Ce sunt deable, que saul
Ne puent estre de nos mordre.

Here the loup-garou is a devil. The Anglo-Saxons regarded him as an
evil man: _wearg_, a scoundrel; Gothic _varys_, a fiend. But very
often the word meant no more than an outlaw. Pluquet in his _Contes
Populaires_ tells us that the ancient Norman laws said of the
criminals condemned to outlawry for certain offences, _Wargus esto_:
be an outlaw!

In like manner the Lex Ripuaria, tit. 87, "Wargus sit, hoe est
expulsus." In the laws of Canute, he is called verevulf. (_Leges
Canuti_, Schmid, i. 148.) And the Salic Law (tit. 57) orders: "Si quis
corpus jam sepultum effoderit, aut expoliaverit, _wargus_ sit." "If
any one shall have dug up or despoiled an already buried corpse, let
him be a varg."

Sidonius Apollinaris. says, "Unam feminam quam forte _vargorum_, hoc
enim nomine indigenas latrunculos nuncupant," as though the common
name by which those who lived a freebooter life were designated, was
varg.

In like manner Palgrave assures us in his _Rise and Progress of the
English Commonwealth_, that among the Anglo, Saxons an _utlagh_, or
out-law, was said to have the head of a wolf. If then the term _vargr_
was applied at one time to a wolf, at another to an outlaw who lived
the life of a wild beast, away from the haunts of men "he shall be
driven away as a wolf, and chased so far as men chase wolves
farthest," was the legal form of sentence--it is certainly no matter
of wonder that stories of out-laws should have become surrounded with