forest. Seeing a fire, he made towards it, and beheld a wolf seated
over it. The wolf addressed him in human-voice, and bade him not fear,
as "he was of the Ossyrian race, of which a man and a woman were
doomed to spend a certain number of years in wolf's form. Only after
seven years might they return home and resume their former shapes, if
they were still alive." He begged the priest to visit and console his
sick wife, and to give her the last sacraments. This the priest
consented to do, after some hesitation, and only when convinced of the
beasts being human beings, by observing that the wolf used his front
paws as hands, and when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin
from her head to her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged woman.

[1. JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG _de Miracul. in Europa_, lib. ii. cap. 42.]

Marie de France says in the Lais du Bisclaveret:-- [1]

Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan
Garwall Papelent li Norman.
* * * *
Jadis le poet-hum oir
Et souvent suleit avenir,
Humes pluseirs Garwall deviendrent
E es boscages meisun tindrent

[1. An epitome of this curious were-wolf tale will be found in Ellis's
_Early English Metrical Romances_.]

There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland were-wolves,
in the Breslauer Sammlung. [2] The author says,--"There are too
many examples derived not merely from hearsay, but received on