hanging up over them in the house; and every tenth day might they come out of those skins; and they were kings’ sons: so Sigmund and Sinfjotli do the wolf-skins on them, and then might they nowise come out of them, though forsooth the same nature went with them as heretofore; they howled as wolves howl, but both knew the meaning of that howling; they lay out in the wild-wood, and each went his way; and a word they made betwixt them, that they should risk the onset of seven men, but no more, and that he who was first to be set on should howl in wolfish wise: “Let us not depart from this,” says Sigmund, “for thou art young and over-bold, and men will deem the quarry good, when they take thee.”
Now each goes his way, and when they were parted, Sigmund meets certain men, and gives forth a wolf’s howl; and when Sinfjotli heard it, he went straightway thereto, and slew them all, and once more they parted. But ere Sinfjotli has fared long through the woods, eleven men meet him, and he wrought in such wise that he slew them all, and was awearied therewith, and crawls under an oak, and there takes his rest. Then came Sigmund thither, and said—
“Why didst thou not call on me?”
Sinfjotli said, “I was loth to call for thy help for the slaying of eleven men.”
Then Sigmund rushed at him so hard that he staggered
wolves; Pliny says that one of the family of Antæus, chosen by lot annually, became a wolf, and so remained for nine years; Giraldus Cambrensis will have it that Irishmen may become wolves; and Nennius asserts point-blank that “the descendants of wolves are still in Ossory;” they retransform themselves into wolves when they bite. Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucian have similar stories. The Emperor Sigismund convoked a council of theologians in the fifteenth century who decided that wer-wolves did exist.
