ieval times of very frequent occurrence. It may, on the
other hand, be a relic of early cannibalism. Communities of
semi-civilized people would begin to shun those who devoured human
flesh, and they would in time be ostracized and classed with wild
beasts, the idea that they had something in common with these would
grow, and the belief that they were able to transform themselves into
veritable animals would be likely to arise therefrom.

There were two kinds of were-wolf, voluntary and involuntary. The
voluntary included those persons who because of their taste for human
flesh had withdrawn from intercourse with their fellows, and who
appeared to possess a certain amount of magical power, or at least
sufficient to permit them to transform themselves into animal shape at
will. This they effected by merely disrobing, by taking off a girdle
made of human skin, or putting on a similar belt of wolf-skin
(obviously a later substitute for an entire wolf-skin; in some cases
we hear of their donning the skin entire). In other instances the body
was rubbed with magic ointment, or rain-water was drunk out of a
wolf's footprint. The brains of the animal were also eaten. Olaus
Magnus says that the were-wolves of Livonia drained a cup of beer on
initiation, and repeated certain magical words. In order to throw off
the wolf-shape the animal girdle was removed, or else the magician
merely muttered certain formulae. In some instances the transformation
was supposed to be the work of Satan.

The superstition regarding were-wolves seems to have been exceedingly
prevalent in France during the sixteenth century, and there is
evidence of numerous trials of persons accused of were-wolfism, in
some of which it was clearly shown that murder and cannibalism had
taken place. Self-hallucination was accountable for many of the cases,
the supposed were-wolves declaring that they had transformed
themselves and had slain many people. But about the beginning of the
seventeenth century native common sense came to the rescue, and such
confessions were not credited. In Teutonic and Slavonic countries it
was complained by men of learning that the were-wolves did more damage
than real wild animals, and the existence of a regular 'college' or
institution for the practice of the art of animal transformation among
were-wolves was affirmed.

Involuntary were-wolves, of which class Bisclaveret was evidently a
member, were often persons transformed into animal