The Wolf 309 



not combine to give a "bad eminence" to anything that 

 is insignificant. They do not often fear harmless objects, 

 and they never do so when these are familiar. Cuvier 

 says in his description of the wolf, that "its courage is 

 not in proportion to its strength." But it is certain that 

 packs once howled at night around Paris, and tore people 

 to pieces in her streets ; that they ravaged, and killed man 

 and beast, in every part of Western Europe, made public 

 highways unsafe, and put travellers by forest roads in 

 constant peril of their lives. When the traditions and 

 myths referred to were formed, things were much worse 

 in this respect than in Cuvier's time, and we may be 

 absolutely sure that these animals' reputation rests on a 

 strong foundation of fact. It was not the accident of an 

 idle fancy that pictured gaunt gray wolves, dripping with 

 blood, that bore the spirits of death upon northern battle- 

 fields. Geri and Freki, the wolves of Woden, battened 

 on the fallen in Valhalla. On earth and on high, fan- 

 tasy grouped its most tragic conceptions around "the 

 dark gray beast " of early Sagas ; and it was believed that 

 chained in hell, the Fenris wolf awaited that day when the 

 demons of the underworld should be loosed, and with the 

 bursting of the vault of heaven, " the twilight of the gods " 

 would come. 



Very little good has ever been said about a wolf. But 

 on the Western Continent there is an almost complete 

 absence of evidence to show that imagination was affected 

 by this creature in the same manner as was common 

 among European nations. 



Henry R. Schoolcraft ("Indian Tribes of North 



