The Sanskrit ### _carmma_; the Hindustanee ### _cam_, hide or skin;
and ### _camra_, leather; the Persian ### _game_, clothing, disguise;
the Gothic _ham_ or _hams_, skin; and even the Italian _camicia_, and
the French _chemise_, are cognate words. [1]

[1. I shall have more to say on this subject in the chapter on the
Mythology of Lycanthropy.]

It seems probable accordingly that the verb _að hamaz_ was first
applied to those who wore the skins of savage animals, and went about
the country as freebooters; but that popular superstition soon
invested them with supernatural powers, and they were supposed to
assume the forms of the beasts in whose skins they were disguised. The
verb then acquired the significance "to become a were-wolf, to change
shape." It did not stop there, but went through another change of
meaning, and was finally applied to those who were afflicted with
paroxysms of madness or demoniacal possession.

This was not the only word connected with were-wolves which helped on
the superstition. The word _vargr_, a wolf, had a double significance,
which would be the means of originating many a were-wolf story.
_Vargr_ is the same as _u-argr_, restless; _argr_ being the same as
the Anglo-Saxon _earg_. _Vargr_ had its double signification in Norse.
It signified a wolf, and also a godless man. This _vargr_ is the
English _were_, in the word were-wolf, and the _garou_ or _varou_ in
French. The Danish word for were-wolf is _var-ulf_, the Gothic
_vaira-ulf_. In the _Romans de Garin_, it is "Leu warou, sanglante
beste." In the _Vie de S. Hildefons_ by Gauthier de Coinsi,--

Cil lon desve, cil lou garol,