Research source

M. Henri Gelin tells a good story of a witch who transformed herself into a dog.[68]

Date of account: Published 1915
Source: Human Animals
Reference: Human Animals · selected passage 109
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

At dawn the next day, he went to look at his new lamb

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 only

At dawn the next day, he went to look at his new lamb. But in the spot where he had placed it the evening before he found a huge demon, busy stitching straw soles into his shoes. The sorcerer had resumed human shape and, looking very foolish, begged that he would say nothing about his little adventure. But the man seized him by the shoulders, kicked him from behind and chucked him out of the pen, crying, "Get out of this, you evil being." "If only he had made the slightest scratch from which the blood flowed," added the old lady who was telling the story, "the sorcerer would have been cured, and would no longer have been able to transform himself into an animal."

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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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