ground, roasting one of the inmates, who was unable to escape.
The beggar passed by soon after, and, as he was suffering from
excessive hunger, could not resist the temptation of making a
meal off the charred body. From that moment he was tormented
by a craving for human flesh. He met a little orphan girl,
about nine years old, and giving her a pinchbeck ring told her
to seek for others like it under a tree in the neighbouring
wood. She was slain, carried to the beggar's hovel, and eaten.
In the course of three years thirteen other children
mysteriously disappeared, but no one knew whom to suspect. At
last an innkeeper missed a pair of ducks, and having no good
opinion of this beggar's honesty, went unexpectedly to his
cabin, burst suddenly in at the door, and to his horror found
him in the act of hiding under his cloak a severed head; a
bowl of fresh blood stood under the oven, and pieces of a
thigh were cooking over the fire.[79]

[78] Baring-Gould, Werewolves, p. 81.

[79] Baring-Gould, op. cit. chap. xiv.

This occurred only about twenty years ago, and the criminal,
though ruled by an insane appetite, is not known to have been
subject to any mental delusion. But there have been a great
many similar cases, in which the homicidal or cannibal craving
has been accompanied by genuine hallucination. Forms of
insanity in which the afflicted persons imagine themselves to
be brute animals are not perhaps very common, but they are not
unknown. I once knew a poor demented old man who believed
himself to be a horse, and would stand by the hour together