Page:Book of Were-wolves.djvu/69

48 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 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 lou desve, cil lon garol,

Ce sunt deable, qne 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 vargs, 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, hoc est expulsus." In the laws of Canute, he is called verevulf. (Leges Canuti, Schmid, i. 148.) And