116 



THE KING'S MIRROR 



men; others suffer it continuously for seven winters all 

 told and are never stricken again.* 



There is still another matter, that about the men who 

 are called " gelts," | which must seem wonderful. Men 

 appear to become gelts in this way: when hostile forces 

 meet and are drawn up in two lines and both set up a 

 terrifying battle-cry, it happens that timid and youth- 

 ful men who have never been in the host before are 

 sometimes seized with such fear and terror that they 

 lose their wits and run away from the rest into the for- 

 est, where they seek food like beasts and shun the meet- 

 ing of men like wild animals. It is also told that if these 

 people live in the woods for twenty winters in this way, 

 feathers will grow upon their bodies as on birds; these 

 serve to protect them from frost and cold, but they have 

 no large feathers to use in flight as birds have. But so 

 great is their fleetness said to be that it is not possible 

 for other men or even for greyhounds to come near 

 them; for those men can dash up into a tree almost as 

 swiftly as apes or squirrels. 



There happened something once in the borough called 

 Cloena,} which will also seem marvelous. In this town 



* See the poem on the "Wonders of Ireland" (Reliquiae Antiquae, II, 105), 

 where this transformation is alluded to. Stories of men who have become 

 wolves are also told in Giraldus, Opera, V, 101, and in the Irish Nennius, 205; 

 but these differ widely from the account given above. Stories of werewolves 

 and lycanthropy are found in folklore everywhere. 



t Gelt (gjalti) is evidently a Celtic loanword, a form of the Irish geilt, mean- 

 ing mad or madman. Cf . the Adventures of Suibhne Geilt, translated by J. G. 

 O'Keefe. Suibhne was an Irish king who lost his reason in battle and for years 

 afterwards led a wild life in the woods. O'Keefe thinks that the author of the 

 King's Mirror must have heard the tale of Suibhne (pp. xxxiv-xxxv). See 

 also Eriu, IV, 12. 



J Kuno Meyer identifies Cloena with Clomnacnois. riu, IV, 12. Clonmac- 

 nois is in King's county eight miles southwest of Athlone. 



