Werwolves Part 18

M. Tonno answered this peremptory summons himself, and demanded in an angry voice what Max meant by daring to announce himself thus.

Max pointed in the direction of the corpse. "That!" he shrieked; "that is the reason of my visit. Madame Tonno is a werwolf--she has murdered both my wife and child, and I am here to demand justice."

"Come inside," M. Tonno said, the tone of his voice suddenly changing.

"We can discuss the matter indoors in the privacy of my study." And he conducted Max to a room in the rear of the house.

But no sooner had Max crossed the threshold than the door was slammed on him, and he found himself a prisoner. He turned to the window, but there was no hope there--it was heavily barred. But although a peasant--and a fool, so he told himself, to have thus deliberately walked into a trap--Max was not altogether without wits, and he searched the room thoroughly, eventually discovering a loose board. Tearing it up, he saw that the s.p.a.ce under the floor--that is to say, between the floor and the foundation of the house--was just deep enough for him to lie there at full length. Here, then, was a possible avenue of escape.

Setting to work, he succeeded, after much effort, in wrenching up another board, and then another, and getting into the excavation thus made, he worked his way along on his stomach, until he came to a grating, which, to his utmost joy, proved to be loose. It was but the work of a few minutes to force it out and to dislodge a few bricks, and Max was once again free. His one idea now was to tell his tale to his brother peasants and rouse them to immediate action, and with this end in view he set off running at full speed to the nearest settlement.

The peasants of Lapland are slow and stolid and take a lot of rousing, but when once they are roused, few people are so terrible.

Fortunately for Max, he was not the only sufferer; several other people in the neighbourhood had lately lost their children, and the story he told found ready credence. In less than an hour a large body of men and women, armed with every variety of weapon, from a sword to a pitchfork, had gathered together, and setting off direct to the chateau, they surrounded it on all sides, and forcing an entrance, seized M. Tonno and his werwolf wife and werwolf children, and binding them hand and foot, led them to the sh.o.r.es of Lake Enara and drowned them. They then went back to the house and, setting fire to it, burned it to the ground, thus making certain of destroying any werwolf influence it might still contain.

With this wholesale extermination a case that may be taken as a characteristic type of Lapland lycanthropy in all its grim and sordid details concludes.

FINLAND WERWOLVES

Finland teems with stories of werwolves--stories ancient and modern, for the werwolf is said to still flourish in various parts of the country.

The property is not restricted to one s.e.x; it is equally common to both.

Spells and various forms of exorcism are used, and certain streams are held to be lycanthropous.

However, in Finland as in Scandinavia, it is very difficult to procure information as to werwolves. The common peasant, who alone knows anything about the anomaly, is withheld by superst.i.tion from even mentioning its name; and if he mentions a werwolf at all, designates him only as the "old one," or the "grey one," or the "great dog," feeling that to call this terror by its true name is a sure way to exasperate it. It is only by strategy one learns from a peasant that when a fine young ox is found in the morning breathing hard, his hide bathed in foam, and with every sign of fright and exhaustion, while, perhaps, only one trifling wound is discovered on the whole body, which swells and inflames as if poison had been infused, the animal generally dying before night; and that when, on examination of the corpse, the intestines are found to be torn as with the claws of a wolf, and the whole body is in a state of inflammation, it is accounted certain that the mischief has been caused by a werwolf.

It is thus a werwolf serves his quarry when he kills for the mere love of killing, and not for food.

In Finland, perhaps more than in other countries, werwolves are credited with demoniacal power, and old women who possess the property of metamorphosing into wolves are said to be able to paralyse cattle and children with their eyes, and to have poison in their nails, one wound from which causes certain death.

To ill.u.s.trate the foregoing I have selected an incident which happened near Diolen, a village on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Gulf of Finland, at the distance of about a hundred wersts from the ancient city of Mawa.

Here vegetation is of a more varied and luxuriant kind than is usually found in the Northern lat.i.tude; the oak and the bela, intermingled with rich plots of gra.s.s, grow at the very edge of the sea--a phenomenon accountable for by the fact that the Baltic is tideless.

