a were-wolf; nay even to lean your head against anything
against which a were-wolf has leaned his head suffices
to do it. The penalty for being a were-wolf is
death; but the sentence is never passed until the accused
has had a fair trial and his guilt has been clearly
demonstrated by an ordeal, which consists in dipping
the middle finger into boiling resin. If the finger
is not burnt, the man is no were-wolf; but if it is
burnt, a werewolf he most assuredly is, so they take
him away to a quiet spot and hack him to bits.
In cutting him up the executioners are naturally very
careful not to be bespattered with his blood, for
if that were to happen they would of course be turned
into were-wolves themselves. Further, they place
his severed head beside his hinder-quarters to prevent
his soul from coming to life again and pursuing his
depredations. So great is the horror of were-wolves
among the Toradjas, and so great is their fear of
contracting the deadly taint by infection, that many
persons have assured a missionary that they would
not spare their own child if they knew him to be a
were-wolf.[763] Now these people, whose faith in were-wolves
is not a mere dying or dead superstition but a living,
dreadful conviction, tell stories of were-wolves which
conform to the type which we are examining. They
say that once upon a time a were-wolf came in human
shape under the house of a neighbour, while his real
body lay asleep as usual at home, and calling out
softly to the man’s wife made an assignation
with her to meet him in the tobacco-field next day.
But the husband was lying awake and he heard it all,
but he said nothing to anybody. Next day chanced
to be a busy one in the village, for a roof had to
be put on a new house and all the men were lending
a hand with the work, and among them to be sure was
the were-wolf himself, I mean to say his own human
self; there he was up on the roof working away as hard
as anybody. But the woman went out to the tobacco-field,
and behind went unseen her husband, slinking through
the underwood. When they were come to the field,
he saw the were-wolf make up to his wife, so out he
rushed and struck at him with a stick. Quick
as thought, the were-wolf turned himself into a leaf,
but the man was as nimble, for he caught up the leaf,
thrust it into the joint of bamboo, in which he kept
his tobacco, and bunged it up tight. Then he
walked back with his wife to the village, carrying
the bamboo with the werewolf in it. When they
came to the village, the human body of the were-wolf
was still on the roof, working away with the rest.
The man put the bamboo in a fire. At that the
human were-wolf looked down from the roof and said,
“Don’t do that.” The man drew
the bamboo from the fire, but a moment afterwards he
put it in the fire again, and again the human were-wolf
on the roof looked down and cried, “Don’t
do that.” But this time the man kept the
bamboo in the fire, and when it blazed up, down fell
the human were-wolf from the roof as dead as a stone.[764]


