself into a hare. But she changed herself into a grey-hound and turned him. And he ran towards a river and became a fish. But she, in form of an otter, chased him until he was fain to become a bird. Then she, as a hawk, followed him, and gave him no rest in the sky. Just as he was in fear of death, he saw a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and dropped among the wheat and turned himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and scratched among the wheat with her feet, and found him out and swallowed him.
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Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, published in 1613, records a curious instance of faith in this transformation superstition in England. He says,
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They talk of an oxe that told the bell at Wolwitch, and howe from an oxe he transformed himself to an old man, and from an old man to an infant, and from an infant to a young man.
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Help to Discourse, published in 1633, is the following passage:--
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Q. Wherefore hath it anciently been accounted good luck if a _wolfe crosse our way_, but ill lucke if a hare crosse it?--A. Our ancestors, in times past, as they were merry conceited, so were they witty; and thence it grew that they held it good lucke if a wolf crost the way and was gone without any more danger and trouble; but ill lucke if a hare crost and escaped them, that they had not taken her. Lupton, in
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Notable Things, published in 1660, refers to Pliny as reporting
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Werenfels informs us that when a
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Brand, referring to the superstition which asserts that if a wolf first sees a man, the latter is suddenly struck dumb, says,
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To the relators of this Icaligar wishes as many blows as at different times he had seen wolves without losing his voice. This is well answered. He further notices the belief
gpt
and adds,
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Of this vulgar error, which is as old as Pliny's time, that author exposes the falsehoods.
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They therefore took the form of wolves. If alive at the end of seven years, two others of the sept
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Camden expresses his disbelief of a story he heard in Tipperary, that there were men who every year were turned into wolves. Gervase, of Tilbury, speaks of were-wolves being common in England in his time (the thirteenth century); and reference is made to a wolf-woman in the Mabinogion, or fairy tales of the Welsh, of about the same period. King John, of England, was suspected of being a were-wolf. It is asserted in an old chronicle that, in some such capacity, he uttered such frightful noises, after he was laid in his grave, in Worcester Cathedral, that the pious monks dug up his body, and removed it from the consecrated ground. One of the mediæval metrical romances, by an unknown English author, refers to this superstition. It is a translation of the
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and is entitled the
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Romance of William the Werwolf.