A return to human body was sometimes easy, sometimes extremely difficult
- Date of account
- Published 1915
- Source
- Human Animals
- Reference
- Human Animals · selected passage 9
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
A return to human body was sometimes easy, sometimes extremely difficult
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyA return to human body was sometimes easy, sometimes extremely difficult. The girdle or skin being removed was often sufficient to remove the enchantment too. Plunging into water or rolling over and over in dew were said to be equally efficacious. A considerably slower method was to kneel in one spot for a hundred years, long enough, one would imagine to deter anyone from ill-judged ambitions to prowl around the world in animal shape. Other cures, however, were simpler, such as being saluted with the sign of the cross, or to be called three times loudly by the baptismal name, or to be struck three blows on the forehead by a knife, or to have three drops of blood drawn from some part of the body.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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