I have COVID. The way my podcast plan is set out, however, I have to do some recording today. I’m recording a couple of episodes which will go live in August. By the time you hear this hopefully I’ve been well for a month. Today I bring you one of the earliest werewolf stories, even though to me arguably it doesn’t contain a werewolf. The version that Seabury Quinn gives here has some of the features of the werewolf version. I originally read the werewolf version of the Swiatek the Beggar story in “The Book of Werewolves” by Sabine Baring-Gould. There it is surrounded by werewolf stories which accents some of his behaviors as similar to those of people who actually transform.
As a trigger warning there is, in some versions of this story, graphic violence directed towards small children.
Seabury Quinn wrote nine articles – I believe – for Weird Tales magazine. He was the most prolific Weird Tales author. The nine weird crimes articles are different from his other work
in that they claim to be non-fictional. This may be why his version, even though historically it comes after Baring-Gould’s, seems a little less supernatural.
I’m going to be giving one of Quinn’s other stories in about two weeks time that’s the magic
mirror motors which is about a serial killer in the Elizabethan period. I think has just done the perfect thing to annoy one of the monsters in the Bestiary, so look out for that.
Over to Ben Tucker. Ben’s recorded all of these for Librivox. Thanks to Ben and his production team.
I’m unable to transcribe this text. Please instead accept copies of the original publication.
Games From Folktales 