Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 11/The loup-garou
THE LOUP-GAROU.
A LEGEND OF AUVERONE.
[The following verses are founded on a superstition once prevalent in various parts of France, and not unknown to other countries. The Loup-garou is the λυκάνθρωπος of the Greeks, and the were-wolf of our own ancestors—a human being with the power of self-transformation into a wolf. Marie de France, the Anglo-Norman poetess of the thirteenth century, in her "Lai du Bisclaveret," states that this human-wolf was, in her time, called "garwall" in Normandy, "bisclaveret" being the Breton name. Her editor, M. de Roquefort, says that "garwall" is a corruption of the "wer-wolf" of the Teutons, or the English "were-wolf." In Mediaeval Latin, its equivalent was "gerulphus." Madlle. Bosquet ("La Normandie, Traditions et Legendes"), quoting Collin de Plancy, "Dictionnaire Infernal." states that the Emperor Sigismund summoned the most learned theologians to discuss before him the question of the reality of the transformation of men into wolves, and the result of it was the unanimous recognition of it as a well-authenticated fact, to dispute which was a heresy, "et ce déclarer partisan d'unc incrédulité damnable." Marie de France thus describes the loup-garou or garwall :—
" Garwall si est beate salvage ;
Taut cum il est en cele race,
Humes dévure, grant mal fait,
Ea grans forest couverse é vait."
Garwall is a savage beast.
And he loves on man to feast;
Great the ravages he makes
Roaming through the forest brakes.