In like manner Skallagrim had his fits of frenzy, taking after his amiable father.

“Thord and his companion were opposed to Skallagrim in the game, and they were too much for him, he wearied, and the game went better with them. But at dusk, after sunset, it went worse with Egill and Thord, for Skallagrim became so strong that he caught up Thord and cast him down, so that he broke his bones, and that was the death of him. Then he caught at Egill. Thorgerd Brák was the name of a servant of Skallagrim, who had been foster-mother to Egill. She was a woman of great stature, strong as a man and a bit of a witch. Brák exclaimed,—‘Skallagrim! are you now falling upon your son?’ (hamaz þú at syni þínum). Then Skallagrim let go his hold of Egill and clutched at her. She started aside and fled. Skallagrim. followed. They ran out upon Digraness, and she sprang off the headland into the water. Skallagrim cast after her a huge stone which struck her between the shoulders, and she never rose after it. The place is now called Brak’s Sound.”—(c. 40.)

Let it be observed that in these passages from the Aigla, the words að hamaz, hamrammr, &c. are used without any intention of conveying the idea of a change of bodily shape, though the words taken literally assert it. For they are derived from hamr, a skin or habit; a word which has its representatives in other Aryan languages, and is therefore a primitive word expressive of the skin of a beast.

The Sanskrit ### carmma; the Hindustanee ### cam, hide or skin; and ### camra, leather; the Persian ### game, clothing, disguise; the Gothic ham or hams, skin; and even the Italian camicia, and the French chemise, are cognate words.[[2]]

[2] I shall have more to say on this subject in the chapter on the Mythology of Lycanthropy.

It seems probable accordingly that the verb að hamaz was first applied to those who wore the skins of savage animals, and went about the country as freebooters; but that popular superstition soon invested them with supernatural powers, and they were supposed to assume the forms of the beasts in whose skins they were disguised. The verb then acquired the significance “to become a were-wolf, to change shape.” It did not stop there, but went through another change of meaning, and was finally applied to those who were afflicted with paroxysms of madness or demoniacal possession.

This was not the only word connected with were-wolves which helped on the superstition. The word vargr, a wolf, had a double significance, which would be the means of originating many a were-wolf story. Vargr is the same as u-argr, restless; argr being the same as the Anglo-Saxon earg. Vargr had its double signification in Norse. It signified a wolf, and also a godless man. This vargr is the English were, in the word were-wolf, and the garou or varou in French. The Danish word for were-wolf is var-ulf, the Gothic vaira-ulf. In the Romans de Garin, it is “Leu warou, sanglante beste.” In the Vie de S. