[229] Cfr. Afanassieff, vi. 51, v. 27, and v. 28.
[230] It is also said that the nurse of the Latin twins was a strumpet, because lupæ or lupanæ fœminæ were names given to such women, whence also the name of lupanaria given to the houses to which they resorted: "Abscondunt spurcas hæc monumenta lupas." Olaus Magnus wrote, that wolves, attracted by smell, attack pregnant women, whence the custom that no pregnant woman should go out unless accompanied by an armed man. The ancients believed that the phallos of the wolf roasted and eaten weakened the Venus.
[231] In the Legendes et Croyances Superstitieuses de la Creuse, collected by Bonnafoux, Guéret, 1867, p. 27, we read concerning the loup garou, that the wolf thanks whoever wounds him. It is said that they who are disguised in the skin of the loup garou are condemned souls: "Chaque nuit, ils sont forcés d'aller chercher la maudite peau à un endroit convenu et ils courent ainsi jusqu'à ce qu'ils rencontrent une âme charitable et courageuse qui les délivre en les blessant."
"... devant qu'il fût nuit
Il arriva nouvel encombre;
Un loup parut, tout le troupeau s'enfuit
Ce n'était pas un loup, ce n'en était que l'ombre."
The sheep were right, however, to flee. In the Edda, the fourth swallow says, "When I see the wolf's ears, I think that the wolf is not far off." The twilight is the shadow or ear of the wolf.
[233] Lous loups-garous soun gens coumo nous autes; mès an heyt un countrat dab lou diable, e cado sé soun fourçatz de se cambia en bestios per ana au sabbat e courre touto la neyt. Y a per aco un mouyén de lous goari. Lous can tira sang pendent qu' an perdut la forme de l'home, e asta leu la reprengon per toutjour; Bladé, Contes et Proverbes Populaires recueillis en Armagnac, Paris, 1867, p. 51.
[234] We ought perhaps to add here the tradition cited by Cæsarius Heisterbacensis of a wolf who, biting the arm of a girl, drags her to a place where there is another wolf; the more she cries the more fiercely the wolf bites her. The other wolf has a bone in his throat, which the girl extracts; here the girl takes the place of the crane or stork of the fable; the bone may be now the moon, now the sun.
[235] In another passage in the Edda, the eagle sits upon the wolf. According to the Latin legend of the foundation of Lavinium, the Trojans saw a singular prodigy. A fire arises in the woods; the wolf brings dry twigs in his mouth to make it burn better, and the eagle helps him by fanning the flames with his wings. The fox, on the other hand, dips its brush in the river to put out the fire with it, but does not succeed.
[236] Cfr. Afanassieff, iii. 19.