and therefore ceased to be objects of dread to the people."[1] That wolves were not unknown animals in this country centuries after anybody can have had the faintest claim to be called Anglo-Saxon is now admitted;[2] it was in Wales that the tribute of their heads came to an end through the lack of supply; but, be that as it may, I am not concerned to deny that stories of were-wolves are rare in England proper. The shepherds in the Man in the Moon[3] thought it was expedient to "go about the field religiously,"
"With hollowing charms the Warwolf thence to fray
That them and theirs awaited to betray."
Had their opinion as to the etymology of the name been asked, it is probable that they would have gladly hailed the guess that "ware-wolves" are "wolves of which we ought to be aware,"[4] but we are bound to accept the more learned notion that wer or were is equivalent to the Gothic vair and the Latin vir, and that a wer-wolf is in word, as well as in deed, a man-wolf; unless we should venture to hold with Mr. Baring-Gould[5] that were is the Norse vargr, a wolf, a godless man, and, in a cognate language, a fiend. If I read mine author rightly, he believes that were-wolf=demon-wolf.
Here is the sum of the tale that Mother Owl or Howlet told to her gossips. Gammers Bumby, Eedcap, and Gurton. There was a man living but a short time before, she said, who had studied witchcraft and black sorcery, and who had learnt from the beldames at whose feet he sat that a particular herb, which opened at sunset and closed at sunrise,[6] would, if gathered at a certain hour and taken with the accompaniment of a thrice-repeated spell, instantly change him into
- ↑ The Book of Were-Wolves, p. 100.
- ↑ "Edward I. issued his mandate for the destruction of wolves in several counties of England A.D. 1289."—See Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, sub "Wolves."
- ↑ [iv. 1325.]
- ↑ Buffon's Natural History Abridged (Berwick, n.d.), vol. i. p. 139. It is only fair to say that no uncanny origin is attributed to these ware-wolves. They are mentioned merely as wolves that have learned to like human flesh, are "man-eaters," as we should say of tigers.
- ↑ Book of Were-Wolves, p. 48.
- ↑ See Part II. of this paper.
