goats, deer, horses, hares, eagles, foxes, magpies, moths, pigs, swans, toads, and weasels.[1] On the authority of Giraldus we may add the wolf in Ireland, and on that of Saxo, the walrus in Norway. The facts admit, however, of another explanation, to which I shall refer later.
(iii.) Widely distributed also is the correlative of this belief. In some cases animals are regarded as human beings under a curse.
In the Isle of Man the wren is said to be a transformed fairy;[2] so, too, the toad in Sicily,[3] the gull,[4] lizard,[5] cuckoo;[6] mole, magpie, and squirrel[7] in Germany, the woodpecker[8] in Scandinavia, and the peewit[9] and owl[10] in England.
(iv.) In the Faroe Isles the seals appear, like the wren in the Isle of Man, once a year in human form.[11]
In other cases the belief takes the form that animals can assume human shape. In Perthshire this was believed of cats, hares, and magpies.[12]
In a third form of the belief, certain animals — the stork, for example — are men in other countries.[13]
(c) The Animal as Life-index.
(i.) Some animals, usually domestic or semi-domestic,
- ↑ Schulenburg, p. 157; Müllenhof, passim; MS. notes.
- ↑ Arch. Rev., iii., 225.
- ↑ De Gubernatis, p. 629.
- ↑ Müllenhof, p. 137.
- ↑ Meier, p. 217.
- ↑ Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, pp. 515, 534, 571; Kuhn, Nordd. S., 289; Meier, 371, 372 ; for other refs. v. Wackernagel, iii., 237.
- ↑ Meier, loc. cit.
- ↑ F., vi., 65.
- ↑ F.L.J., vii., 57.
- ↑ Hamlet, iv., 5.
- ↑ Grundtvig, Folkeviser, ii., 76 n. ; cf. Antiqtmarsk T., loc. cit.
- ↑ A. R., iii., 225.
- ↑ Skattegmveren, viii., 117; Kamp, Folksminder, 221 ; Kristensen, Sagn, ii., 140 ; Stöber, Elsäss. Volksbüchlein (1859), i., 165; Evangiledes des quenouilles, p. 94 ; cf. Aelian, De nat. anim., iii., 23.
