Parkyns and the buda were-hyenas
In his 1853 'Life in Abyssinia', the English traveller Mansfield Parkyns described the belief in Tigray that blacksmiths and potters were buda, people with the evil eye who could turn into hyenas at night.
1853 CE · 14.16, 38.90 · status: account
The account
Parkyns lived around Adwa in the 1840s and recorded stories of buda who ate the flesh of their victims from inside, and of the possession and illness they caused. Anthropologists later documented the same belief among the Amhara: buda is attributed to marginal craft groups and, in places, to the Beta Israel, and accusations could bring exclusion or violence.
The sceptical view
Buda belief maps onto social boundaries rather than any real transformation; scholars read it as a way of explaining misfortune and policing caste-like groups.