The Story of Lycanthropy

St. Augustine declared in his De Sivita today that he knew an old woman who was said to turn men into asses by her enchantments. Papaleus has left us his charming romance of the Golden Ass, in which the hero is transformed into that long-eared animal. In Norway and Iceland, certain men were said to be Ege Einhamer, not of one's skin, an idea which had its roots in paganism. The full form of this strange superstition was that men could take upon them other bodies, and the natures of those beings whose bodies they assumed. If I tell you a lie, may your genie confound me.