For about half a werst in breadth, the sh.o.r.e continues a level, luxuriant stretch, when it suddenly rises in three successive cliffs, each about a hundred feet in height, and placed about the same s.p.a.ce of half a werst, one behind the other, like huge steps leading to the table-land above. In some places the rocks are completely hidden from the view by a thick fence of trees, which take root at their base, while each level is covered by a minute forest of firs, in which grow a variety of herbs and shrubs, including the English whitethorn, and wild strawberries.

It was to gather the latter that Savanich and his seven-year-old son, Peter, came one afternoon early in summer. They had filled two baskets and were contemplating returning home with their spoil, when Caspan, the big sheepdog, uttered a low growl.

"Hey, Caspan, what is it?" Peter cried. "Footsteps! And such curious ones!"

"They are curious," Savanich said, bending down to examine them. "They are larger and coa.r.s.er than those of Caspan, longer in shape, and with a deep indentation of the ball of the foot. They are those of a wolf--an old one, because of the deepness of the tracks. Old wolves walk heavy.

And here's a wound the brute has got in its paw. See! there is a slight irregularity on the print of the hind feet, as if from a dislocated claw. We must be on our guard. Wolves are hungry now: the waters have driven them up together, and the cattle are not let out yet. The beast is not far off, either. An old wolf like this will prowl about for days together, round the same place, till he picks up something."

"I hope it won't attack us, father," Peter said, catching hold of Savanich by the hand. "What should you do if it did?"

But before Savanich could reply, Caspan gave a loud bark and dashed into the thicket, and the next moment a terrible pandemonium of yells, and snorts, and sharp howls filled the air. Drawing his knife from its sheath, and telling Peter to keep close at his heels, Savanich followed Caspan and speedily came upon the scene of the encounter. Caspan had hold of a huge grey wolf by the neck, and was hanging on to it like grim death, in spite of the brute's frantic efforts to free itself.

There was but little doubt that the brave dog would have, eventually, paid the penalty for its rashness--for the wolf had mauled it badly, and it was beginning to show signs of exhaustion through loss of blood--had not Savanich arrived in the nick of time. A couple of thrusts from his knife stretched the wolf on the ground, when, to his utmost horror, it suddenly metamorphosed into a hideous old hag.

"A werwolf!" Savanich gasped, crossing himself. "Get out of her way, Peter, quick!"

But it was too late. Thrusting out a skinny hand, the hag scratched Peter on the ankle with the long curved, poisonous nail of her forefinger. Then, with an evil smile on her lips, she turned over on her back, and expired. And before Peter could be got home he, too, was dead.

CHAPTER XVII

THE WERWOLF IN RUSSIA AND SIBERIA

The ideal home of all things weird and uncanny--is cold, grey, gaunt, and giant Russia. Nowhere is the werwolf so much in evidence to-day as in the land of the Czar, where all the primitive conditions favourable to such anomalies, still exist, and where they have undergone but little change in the last ten thousand years.

A thinly-populated country--vast stretches of wild uncultivated land, full of dense forests, rich in trees most favourable to Elementals, and watered by deep, silent tarns, and stealthily moving streams,--its very atmosphere is impregnated with lycanthropy.

At the base of giant firs and poplars, or poking out their heads impudently, from amidst brambles and ferns, are werwolf flowers--flowers with all the characteristics of those found in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula, but of a greater variety. There are, for example, in addition to the white, yellow, and red species, those of a bluish-white hue, that emit a glow at night like the phosph.o.r.escent glow emanating from decaying animal and vegetable matter; and those of a brilliant orange, covered with black, protruding spots, suggestive of some particularly offensive disease, that show a marked preference for damp places, and are specially to be met with growing in the slime and mud at the edge of a pool, or in the soft, rotten mould of mora.s.ses.

Werwolves haunt the plains, too--the great barren, undulating deserts that roll up to the foot of the Urals, Caucasus, Altai, Yablonoi, and Stanovoi Mountains--and the Tundras along the sh.o.r.es of the Arctic Ocean--dreary swamps in summer and ice-covered wastes in winter. Here, at night, they wander over the rough, stony, arid ground, picking their way surrept.i.tiously through the scant vegetation, and avoiding all frequented localities; pausing, every now and then, to slake their thirst in deep sunk wells, or to listen for the sounds of quarry. Hazel hen, swans, duck, geese, squirrels, hares, elk, reindeer, roes, fallowdeer, and wild sheep, all are food to the werwolf, though nothing is so heartily appreciated by it as fat tender children or young and plump women.

