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,"[1] 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 mythical accounts of their transformation into wolves.
But the very idiom of the Norse was calculated to foster this superstition. The Icelanders had curious expressions which are sufficiently likely to have produced misconceptions.
- ↑ Sidonius Apoullnaris: Opera, lib. vi. ep. 4.
