fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy
became regarded as a species of witchcraft; the werewolf was
supposed to have obtained his peculiar powers through the
favour or connivance of the Devil; and hundreds of persons
were burned alive or broken on the wheel for having availed
themselves of the privilege of beast-metamorphosis. The
superstition, thus widely extended and greatly intensified,
was confirmed by many singular phenomena which cannot be
omitted from any thorough discussion of the nature and causes
of lycanthropy.

The first of these phenomena is the Berserker insanity,
characteristic of Scandinavia, but not unknown in other
countries. In times when killing one's enemies often formed a
part of the necessary business of life, persons were
frequently found who killed for the mere love of the thing;
with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merely
a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which
worships mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the
current idea of heaven was that of a place where people could
hack each other to pieces through all eternity, and when the
man who refused a challenge was punished with confiscation of
his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, the
chief business and amusement in life was to set sail for some
pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the
coasts and navigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre.
When at home, in the intervals between their freebooting
expeditions, they were liable to become possessed by a strange
homicidal madness, during which they would array themselves in
the skins of wolves or bears, and sally forth by night to