In its nocturnal ramblings the werwolf often encounters enemies--bears, wolves, and panthers--with which it struggles for dominion--dominion of forest, plain and mountain; and when the combat ends to its disadvantage, its metamorphosed corpse is at once devoured by its conqueror.

Of all parts of Russia, the werwolf loves best the Caucasus and Ural Mountains. They are to Russia what the Harz Mountains were to Germany, centuries ago--the head-quarters of all manner of psychic phenomena, the happy hunting ground of phantom and fairy; and over them still lingers, almost, if not quite, as forcibly as ever, the glamour and mystery inseparable from the superphysical.

Times without number have the great black beetling crags of these mountains been scaled by the furry, sinewy feet of werwolves; times without number have the shadows of these anomalies fallen on the moon-kissed, snowy peaks, towering high into the sky, or mingled with the rank and dewy herbage in the pine-clad valleys, and narrow abysmal gorges deep down below.

It was here, in these lone Russian mountains, so legend relates, that Peter and Paul turned an impious wife and husband, who refused them shelter, into wolves: but Peter and Paul, apparently, had not the monopoly of this power; for it was here, too, in a Ural village, that the Devil is alleged to have metamorphosed half a dozen men into wolves for not paying him sufficient homage.

There is no restriction as to the s.e.x of werwolves in Russia and Siberia--male and female werwolves are about equal in number, though perhaps there is a slight preponderance in favour of the female.

Vargamors are to be encountered in almost all the less frequented woody regions, but more especially in those in the immediate vicinity of the Urals and Caucasus.

Though many of the werwolves inherit the property, many, too, have acquired it through direct intercourse with the superphysical; and the invocation of spirits, whether performed individually or collectively, is far from uncommon.

Black Magic is said to be practised in the Urals, Caucasus, Yerkhoiansk, and Stanovoi Mountains; in the Tundras, the Plains of East Russia, the Timan Range, the Kola Peninsula, and various parts of Siberia.

I am told that the usual initiating ceremony consists of drawing a circle, from seven to nine feet in radius, in the centre of which circle a wood fire is kindled--the wood selected being black poplar, pine or larch, never ash. A fumigation in an iron vessel, heated over the fire, is then made out of a mixture of any four or five of the following substances: Hemlock (2 to 3 ounces), henbane (1 ounce to 1-1/2 ounces), saffron (3 ounces), poppy seed (any amount), aloe (3 drachms), opium (1/4 ounce), asaftida (2 ounces), solanum (2 to 3 drachms), parsley (any amount).

As soon as the vessel is placed over the fire so that it can heat, the person who would invoke the spirit that can bestow upon him the property of metamorphosing into a wolf kneels within the circle, and prays a preliminary impromptu prayer. He then resorts to an incantation, which runs, so I have been told, as follows:--

"Hail, hail, hail, great wolf spirit, hail!

A boon I ask thee, mighty shade. Within this circle I have made, Make me a werwolf strong and bold, The terror alike of young and old.

Grant me a figure tall and spare; The speed of the elk, the claws of the bear; The poison of snakes, the wit of the fox; The stealth of the wolf, the strength of the ox; The jaws of the tiger, the teeth of the shark; The eyes of a cat that sees in the dark.

Make me climb like a monkey, scent like a dog, Swim like a fish, and eat like a hog.

Haste, haste, haste, lonely spirit, haste!

Here, wan and drear, magic spell making, Findest thou me--shaking, quaking.

Softly fan me as I lie, And thy mystic touch apply-- Touch apply, and I swear that when I die, When I die, I will serve thee evermore, Evermore, in grey wolf land, cold and raw."

The incantation concluded, the supplicant then kisses the ground three times, and advancing to the fire, takes off the iron vessel, and whirling it smoking round his head, cries out:--

"Make me a werwolf! make me a man-eater!

Make me a werwolf! make me a woman-eater!

Make me a werwolf! make me a child-eater!