xlii PROLEGOMENA 



collected and mounted. The perfect skeleton is contained in 

 the Kendal Museum. At that time we may fairly conjecture 

 that the whole of Lakeland was infested by packs of wolves, 

 which doubtless preyed upon the herds of the prehistoric men 

 who then tended their goats and cattle on the pastures of our 

 dreary uplands. How long the wolf continued to carry con- 

 sternation into the sheep-folds cannot at present be stated with 

 any exactitude. Probably the wolf had become rare, if not 

 extinct, in this region by the end of the thirteenth century. In 

 Saxon times wolf-hunting must have been a common event. 



In the summer of 1865 I had the privilege of examining 

 two adult wolves which had been taken a few days before in a 

 pitfall in the Ardennes. Their gaunt, emaciated frames and 

 cowed carriage told a sad tale of hunger and brutal ill-usage, 

 but their appearance with their rough-looking captors in a 

 country town made a strong impression on my mind; young 

 child as I was at the time, I still possess a most vivid recollection 

 of these poor animals, and have often thought in later years 

 that such a sight must frequently have been witnessed in the 

 village communities of our island-home during the first few 

 centuries of the Christian era. 



Quite a considerable literature has gathered round the nucleus 

 of lupine lore which Pennant first provided, when he narrated 

 the terrorism once exercised by ' that grey beast the wolf in the 

 weald/ as the Saxon minstrel described the ghoul which preyed 

 upon the bodies of the warriors that lay upon the battle-field 

 awaiting the rite of sepulture which would commence with the 

 first promise of approaching dawn. Mr. J. E. Harting has done 

 more than any one else to trace the former distribution of the 

 wolf in Britain, but he has failed to discover, or at any rate 

 to publish, any fresh information regarding the Wolves of the 

 Lake district. Every Cumbrian has read the tale concerning 

 a lady of the Lucy family being destroyed by a wolf. ' Accord- 

 ing to one version,' wrote a distinguished antiquarian, now 

 deceased, ' this catastrophe occurred on an evening walk near 

 the castle; whilst a more popular rendering of the legend 

 ascribes it to an occasion on which the lord of the manor, with 

 his lady and servants, were hunting in the forest ; when the 



