It Was The Crati Whose Rapid Waves, Fraught With Unhealthy
Chills, Rippled Brightly In The Moonlight.
We crossed the malarious
valley, and once more touched the hills.
From those treeless slopes there streamed forth deliciously warm
emanations stored up during the scorching hours of noon; the short scrub
that clothed them was redolent of that peculiar Calabrian odour which
haunts one like a melody - an odour of dried cistus and other aromatic
plants, balsamic by day, almost overpowering at this hour. To aid and
diversify the symphony of perfume, I lit a cigar, and then gave myself
up to contemplation of the heavenly bodies. We passed a solitary man,
walking swiftly with bowed head. What was he doing there?
"Lupomanaro," said the driver.
A werewolf. . . .
I had always hoped to meet with a werewolf on his nocturnal rambles, and
now my wish was gratified. But it was disappointing to see him in human
garb - even werewolves, it seems, must march with the times. This
enigmatical growth of the human mind flourishes in Calabria, but is not
popular as a subject of conversation. The more old-fashioned werewolves
cling to the true versipellis habits, and in that case only the pigs,
the inane Calabrian pigs, are dowered with the faculty of distinguishing
them in daytime, when they look like any other "Christian." There is a
record, in Fiore's book, of an epidemic of lycanthropy that attacked the
boys of Cassano. (Why only the boys?) It began on 31 July, 1210; and the
season of the year strikes me as significant.
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