"Urbibus et castris regnat et ecclesiis."
Macchiavelli, St Ignazio di Loyola, and St Vincenzo de' Paoli took upon themselves the charge of propagating its type over the whole world.
The wolf is better, when he is a wolf, for then we know at least what he wants; we know that he is our enemy, and are accordingly on our guard; but he, too, sometimes disguises himself, by imposture or magic, as a sheep, a shepherd, a monk, or a penitent, like Ysengrin; and from this point of view resembles not a little his perfidious god-mother the fox; it is well known that amongst the exploits of Reinart there is that of his extra-matrimonial union with the she-wolf.
In the Ṛigvedas we already find several interesting mythical data concerning the wolf; he is in it entirely demoniacal, as the exhausted Vṛikas, to which, in a hymn, the Açvinâu give back its strength,[217] seems, as it appears to me, not to be the wolf, but the messenger crow which, during the night, must carry the solar hero.
As in the Zendic Vendidad,[218] the souls of good men, when on the way to heaven, are afraid of meeting the wolf, so in the Ṛigvedas, the devotee says that once the reddish wolf (which seems to be confounded here with the jackal or the fox) saw him coming on the way, and fled in terror;[219] he invokes the (luminous) night to send the wolf, the robber far away,[220] and the god Pûshan (the sun) to remove the evil wolf, the malignant spirit, from the path of the devotees, the wolf that besieges the roads, thieving, fraudulent, double-dealing.[221] The poet, after having called the enemy Vṛikas, prays, with imprecations, that he may lacerate his own body;[222] and the wild beast, full of witchcraft,[223] which Indras kills, is probably a wolf. But, besides this, I think I can find in the Ṛigvedas the lupus piscator of Russian and Western tradition; (according to Ælianos there were wolves friendly to fishermen near the Palus Mœotis.) In the fifty-sixth hymn of the eighth book, Matsyas (the fish) invokes the Âdityas (that is, the luminous gods) to free him and his from the jaws of the wolf. So in another strophe of the same hymn, we must in reason suppose that it is a fish that speaks when she who has a terrible son (i.e., the mother of the sun) is invoked as protectress from him who in the shallow waters endeavours to kill him.[224] We also find a fish lying in shallow water explicitly mentioned in another hymn;[225] which proves to us the image of the fish without water, which was widely developed in later Hindoo tradition, to have been in the Vedic age already a familiar one. We find the dog as the enemy of the wolf in the Hindoo words vṛikâris vṛikârâtis, and vṛikadanças. (In the thirteenth story of the fourth book of Afanassieff, the wolf wishes to eat the dog; the latter, who feels himself too weak to resist, begs the wolf to bring him something to eat, in order that he may become larger, and be more tender for the wolf's teeth; but when he is in good condition, he acquires strength and makes the wolf run. The enmity of the dog and the wolf was also made popular in the Æsopian fables.)
In the Râmâyaṇam,[226] we already meet with the proverbial expression of the sheep who do not increase when guarded by the wolf or jackal (rakshayamâṇâ na vardhante meshâ gomâyunâ).
In the Mahâbhâratam, the second of the three sons of Kuntî, the strong, terrible, and voracious Bhîmas, is called Wolf's-belly (Vṛikodaras, the solar hero enclosed in the nocturnal or winter darkness). Here the wolf has a heroic and sympathetic form, as in the Tuti-Name[227] he, although famished, shows compassion upon a maiden who travels to fulfil a promise; as in the same Tuti-Name[228] he helps the lion against the mice, and in the story of Ardschi Bordschi, the boy, son of a wolf, understands the language of wolves, and teaches it to the merchants with whom he lives; like the Russian she-wolf that gives her milk to Ivan Karoliević, in order that he may take it to the witch, his wife, who induced him to fetch it in the hope that he would thereby meet with his death;[229] and like the she-wolf of the fifteenth Esthonian story, who comes up on hearing the cry of a child, and gives its milk to nourish it. The story tells us that the shape of a wolf was assumed by the mother of the child herself, and that when she was alone, she placed her wolf-disguise upon a rock, and appeared as a naked woman to give milk to her child. The husband, informed of this, orders that the rock be heated, so that when the wolf's skin is again placed upon it, it may be burnt, and he may thus be able to recognise and take back to himself his wife. The she-wolf that gives her milk to the twin-brothers, Romulus and Remus, in Latin epic tradition, was no less a woman than the nurse-wolf of the Esthonian story.[230] The German hero Wolfdieterich, the wolves who hunt for the hero in Russian stories, sacred to Mars and to Thor as their hunting dogs, have the same benignant nature. (The evening aurora disguises herself in the night with a wolf's skin, nourishes as a she-wolf the new-born solar hero, and in the morning puts down her wolf's skin upon the fiery rock of the East, and finds her husband again.) What Solinus tells us of the Neuri, viz., that they transformed themselves into wolves at stated periods; and what used to be narrated of the Arcadians, to the effect that when they crossed a certain marsh, they became wolves for eight years,—suggests us a new idea of the zoological transformations of the solar hero.