ch a wolfskin
was kept by the boy Grenier. Roulet, on the other hand, confessed to
using a magic salve or ointment. A fourth method of becoming a werewolf
was to obtain a girdle, usually made of human skin. Several cases are
related in Thorpe's "Northern Mythology." One hot day in harvest-time
some reapers lay down to sleep in the shade; when one of them, who could
not sleep, saw the man next him arise quietly and gird him with a strap,
whereupon he instantly vanished, and a wolf jumped up from among the
sleepers and ran off across the fields. Another man, who possessed such
a girdle, once went away from home without remembering to lock it
up. His little son climbed up to the cupboard and got it, and as he
proceeded to buckle it around his waist, he became instantly transformed
into a strange-looking beast. Just then his father came in, and seizing
the girdle restored the child to his natural shape. The boy said that no
sooner had he buckled it on than he was tormented with a raging hunger.

Sometimes the werewolf transformation led to unlucky accidents. At
Caseburg, as a man and his wife were making hay, the woman threw down
her pitchfork and went away, telling her husband that if a wild beast
should come to him during her absence he must throw his hat at it.
Presently a she-wolf rushed towards him. The man threw his hat at it,
but a boy came up from another part of the field and stabbed the animal
with his pitchfork, whereupon it vanished, and the woman's dead body lay
at his feet.

A parallel legend shows that this woman wished to have the hat thrown
at her, in order that she might be henceforth free from her liability
to become a werewolf. A man was one night returning with his wife from
a merry-making when he felt the change coming on. Giving his wife the
reins, he jumped from the wagon, telling her to strike with her apron
at any animal which might come to her. In a few moments a wolf ran up to
the side of the vehicle, and, as the woman struck out with her apron, it
bit off a piece and ran away. Presently the man returned with the
piece of apron in his mouth and consoled his terrified wife with the
information that the enchantment had left him forever.

A terrible case at a village in Auvergne has found its way into the
annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked
by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast
made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the