The Werewolf in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers

Author:Montague Summers
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2003-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

THE WEREWOLVES

As might be supposed, werewolfism lingers in the remoter Pyrenees, in the Cantabrian Mountains of the north, and in the Sierra Morena. Mr. Elliott O’Donnell writes: “Though they are extremely rare, both flowers and streams possessing the power of transmitting the property of werewolfery are to be found in the Cantabrian mountains and the Pyrenees.”126

A very ancient and widespread tradition concerns itself in Portugal127 with the lobis-homem, who are for the most part believed to be ensorcelled by some stroke of fate, fado, or slaved by a spell, sina. The Portuguese lobis-homem of the southern province differs in many respects from the werewolf, for he is a clandestine and even a timid creature. The man (or woman) who is under the charm of the wolf goes out by night to some lonely spot, generally where four crossroads meet. After having turned round five times with giddy speed, he falls upon the earth grovelling and howling. (If by chance some wild animal has previously lain upon the spot he will assume the shape of that animal.) He then rises transformed to a wolf. But unlike the northern werewolf and the loup-garou the lobis-homems seek to harm none. They run about country lanes, but at the least glimmer of a light they gallop off at full tilt into the kindly darkness. If they prowl near a cottage they utter long howls and a kind of sobbing noise, which is taken to be an entreaty for the candle or lamp to be promptly dowsed. M. Ferdinand Denis128 says that werewolfism seems to have been most prevalent in Portugal in the fifteenth century, but if a belated peasant chanced to meet one of these hapless wretches he had only to strike a flint or show the glim of the lanthorn he was carrying and the lobis-homem fled.

A curious point is that the lobis-homem was generally supposed to have a short tail, which was covered with yellow fur.

There was, however, quite another and most evil kind of lobis-homem, who seems to have been closely connected with the bruxa, the Portuguese witch, a Satanist of the vilest and most deadly courses.

Writing in 1870, Oswald Frederick Crawfurd129 says that in Portugal “the superstitions have the peculiar gloomy stamp of the legendary mysteries of ancient Italy… . The type of Latin legend to which I refer, is that well-known and most grisly and hideous of all ghost stories, the tale of the soldier in Petronius Arbiter. Now the belief in the ‘Lupus-homem’ is very prevalent in parts of Northern Portugal … [and] nowhere is this belief invested with so many peculiar and gloomy circumstances as in Portugal

He relates a werewolf history which was told him by a farmer at whose manor he received the generous hospitality of the country. When a young man this farmer was working at a farm, near Cabrasam, among the mountains of Estrica, one of the wildest districts of Portugal. The master of the farm had recently married a young wife, and as

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