yS The Poets Beasts. 



doubt that the image was one used, as a rule, to represent 

 a fraudulent, double-dealing, heartless, and pitiless monster. 

 Night, and Winter, and Cold put on the wolf's skin. It is 

 then gloomy, sinister, malignant, diabolical. How terrible, 

 for example, are those wolves of Odin, " Gari and Freki," 

 who hunt down his enemies — the " Odin's hounds " of more 

 modern folk-lore — the truly awful Feuris-wolf whom the 

 gods tried to bind with chains but could not, but at last 

 was fettered by most delicate links to the rock Amsvartner 

 to await Ragnarok — those dread Finland jinns who Hve in 

 the Wolf-Valley by the Lake of the Wolves — the red wolf 

 that waylays the souls of bad men going to the nether 

 world. 



But the wolf's name would not have been terrible in legends 

 had it merely plundered the sheepfold. It is its crimes 

 against mankind that have made it so gruesome a beast in 

 folk-lore and so perilous in Nature ; and the poets do not fail 

 to take note of the solitary pilgrims, mountaineers, goat- 

 herds, and travellers that the wolves make their prey, nor of 

 the horrid duties they share with birds of carrion on deserted 

 fields of battle ; nor yet of greater crimes than all these 

 — the murder of infants in their mothers' arms, and their 

 violation of graves. In the following truly Thomsonian 

 nonsense the poet catalogues the animal's iniquities : — 



" Cruel as death, and liungry as the grave! 

 Burning for blood ! bony, and gaunt, and grim, 

 Assembling wolves in raging troops descend ; 

 And, pouring o'er the country, bear along, 

 Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow. 

 All is their prize. They fasten on the steed, 

 Press him to the earth, and pierce liis mighty heart. 

 Nor can the bull his awful front defend, 

 Or shake the murdering savages away. 

 Rapacious at the mother's throat they fly, 

 And tear the screaming infant from her breast. 

 The godlike face of man avails him nought. 

 Even beauty, force divine ! at whose bright glance 



