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 115
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Many of the sailors went ashore in the hope of procuring fresh provisions

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

Many of the sailors went ashore in the hope of procuring fresh provisions. A certain sturdy young Englishman went to a woman's shop some little way from the town, to see whether she could let him have some new-laid eggs. She promised to do so and went off to fetch them, but she was away so long that the young sailor called out that she must please make haste, as the tide was going out and he might be left behind when his ship set sail. At last she came out with the eggs and told him to come back to her house if the ship had gone. The sailor made the best of his way back to the vessel, but being hungry, ate an egg on the way. He was then struck dumb and his wits seemed to have left him. When he reached the side of the vessel and tried to go aboard, the mariners beat him back with cudgels crying, "What lacks the ass?" and "Whither the devil does the ass want to come?" Then the sailor realised that he had been bewitched by the woman's eggs he had eaten, and had turned into a donkey.

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.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.