lycanthropy, lykanthropy

[LYCAN THROPE.] Anthrop.: In a wide sense, the term lycanthropy is used for what Tylor calls the Doctrine of Werewolves-"That certain men by natural gift or magic art can turn, for a time, into ravening wild beasts." Le widely, it denotes a belief in the temporary change of a man into a wolf. Such belief was once widely spread. The dominant Aryans in India in long-past ages described the rude indigenes by an epithet signifying "changing their shape at will." In cla ic times we find the beliof in Hero dot us (iv. 105), in Pliny ( H. N. viii. 34), in Petronius Arbiter (Sat. 62, ad fin .), and in Virgil ( Ecl . viii. 95-99). It is mentioned by Augustine ( de Civ . Dei . xviii 17); it flourished in the Middle Ages, when it was viewed as a form of demoniacal po e ion. Lycanthropy seems to have been first viewed rationally in 1603, when, in the case of Jean Grenier, the judge declared that it was an insane delusion, not a crime." Strange to say, in France, where this just conclusion was come to nearly three centuries ago, the belief in werewolves still lingers, found it impo ible to get a guide after dark acro and within the last twenty years Mr. Baring-Gould a wild place said to be haunted by a loupgarou. (Tylor: Prim . Cult . (1873), ch. viii., where a copious bibliography will be found; see also Baring-Gould: Book of Were- wolves .)