Note 107 — Front matter
Reading edition
Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, III. 1094, fol. says: Our oldest native notions make the assumption of wolf-shape depend on arraying oneself in a wolf-belt or wolf-shirt, as transformation into a swan does on putting on the swan-shirt or swan-ring. Page 1095: “The transformation need not be for a magical purpose at all: any one that puts on, or is conjured into, a wolf-shirt, will undergo metamorphosis.... With the appearance, he acquires also the fierceness and howling of the wolf; roaming the woods, he rends to pieces everything that comes in his way.” This is like the belief of the American Indian that the wearer of a mask becomes imbued with the spirit of the being which his mask represents (note 57); or that the shaman in full regalia becomes, or tries to make his followers believe that he has become, the power he represents (note 67).