pacts with the devil. A dog lurks in front of a child’s coffin and prevents his receiving a proper Christian burial.
Often the demon dog can be creepily communicative. A Danish boy in Frlund, when reading his parents’ copy of a forbidden magic book, is interrupted by a noise in the hall. He opens the door to find a large black poodle, which gazes at the boy “with strange pleading eyes.” * In one Swiss legend, two men see a dog watching a dance andask why he is there. The dog replies, matter-of-factly, that a fight is about to break out and someone will be killed; he, the devil, intends to claim that soul. In a similar Swedish tale, the dog is considerably more articulate. Two brothers from Sandåkra, after they commit perjury and escape detection, promise each other that whichever dies first shall return as a ghost, in order to tell the other what he has learned of the afterlife. Soon after the death of one brother, the second finds a large black dog sitting on the steps of his cottage. Knowing it is his brother, he asks the dog what he has found. “That which is once forsworn is eternally lost,” replies the dog glumly. The living brother decides he must confess to his crime.
During witch trials, the accused often were found to have had canine “familiars” (that word again), demons who accompanied them in the form of dogs. Elizabeth Clarke, who during the seventeenth century admitted to having slept with the devil himself thrice weekly, was kept company during her sexploits by Jarmara, a white spaniel with spots, as well as by an ox-headed greyhound named Vinegar Tom. When the Devices—Alison, James, and Elizabeth—were convicted of witchcraft in 1612, all three of them claimed to have murderous dog familiars, with names like Dandy and Ball. In Alison’s account of her dog’s attack on a peddler, it is she who summons the dog to act but the dog who explains her options.
“What wouldst thou have me to do with yonder man?” the dog is alleged to have asked, as the peddler fled what he could tell would be an imminent attack.
“What canst thou do at him?” Alison replied.
“I can lame him.”
“Lame him,” replied the girl; and within forty yards the deed was done.
Notice the balancing act that is struck by this last tale, of the witch’s canine accomplice. The dog must be possessed bodily by the most fearsome rage in order to carry out his bloodthirsty attacks, for example,to lame the peddler. And yet he must also be possessed spiritually of an almost human reason and capacity for understanding in order to present to the audience as properly and chillingly evil. It is the ancient dichotomy of the dog—between the intuitive, loyal companion and the savage, potentially rabid beast—with each pole of the dualism merely ratcheted out a notch. The uncanniness of the demon dog lies in his being simultaneously more familiar and more prone to insensate frenzy than the typical four-footed friend.
A similar formula undergirded the werewolf tales of the sixteenth century. Unlike the dog-headed men of maps, these were real people, often known to their alleged victims, who would testify with apparent sincerity that their neighbors had taken the form of vicious wolves. One oft-repeated tally, though perhaps apocryphal, puts the number of recorded cases in France at thirty thousand between 1520 and 1630. Regardless of the specific figure, history has bequeathed us enough specific cases to make clear that something like an epidemic was afoot. A sample:
1521
. Two admitted werewolves, Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun, stand trial in Poligny for many murders: of a four-year-old girl, of a woman gathering peas, and more still. Along with another lycanthrope confederate the two are convicted, burned.
1530
. Near Poitiers, three enormous wolves set upon three young men, one of whom slices off a wolf ear in the melee. The following day, a known harlot in the town is observed to have lost an ear.
1541
. A farmer in
Often the demon dog can be creepily communicative. A Danish boy in Frlund, when reading his parents’ copy of a forbidden magic book, is interrupted by a noise in the hall. He opens the door to find a large black poodle, which gazes at the boy “with strange pleading eyes.” * In one Swiss legend, two men see a dog watching a dance andask why he is there. The dog replies, matter-of-factly, that a fight is about to break out and someone will be killed; he, the devil, intends to claim that soul. In a similar Swedish tale, the dog is considerably more articulate. Two brothers from Sandåkra, after they commit perjury and escape detection, promise each other that whichever dies first shall return as a ghost, in order to tell the other what he has learned of the afterlife. Soon after the death of one brother, the second finds a large black dog sitting on the steps of his cottage. Knowing it is his brother, he asks the dog what he has found. “That which is once forsworn is eternally lost,” replies the dog glumly. The living brother decides he must confess to his crime.
During witch trials, the accused often were found to have had canine “familiars” (that word again), demons who accompanied them in the form of dogs. Elizabeth Clarke, who during the seventeenth century admitted to having slept with the devil himself thrice weekly, was kept company during her sexploits by Jarmara, a white spaniel with spots, as well as by an ox-headed greyhound named Vinegar Tom. When the Devices—Alison, James, and Elizabeth—were convicted of witchcraft in 1612, all three of them claimed to have murderous dog familiars, with names like Dandy and Ball. In Alison’s account of her dog’s attack on a peddler, it is she who summons the dog to act but the dog who explains her options.
“What wouldst thou have me to do with yonder man?” the dog is alleged to have asked, as the peddler fled what he could tell would be an imminent attack.
“What canst thou do at him?” Alison replied.
“I can lame him.”
“Lame him,” replied the girl; and within forty yards the deed was done.
Notice the balancing act that is struck by this last tale, of the witch’s canine accomplice. The dog must be possessed bodily by the most fearsome rage in order to carry out his bloodthirsty attacks, for example,to lame the peddler. And yet he must also be possessed spiritually of an almost human reason and capacity for understanding in order to present to the audience as properly and chillingly evil. It is the ancient dichotomy of the dog—between the intuitive, loyal companion and the savage, potentially rabid beast—with each pole of the dualism merely ratcheted out a notch. The uncanniness of the demon dog lies in his being simultaneously more familiar and more prone to insensate frenzy than the typical four-footed friend.
A similar formula undergirded the werewolf tales of the sixteenth century. Unlike the dog-headed men of maps, these were real people, often known to their alleged victims, who would testify with apparent sincerity that their neighbors had taken the form of vicious wolves. One oft-repeated tally, though perhaps apocryphal, puts the number of recorded cases in France at thirty thousand between 1520 and 1630. Regardless of the specific figure, history has bequeathed us enough specific cases to make clear that something like an epidemic was afoot. A sample:
1521
. Two admitted werewolves, Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun, stand trial in Poligny for many murders: of a four-year-old girl, of a woman gathering peas, and more still. Along with another lycanthrope confederate the two are convicted, burned.
1530
. Near Poitiers, three enormous wolves set upon three young men, one of whom slices off a wolf ear in the melee. The following day, a known harlot in the town is observed to have lost an ear.
1541
. A farmer in
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