[231] In La Fontaine,[232] the shadow of the wolf makes the sheep flee in the evening. As a hero transformed, the wolf has a benignant aspect in legends. According to Baronius, in the year 617, a number of wolves presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by God tore the sacrilegious thieves of the army of Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of Loreto. A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head of St Edmund the Martyr, King of England. St Oddo, Abbot of Cluny, assailed in a pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a wolf; thus a wolf showed the way to the beatified Adam, in the same way as, in Herodotos, the wolves served as guides to the priests of Ceres. A wolf, having devoured two mares which drew a cart, was forced by St Eustorgius to draw the cart in their stead, and obeyed his orders. St Norbert compelled a wolf, first to let a sheep go after having clutched it, and then to guard the sheep all day without touching them. We read of the youth of the ancient Syracusan hero Hielon that, being at school, a wolf carried off his tablets in order to make him pursue it; no sooner was Hielon out, than the wolf re-entered the school, and massacred the master and the other scholars.
And even after his death the wolf is useful. The ancients believed that a wolf's hide, when put on by one who had been bitten by a mad dog, was a charm against hydrophobia. According to Pliny, wolf's teeth rubbed on the gums of children during teething relieves the pain (which is quite credible, but any other sharp tooth would serve the same purpose, by making the teeth cut sooner). In Sicily it is believed that a wolf's head increases the courage of whoever puts it on. In the province of Girgenti shoes are made of wolf's skin for children whom their parents wish to grow up strong, brave, and pugnacious. The animals themselves that are ridden by persons who wear these shoes are cured of their pain. The animal allupatu (that is, which has once been bitten by a wolf) becomes invulnerable, and never feels any other kind of pain. It is also believed in Sicily that when a wolf's skin is exposed in the open air, it causes drums to break when they are beaten. This superstition reminds us of the fable of the fox that kills itself by breaking the drum or biting the string of a bow; the mythical drum (that is, the cloud) is destroyed when the wolf's skin is taken off. In Æsop's fable, the wolf's skin is recommended by the fox as a cure for the sick lion.
But the wolf of tradition usually has a perverse or diabolical signification; and as the demon is represented now as a master of every species of perfidy and wickedness, and now as a fool, so is the wolf. In the Hellenic myth, Lycaon, King of Arcadia, became a wolf because he had fed upon human flesh. According to Servius, the wolves among the people, called for this reason Hirpini (the Sabine word hirpus meaning a wolf), carried off the entrails of the victim sacrificed to Pluto, and therefore brought down a pestilence upon the land. Wolves tore the hero Milôn to pieces in the forest. Wolves are an omen of death; the loup garou of popular French tradition is a diabolical form.[233] In the Edda, the two wolves Sköll and Hati wish to take, one the sun and the other the moon; the wolf devours the sun, father of the world, and gives birth to a daughter. He is then killed by Vidarr. Hati precedes the luminous betrothed of the sky; the wolf Fenris, son of the demoniacal Lokis, chained by the Ases, bites off the hand that the hero Tyr, as an earnest of the good faith of the Ases, had put into his mouth,[234] when chained to the western gate. Nanna, of the Pentamerone, after having travelled over the world, is disguised in the shape of a wolf, and changes in character and in colour, becoming malicious; the three sons of the Finns go to inhabit the Valley of the Wolf, near the Wolf's Lake, and find there three women spinning, who can transform themselves into swans. On Christmas Eve, the King Helgi meets a witch who rides upon a wolf, having eagles for bridles.