to his friend’s house.  He entered it like a ghost, to the surprise of the widow, who wondered to see him abroad so late.  “If you had only been here a little ago,” said she, “you might have been of some use.  For a wolf came tearing into the yard, scaring the cattle and bleeding them like a butcher.  But he did not get off so easily, for the servant speared him in the neck.”  After hearing these words, Niceros felt that he could not close an eye, so he hurried away home again.  It was now broad daylight, but when he came to the place where the clothes had been turned to stone, he found only a pool of blood.  He reached home, and there lay the soldier in bed like an ox in the shambles, and the doctor was bandaging his neck.  “Then I knew,” said Niceros, “that the man was a were-wolf, and never again could I break bread with him, no, not if you had killed me for it."[767]

[Witches like were-wolves can temporarily transform themselves into animals.]

These stories may help us to understand the custom of burning a bewitched animal, which has been observed in our own country down to recent times, if indeed it is even now extinct.  For a close parallel may be traced in some respects between witches and were-wolves.  Like were-wolves, witches are commonly supposed to be able to transform themselves temporarily into animals for the purpose of playing their mischievous pranks;[768] and like were-wolves they can in their animal disguise be compelled to unmask themselves to any one who succeeds in drawing their blood.  In either case the animal-skin is conceived as a cloak thrown round the wicked enchanter; and if you can only pierce the skin, whether by the stab of a knife or the shot of a gun, you so rend the disguise that the man or woman inside of it stands revealed in his or her true colours.  Strictly speaking, the stab should be given on the brow or between the eyes in the case both of a witch and of a were-wolf;[769] and it is vain to shoot at a were-wolf unless you have had the bullet blessed in a chapel of St. Hubert or happen to be carrying about you, without knowing it, a four-leaved clover; otherwise the bullet will merely rebound from the were-wolf like water from a duck’s back.[770] However, in Armenia they say that the were-wolf, who in that country is usually a woman, can be killed neither by shot nor by steel; the only way of delivering the unhappy woman from her bondage is to get hold of her wolf’s skin and burn it; for that naturally prevents her from turning into a wolf again.  But it is not easy to find the skin, for she is cunning enough to hide it by day.[771] So with witches, it is not only useless but even dangerous to shoot at one of them when she has turned herself into a hare; if you do, the gun may burst in your hand or the shot come back and kill you.  The only way to make quite sure of hitting a witch-animal is to put a silver sixpence or a silver button in your gun.[772] For example, it happened one evening that a native of the island of Tiree was going home with a new gun, when he saw a black sheep running towards him across the plain of Reef.  Something about the creature excited his suspicion, so he put a silver sixpence in his gun and fired at it.  Instantly the black sheep became a woman with a drugget coat wrapt round her head.  The man knew her quite well, for she was a witch who had often persecuted him before in the shape of a cat.[773]