Lane found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a witch who was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape she was wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she resumed her human appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century, found precisely the same tale, except that the wizards took the form of birds, not of hares, among the Red Indians. The birds were wounded by the magical arrows of an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui Eretsi, and these bolts were found in the bodies of the human culprits. In Japan, as we learn from several stories in Mr.
Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, people chiefly metamorphose themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras
"possess the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were much feared accordingly". Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated people of Guatemala, the very name of the clergy, haleb, was derived from their power of assuming animal shapes, which they took on as easily as the Homeric gods. Regnard, the French dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at the end of the seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches can turn men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows, falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".
Among the Bushmen "sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and jackals". Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay, found that "sorcerers arrogate to themselves the power of transforming themselves into tigers". He was present when the Abipones believed that a conversion of this sort was actually taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are growing".
Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his proper form". Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are still alive they may enter into lions and alligators". Among the Mayas of Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves into dogs, pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a victim". The Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can metamorphose themselves into animals at pleasure; and a very old raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E. S. Wood as an incarnation of the soul of a Shaman. Sir A. C. Lyall finds a similar belief in flourishing existence in India. The European superstition of the were-wolf is too well known to need description. Perhaps the most curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis about a man and his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They retained human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith, and sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In an old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and hunted and slain by her brother's hounds. The "aboriginal" peoples of India retain similar convictions. Among the Hos, an old sorcerer called Pusa was known to turn himself habitually into a tiger, and to eat his neighbour's goats, and even their wives.
Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in America. Hearne found that the Indians believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man.
Vol. i. pp. 309-315.
See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Arabian Nights, i. 51.
Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.
Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.
Pinkerton, i. 471.
Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.
English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.
Missionary Travels, p. 615.
Livingstone, p. 642.
Bancroft, ii.
Century Magazine, July, 1882.
Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.
Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington, 1880-81.
A Journey, etc., p. 342.
Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their abodes.
When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised, as distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and creative guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general, though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark, or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the Greeks, Zeus, mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le Jeune, the old Jesuit missionary, observed, the medicine-man enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a real living medicine- man. But myth-****** man confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.
Relations (1636), p. 114.