“The Wer-Wolves” (1898) by Henry Beaugrand is not technically a Northern, in that it doesn’t take place in the Arctic, Labrador or the Klondike, traditional Northern locales. It also happens centuries before. But if you were living in North America at the time of New France (later the province of Quebec), then all of Canada is the North.
It is Chritmas Eve at Fort Richlieu in New France. The soldiers are drinking and telling scary stories. A sentry fires his musket but later is arrested for raising a false alarm. One old hunter offers up an explanation and a story about loup-garous. He recounts one time when he and a companion encountered a group of loup-garous around a fire, getting ready to eat some poor captive. They could not kill the offensive creatures because they did not have holy water or a four-leaf clover. Instead they loaded their muskets with beads from a rosary and were able to scatter the werewolves. The next day they looked for remains of the campfire or tracks but found nothing. The old hunter suggests the sentry saw werewolves.
“…White loup-garous are bad enough at any time, and you all know that those who have remained seven years without performing their Easter duties are liable to be changed into wolves, condemned to prowl about at night until they are delivered by some Christian drawing blood from them by inflicting a wound on the forehead in the form of a cross…”
Beaugrand’s werewolves leave no tracks or campfires behind them. “…White loup-garous are bad enough at any time, and you all know that those who have remained seven years without performing their Easter duties are liable to be changed into wolves, condemned to prowl about at night until they are delivered by some Christian drawing blood from them by inflicting a wound on the forehead in the form of a cross…” A musket ball loaded with four-leaf clover or bullets with crosses cut into them also works. Normal bullets will only flatten out on their impenetrable hide. During the day the werewolves will look human, turning their skin around and keeping their fur on the inside. The hunters hurt or possibly kill some of them by adding rosary beads to their rifle shot.
Not a very well-constructed story but a warehouse of werewolf lore. The idea of turning their skins inside out is a wonderful euphemism for hiding your sin if taken figuratively. The movie A Company of Wolves (1984) used it both figuratively and literally.
A little digging showed that Henry Beaugrand was a non de plum of Honore Beaugrand (1848-1906). This French Canadian journalist also wrote about Canadian folklore. His newspapers and political writing won him the cross of French Légion d’honneur in 1885. That year he was elected mayor of Montreal, and has had a street and metro stations named after him. He is most famous for writing down the legend of the “Chasse-galerie” (The Century Magazine, August 1892) in La chasse galerie: légendes canadiennes, which included “Le loup-garou”.
This in its way explains why “The Wer-Wolves” reads the way it does. It was not meant to be a ghost story in the tradition of Algernon Blackwood, but a more like a fairy tale by Madame d’Aulnoy including her lycanthropic tale, “The White Cat”.
