The Book of Were-Wolves by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
page 16 of 202 (07%)
page 16 of 202 (07%)
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It is to be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia,
and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he traced to the following circumstance:--The natives were a pastoral people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks and depredations of wolves. They would naturally institute a sacrifice to obtain deliverance from this pest, and security for their flocks. This sacrifice consisted in the offering of a child, and it was instituted by Lycaon. From the circumstance of the sacrifice being human, and from the peculiarity of the name of its originator, rose the myth. But, on the other hand, the story is far too widely spread for us to attribute it to an accidental origin, or to trace it to a local source. Half the world believes, or believed in, were-wolves, and they were supposed to haunt the Norwegian forests by those who had never remotely been connected with Arcadia: and the superstition had probably struck deep its roots into the Scandinavian and Teutonic minds, ages before Lycaon existed; and we have only to glance at Oriental literature, to see it as firmly engrafted in the imagination of the Easterns. CHAPTER III. THE WERE-WOLF IN THE NORTH. |
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