Bears and Wolves. 73 



And just as owls, after taking all the lower degrees of 

 criminality, become in poetry "shrikkes" (which are of a 

 specially venomous sort), so wolves graduate into "were- 

 wolves" or " war- wolves " — that fearful fancy of the loup-garou 

 that has kept its hold upon popular terror in every country 

 ever since the day when " wild Lycaon, changed by angry 

 gods, and frighted at himself, ran howling through the 

 woods." Their hairs are then used like owls' feathers by 

 witches to mix with "madd dogges foames and adders 

 eares." They haunt Coleridge's woods with " vampyres " 

 and other monstrosities, and their voices are alike " death- 

 boding." 



This were-wolf superstition is a more ancient and persis- 

 tent one. The horrid " HjTcanians " were said to " become 

 wolves " in the heat of battle, a more allowable metaphor, 

 since historians talk commonly of British soldiers being 

 " lions " and " tigers." So also the Newri and Hirpini : and 

 much later the same simile was frequently used in the Sages 

 for the Berserkers ; and later still, in our own time, for the 

 men of Norway and of Iceland, who " become wolves " in 

 conflict In Ireland I suspect tiie phrase would be found 

 still extant, for the Irish, according to their own legends, 

 are specially liable to being " people not of one skin," which 

 is a euphemism for lycanthropes. Many individual instances 

 are on record, notably that of the family whom St Nathalie 

 turned into were-wolves for seven years. But these could 

 retaliate on occasion, as, for example, when St Patrick 

 turned Vereticos, king of Wales, into a wolf. Ireland, 

 indeed, would in this matter appear to be our Arcadia — 

 the land of superstition ; for that province was conspicuous 

 for its wolf traditions. Lycaon himself was a king of 

 Arcadia, and the loup-garou was a household word in that 

 "emerald-state." The hyaena and the vampyre are in some 

 countries curiously mixed up with the wolf-myth, but by 

 itself it possesses a very dreadful individuality. 



