several points connected with the wolf-stories, that Mr. Pakenham Edgworth has met with a similar story in Central India.

If we examine the best of the earlier stories of beast-children, we shall find them very much like the modern stories from Oude. The wild child, of which we read in Wilhelm Dilich's Hessian Chronicle, as having been caught by hunters among wolves in 1341, is described as running sometimes on all-fours, and jumping an extraordinary distance. They could not tame it, and it avoided men, and would run and hide itself under benches. It could not bear the food given it, and soon died. A late version of the story is given by an anonymous monk, with some additional embellishments, as that the boy related that the beasts made a nest of leaves for him to lie in, and so forth; but there is nothing of this in the original.

The two celebrated stories given by the old historian, Bernard Connor, are not unlike the others, except that the children are brought up by she-bears instead of she-wolves. His account is as follows: "There was one (child) kept in a convent. He was about ten years of age (which might be guess'd only by his stature and aspect), of a hideous countenance, and had neither the use of reason nor speech: he went upon all four, and had nothing in him like a man, except his Human Structure. But, seeing he resembled a Rational Creature, he was admitted to the font, and christen'd; yet still he was restless and uneasy, and often inclined to flight. But at length, being taught to stand upright, by clapping up his body against a Wall, and holding him, after the manner that dogs are taught to beg; and, being by little and little accustom'd to eat at Table, he, after some time, became indifferently tame, and began to express his mind with a hoarse and inhuman Tone; but being asked concerning his course of life in the Woods, he could not give much better account of it than we can do of our Actions in the Cradle. Upon this occasion I was assured by the king himself, several Senators and other Great Men of that Kingdom; and, moreover, it is the common and undisputed Report, that children are oftentimes nourish'd and brought up by Bears in these parts. They say likewise that if a hungry He-Bear finds a child that has been carelessly left anywhere, he will immediately tear it to pieces; but, on the contrary, had it been a She-Bear, then giving suck, she would undoubtedly have carried it safe to her Den, and nourish'd it among her Cubs, which, after some time, might probably have been rescued from her, and been taken by Hunters, as it

History of Poland. London, 1698, vol. i, p. 342, &c. Evangelium Medici. London, 1697, p. 181, &c.

happened in another Case of this nature in the year 1669 which has been positively asserted to me in a letter from his Excellency Monsieur de Cleverskerk, now Embassador here to his Majesty King William, from the States of Holland, which letter I thought not amiss to insert." The letter, dated January 1, 1698, relates that the writer was in Warsaw in 1661, and saw a boy at a convent there, who they told him had been caught some time before at a bear hunt. The description he gives comes to this, that the boy was a half brutal idiot, who ran on all-fours to seize the bread which was given him.

Another account of this case, apparently an independent one, is quoted by Koenig,* from Hartknoch, De Republica Polonica. He says that in the year 1661 two boys were found in company with several bears in the woods of Grodno. One of them escaped with the bears into a marsh; but the other was taken. This boy appeared to be eight or nine years old, went on all-fours, and ate greedily such things as bears love, such as raw flesh, apples, and honey. He was taken to the king at Warsaw, and baptized Joseph. With some difficulty he was taught to walk upright. He could not learn to speak Polish, but expressed himself with a bear-like growl (murmure ursino). The king gave him to a vice-chamberlain of Posnan called Peter Adam Opalinski, in whose kitchen he was employed to carry wood, and do menial work. But he never lost his wildness, and would sometimes go off to the woods, where the bears never molested him. Koenig gives at full length a wearisome Latin poem, which was written about this Joseph in 1674.

There are two more stories, cited by Koenig, of a wolf-child caught in the forest of Ardennes, and of a wild man, going on all fours, caught in the forest of Compiegne.

As to the other stories of wild children, they are scarcely worth mentioning. The boy described by Tulp (i.e. tulip, a surname interesting as belonging to a Dutch burgomaster), who was brought to Amsterdam (probably as a show), and who had been caught in Ireland living among wild sheep, who ate grass and hay and bleated, was, as the very description shows, a poor dumb idiot, and about as much a wild boy as the wretched malformed Red Indian children that drew crowds of sightseers in London, not long ago, were "Aztec Children of the Sun." The girl caught living wild in Holland (of all places in the world), in 1717, who fed on grass and leaves, and had made herself a girdle of straw; the two boys seen to leap from crag to crag, like

* Schediasma de hominum inter feras educatorum statu naturali solitario. Hanover, 1730.

goats, in the Pyrenees, in 1719; Lord Monboddo's friend, the wild girl, who was caught at Châlons-sur-Marne, in 1731, diving for fish in the river; and the wild boy of Bamberg, who lowed like an ox, may be dismissed without further remark.

The whole evidence in the matter comes to this. First, that in different parts of the world children have been found in a state of brutalization, due to want of education or to congenital idiocy, or to both; and, secondly, that people often believe that these children have been caught living among wild beasts, a supposition which accounts for their beast-like nature.

Now stories of children being brought up by animals are found among the popular myths of several parts of the world. the tale of Romulus and Remus is the best known example. Here the idea of children being suckled by a she-wolf is joined to another incident often found in the old wonder-tales, the setting adrift of children in an ark, after the manner of the infant Moses in the ark of bulrushes. The infant Cyrus is said to have been brought up by a bitch, and the attempt to rationalize the story by considering bitch. (Cyno), to have been the nurse's name, as well as the similar explanation of the myth of Romulus and Remus, are evidently mere commentator's work.

