S. Patrick is said to have changed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a wolf, and S. Natalis, the abbot, to have pronounced anathema upon an illustrious family in Ireland; in consequence of which, every male and female take the form of wolves for seven years and live in the forests and career over the bogs, howling mournfully, and appeasing their hunger upon the sheep of the peasants.[5] A duke of Prussia, according to Majolus, had a countryman brought for sentence before him, because he had devoured his neighbour’s cattle. The fellow was an ill-favoured, deformed man, with great wounds in his face, which he had received from dogs’ bites whilst he had been in his wolf’s form. It was believed that he changed shape twice in the year, at Christmas and at Midsummer. He was said to exhibit much uneasiness and discomfort when the wolf-hair began to break out and his bodily shape to change. [5] PHIL. HARTUNG: _Conciones Tergeminæ_, pars ii. p. 367. He was kept long in prison and closely watched, lest he should become a were-wolf during his confinement and attempt to escape, but nothing remarkable took place. If this is the same individual as that mentioned by Olaus Magnus, as there seems to be a probability, the poor fellow was burned alive. John of Nüremberg relates the following curious story.[6] A priest was once travelling in a strange country, and lost his way in a forest. Seeing a fire, he made towards it, and beheld a wolf seated over it. The wolf addressed him in human-voice, and bade him not fear, as “he was of the Ossyrian race, of which a man and a woman were doomed to spend a certain number of years in wolf’s form. Only after seven years might they return home and resume their former shapes, if they were still alive.” He begged the priest to visit and console his sick wife, and to give her the last sacraments. This the priest consented to do, after some hesitation, and only when convinced of the beasts being human beings, by observing that the wolf used his front paws as hands, and when he saw the she-wolf peel off her wolf-skin from her head to her navel, exhibiting the features of an aged woman. [6] JOHN EUS. NIERENBERG _de Miracul. in Europa_, lib. ii. cap. 42. Marie de France says in the _Lais du Bisclaveret:_—[7] Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan Garwall Papelent li Norman. * * * * Jadis le poet-hum oir Et souvent suleit avenir, Humes pluseirs Garwall deviendrent E es boscages meisun tindrent [7] An epitome of this curious were-wolf tale will be found in Ellis’s _Early English Metrical Romances_. There is an interesting paper by Rhanæus, on the Courland were-wolves, in the _Breslauer Sammlung_.[8] The author says,—“There are too many examples derived not merely from hearsay, but received on indisputable evidence, for us to dispute the fact, that Satan—if we do not deny that such a being exists, and that he has his work in the children of darkness—holds the Lycanthropists in his net in three ways:—