THE EXTINCT BRITISH WOLF. 
57 
most probable that the Britons were left at liberty to exercise 
their ancient privileges ; for had any severity been exerted to 
prevent the destruction of game, such laws would hardly have 
been passed over without the slightest notice being taken of 
them by the ancient historians. 
Anglo-Saxon Period. — As early as the ninth century, and 
doubtless long before that, a knowledge of hunting formed an 
essential part of the education of a young nobleman. Asser, in 
his life of Alfred the Great, assures us that that monarch before 
he was twelve years of age “was a most expert and active 
hunter, and excelled in all the branches of that most noble art, 
to which he applied with incessant labour and amazing success.” 
Hunting the wolf, the wild boar, the fox, and the deer, were the 
favourite pastimes of the nobility of that day, and the dogs 
which they employed for these various branches of the sport, 
were held by them in the highest estimation. 
Such ravages did the wolves commit during winter, particularly 
in January when the cold was severest, that the Saxons distin- 
guished that month by the name of “ wolf month.” 
“ The month which we now call January,” says Verstegan, 
“they called ‘ Wolf monat,’ to wit 6 Wolf moneth,’ because 
people are wont always in that month to be in more danger to 
be devoured of wolves than in any season else of the year ; for 
that, through the extremity of cold and snow, these ravenous 
creatures could not find of other beasts sufficient to feed 
upon.”* 
The Saxons also called an outlaw “ wolfs-head,”f as being out 
of the protection of the law, proscribed, and as liable to be 
killed as that destructive beast. “ Et tunc gerunt caput lujoi- 
num , ita quod sine judiciali inquisitione rite pereant.''i 
It is to the terror which the wolf inspired among our fore- 
fathers that we are to ascribe the fact of kings and rulers, in a 
barbarous age, feeling proud of bearing the name of this animal 
as an attribute of courage and ferocity. Brute power was then 
considered the highest distinction of man, and the sentiment 
was not mitigated by those refinements of modern life which 
conceal but do not destroy it. We thus find, amongst our 
Anglo-Saxon kings and great men, such names as Ethelwulf, 
the noble wolf ; ” Berthwulf, “ the illustrious wolf ; ” Eadwulf, 
“the prosperous wolf ;” Ealdwulf, “ the old wolf.”§ 
* “Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,” p. 64 (ed. 1673). 
t Ang. Sax. Widvesheofod, that is, having the head of a wolf. The term 
was in use temp. Henry II. 
X Bracton, “De legibus et consuetudinibus Anglise,” lib. iii. tr. ii. c. 11 
(1569). See also Knighton, “De Eventibus Anglise,” in Twysden’s 
“Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decern,” p. 2356 (1652). 
§ Wulfere, King of Mercia (a.d. 660), had a son Wulfade. 