A curious story in the Katha-sarit-sagara, or Ocean of the Rivers of Story, a collection of Sanscrit wonder-tales dating from the twelfth century, belongs to the class of myths of beast-children. A certain Yaksha, or jin, whose name was Sata, saw the daughter of a holy man bathing in the Ganges; and both being inflamed with love at first sight, married one another by what is called a Gandharvamarriage, that is a sort of Scotch marriage, which was nothing but an agreement between the two parties without witnesses or any formality whatever. Such unions, which were only allowed to the warriorcaste, seem not to have been uncommon in India, to judge by the frequency of their occurrence in stories; but in this instance the lady's relations seem to have considered the proceeding immoral, much as we should have done. So they turned the young couple, by magic, into a lion and lioness, telling them to go and wander thenceforth, following only their own devices, as the lions do. The lioness died afterwards in giving birth, not to a cub but to a human child, and the father-lion made the other lionesses suckle the boy, who grew up and became the world-ruling king Satavahana.

In another Indian story,† the daughter of a Brahmin is delivered of a child while on a journey, and is obliged to leave it behind in a wood, * Herod. i, c, 122. + Lassen. Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. ii, p. 809.

where a female jackal suckles it till it is rescued by some passing merchants.

Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin, whom I have to thank for the reference to the last two stories, tells me that he does not know of any stories of wolf-children in Sanskrit literature, which is, I believe, equivalent to saying that there are none in such Sanskrit works as are known to European scholars.

Dr. Prichard speaks of an Asiatic Saga which relates "the fate of a single family, born, or perhaps, if the story were rightly interpreted, suckled, by a wolf in Turkish Assena, or Tsena, who became the founder of the Turkish dynasty on Mount Altai." Whether the story in question really belongs to the same class with those just mentioned I am not at present prepared to say.

It should be remembered, also, that among the animals into which, according to a most ancient and wide-spread popular belief, a man can transform himself, the principal are the wolf and the bear. Men who have the power of changing themselves into wolves are called were-wolves (i.e. man-wolves), λvкаv@рwжо, loup-garous, turnskins, turncoats; and the Norwegians believe that the Laplanders have the faculty of turning themselves into bears, so that the close connexion of these animals with man is a thing recognized in popular mythology. The belief that bears have human souls occurs among the Indians of North America, and the custom of asking pardon of the bear before killing him is found there as well as in the old world. Mr. Gibbs tells a story he heard of an Indian tribe in California who begged the life of a wrinkled-faced old she grizzly-bear, into whom they firmly believed the soul of a deceased old woman of their tribe had migrated, she was so like her.* I have not met with any story of children suckled by wolves among the North American Indians; but there is a Chippewa tale which comes very near to it. A deserted child goes and lives with the wolves, who leave food for him. He gradually becomes more and more wolf-like; his brother at last finds him half turned into a wolf, and before he can catch him the transformation is complete.f

That among ignorant and superstitious men the step is easily made. from an abstract belief in such stories to the application of them to particular persons, is a thing which hardly requires proof. Not many years ago, in districts where it was believed that witches could ride on spits and broomsticks, it was easy to obtain evidence enough against particular old women to satisfy the rest of the world that they had committed this diabolical act, and to cost the old women their

Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes, Part 111, p. 113. + Id. Part II, p. 232.

lives. The enormous influence which a belief in witchcraft has had, and still has, in the world, is due, in great measure, to its supplying an explanation of real events, such as storms, and the sickness and death of animals and men. In like manner there are facts which lend countenance to a belief in children brought up by wild-beasts, among a credulous and illogical people. The existence of idiots, no doubt, has been accounted for on this supposition, when the still more convenient belief in changelings has not taken possession of them.

It is easy to show how such stories may come to be believed as matter of fact, by an example which has this advantage over the stories of beast-children, that the matter of it is not only improbable, but ridiculously absurd. It would be, perhaps, imprudent to assert that it is impossible that children might be suckled by wild beasts, though the fact that the she-wolf drives her cubs away to shift for themselves before they are a year old is not very compatible with the notion of a child being an inmate of the family for several years; we can only say that it is very improbable and not to be believed but on the best of evidence; but if all the Asiatics living were to declare with one accord that a child and a crocodile had been born twins at one birth, we should not believe it. This idea of children and animals being born together is, howeyer, common in the folk-lore of the East. There is a story in the Panchatantra of a Brahman woman bringing forth together a boy and an ichneumon.* Among the Land Dayaks there is a legend of a woman who brought forth at once a child and a cobra de capella. This is mere legend; but when Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks were in Batavia they found it believed as a matter of fact that children had often crocodile twins. Such crocodiles were at once carried down to the river by the nurse; and the family, especially the twin-child, used to throw food into the river for it from time to time. Not only were they assured by every Indian they asked that such things did happen, but many told them that they had frequently seen them. One girl declared that her father had charged her on his death-bed to carry food to his Sudara Oran, as these man-crocodiles are called. It used to come and eat out of her hand when she called it; it had a spotted body and a red nose, gold bracelets on its feet, and gold earrings in its ears. Another native assured Mr. Banks that he had seen a Sudara Oran. Mr. Banks replied that such stories were nonsense, as he had been told of one which had earrings, whereas everybody knew that crocodiles had no ears to put them in; to this the man replied that the Sudara Oran were not like other crocodiles,

*Book v, sec. ii.