their blood was found, so a great doctor was sent for, who said it was Akondogo's own nephew and heir Akosho. The lad was sent for, and when asked by the chief, answered that it was truly he who had committed the murders, that he could not help it, for he had turned into a leopard, and his heart longed for blood, and after each deed he had turned into a man again. Akondogo loved the boy so much that he would not believe his confession, till Akosho took him to a place in the forest, where lay the mangled bodies of the two men, whom he had really murdered under the influence of this morbid imagination. He was slowly burnt to death, all the people standing by.[1]
Brief mention is enough for the comparatively well-known European representatives of these beliefs. What with the mere continuance of old tradition, what with the tricks of magicians, and what with cases of patients under delusion believing themselves to have suffered transformation, of which a number are on record, the European series of details from ancient to modern ages is very complete. Virgil in the Bucolics shows the popular opinion of his time that the arts of the werewolf, the necromancer or 'medium,' and the witch, were different branches of one craft, where he tells of Mœris as turning into a wolf by the use of poisonous herbs, as calling up souls from the tombs, and as bewitching away crops: —
'Has herbas, atque haec Ponto mihi lecta venena Ipse dedit Moeris; nascuntur plurima Ponto. His ego saepe lupum fieri, et se condere sylvis Moerin, saepe animas imis excire sepulcris, Atque satas aliò vidi traducere messes.'[2]
Of the classic accounts, one of the most remarkable is Petronius Arbiter's story of the transformation of a 'versipellis' or 'turnskin;' this contains the episode of the
