The man climbed
a tree in terror, and conjured his companion to resume her
natural shape. Then the lioness came back, and putting on the
skirt made of human skin reappeared as a woman, and took up
her child, and the two friends resumed their journey after
making a meal of the horse's flesh.[143]
[142] Speaking of beliefs in the Malay Archipelago, Mr.
Wallace says: "It is universally believed in Lombock that some
men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which
they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many
strange tales are told of such transformations." Wallace,
Malay Archipelago, Vol. I. p. 251.
[143] Bleek, Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 58.
The werewolf also appears in North America, duly furnished
with his wolf-skin sack; but neither in America nor in Africa
is he the genuine European werewolf, inspired by a diabolic
frenzy, and ravening for human flesh. The barbaric myths
testify to the belief that men can be changed into beasts or
have in some cases descended from beast ancestors, but the
application of this belief to the explanation of abnormal
cannibal cravings seems to have been confined to Europe. The
werewolf of the Middle Ages was not merely a transformed
man,--he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due
to the machinations of the Devil, showed its power over his
physical organism by changing the shape of it.
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