[235] Wolves eat each other; the wolf Sinfiölti becomes a eunuch; the wolf who flees before the hero is an omen of victory, as well as the wolf who howls under the branches of an ash-tree. (The howling of the wolf, the braying of the ass, the hissing of the serpent, announce the death of the demoniacal monster; this howling must necessarily take place in the morning, or the spring, when the hero has recovered his strength, as the Edda says that "a hero must never fight towards sunset)." If Gunnar (the solar hero) loses his life, the wolf becomes the master of the treasure, and of the heritage of Nifl; the heroes roast the wolf. All these legendary particulars relating to the wolf in the Edda concur in showing us the wolf as a gloomy and diabolical monster. The night and the winter is the time of the wolf spoken of in the Voluspa; the gods who enter, according to the German tradition, into wolves' skins, represent the sun as hiding himself in the night, or the snowy season of winter (whence the demoniacal white wolf of a Russian story,[236] in the midst of seven black wolves). Inasmuch as the solar hero becomes a wolf, he has a divine nature; inasmuch, on the contrary, as the wolf is the proper form of the devil, his nature is entirely malignant. The condemned man, the proscribed criminal, the bandit, the utlagatus or outlaw, were said in the Middle Ages to wear a caput lupinum (in England, wulfesheofod; in France, teste lœue). The wolf Ysengrin, descended partly from the Æsopian wolf, and partly from Scandinavian myths, which were propagated in Germany, Flanders, and France, possesses much of the diabolical craftiness of the fox; he usually adopts against sheep the same stratagems which the fox makes use of to entrap chickens. The French proverb makes the fox preach to the fowls; the Italian proverb makes the wolf sing psalms when he wishes to ensnare the sheep. As we have seen the jackal and the fox confounded in the East, so Reinart and Ysengrin are sometimes identified by their cunning in Western tradition. A recent French writer, who had observed the habits of the wolf, says that he is "effrayant de sagacité et de calcul."[237] In the second story of the second book of Afanassieff, the same wizard-wolf who knew how to imitate the goat's voice to deceive the kids, goes to the house of an old man and an old woman, who have five sheep, a horse, and a calf. The wolf comes and begins to sing. The old woman admires the song, and gives him one sheep, then the others, then the horse, next the calf, and finally herself. The old man, left alone, at last succeeds in hunting the wolf away. In the preceding story, where the animals accuse each other, the demoniacal wolf, when his turn comes, accuses God. We have already spoken of the wolf who, by the order of St Eustorgius, draws the cart instead of the mares which he had eaten. In the twenty-fifth story of the third book of Afanassieff, the wolf comes up to the sleeping workman, and smells him; the workman awakes, takes the wolf by the tail,[238] and kills him. Another time the same workman, when he goes with his father to the chase, after having enriched himself with money which he had taken from three brigands who had hidden it in a deserted mill, meets again with two wolves who eat the horses, but, entangling themselves in the reins, they are compelled to draw the car home again themselves; here, therefore, we have the miracle of St Eustorgius reduced to its natural mythical proportions. Here, evidently, the wolf begins to show himself as a stupid animal; the demon teaches his art to the little solar hero in the evening, and is betrayed by the hero himself in the morning; the fox cheats the solar cock in the evening, and is deceived by it in the morning; the wolf succeeds by his wickedness in the evening, and is ruined in the morning. We have already mentioned the Norwegian story of the little Schmierbock, who, put into a sack by the witch, twice makes a hole in the sack and escapes, and the third time makes the witch eat her own daughter. Schmierbock is the ram; the witch or night puts him into the sack. In the Piedmontese story,[239] and in the Russian one, instead of Schmierbock, we have Piccolino (the very little one), and the Small Little Finger (malćik-s palćik, that is, the little finger, which is the wise one, according to popular superstition). The Russian story is as follows: An old woman, while baking a cake (the moon), cuts off her little finger and throws it into the fire. From the little finger in the fire, a dwarf, but very strong son, is born, who afterwards does many wonderful things. One day he was eating the tripe of an ox in the forest; the wolf passes by, and eats dwarf and tripe together. After this, the wolf approaches a flock of sheep, but the dwarf cries out from within the wolf, "Shepherd, shepherd, thou sleepest and the wolf carries off a sheep." The shepherd then chases the wolf away, who endeavours to get rid of his troublesome guest; the dwarf requests the wolf to carry him home to his parents; no sooner have they arrived there than the dwarf comes out behind and catches hold of the wolf's tail, shouting, "Kill the wolf, kill the grey one." The old people come out and kill it.[240] The mythical wolf dies now after only one night, now after only one winter of life. To the mythical wolf, however, bastard sons were born, who, changing only their skin, succeeded in living for a long period among mortals in the midst of civil society, preserving, nevertheless, their wolf-like habits. The French proverb says, "Le loup alla à Rome; il y laissa de son poil et rien de ses coutumes." The pagan she-wolf gave milk to the Roman heroes; the Catholic wolf, thunderstruck by Dante,[241] on the contrary, feeds upon them—
"Ed ha natura sì malvagia e ria,
Che mai non empie la bramosa voglia,
E dopo il pasto ha più fame che pria.
Molti son gli animali a cui s'ammoglia."