Marie de France's lays are based on British tradition. There are many of these delightful stories. Among the most interesting of them is "The Werewolf." * * * * * Once upon a time in the days of King Arthur--for later there are some lines in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" which tells us that this story must have been true--there lived a man who for part of the week was a wolf--that is, he had the form and the appetite of a wolf, and was called a werewolf. But nobody knew that he was a werewolf for three days in the week. Not even his wife, whom he loved well and devotedly, knew what happened to her husband while he was away from her these three days every week. It vexed the wife very much that she did not know, but she was afraid to question her husband, lest he be angry. At last one day she did question him. "Ask me no more," replied the husband, "for if I answered you you would cease to love me." Nevertheless she gave him no peace until he had told her that three days in the week, because of a spell which was over him, he was forced to be a werewolf, and that when he felt the change coming over him he hid himself in the very thickest part of the forest. Then the wife demanded to know what became of his clothes, and he answered that he laid them aside. The wife asked where he put them. He begged her not to ask him, for only the garments made it possible for him to return to human shape again. But the wife cried and begged until the knight, her husband, had told her all. "Wife," he said, "inside the forest on a crossroad is a chapel. Near the chapel under a shrub is a stone. Beneath the stone is a hole, and in that hole do I hide my clothes until the enchantment makes it possible for me to take my human shape again." Now the wife was not a good wife. Instead of trying to help her husband to get free from the wolf shape he had to assume three days in every week, thereafter she loathed him and was afraid of him. And what is worse still, she betrayed him to another knight. She took this other knight into her confidence and told him where her husband hid his clothes when the spell came upon him and he took the form of a wolf. Thereupon the knight to whom she had told this dreadful secret stole the clothes, and they hid them where the poor wolf could never find them again. After that these two wicked people were married, while the poor wolf wandered about in the forest, grieving, for he had loved his wife well and truly. Some time after this the King was hunting one day in the forest, and his hounds gave chase to a wolf. At last, when the wretched beast was in danger of being overtaken by the hounds and torn into a thousand pieces, he fled to the King, seized him by the stirrup, and licked his foot submissively.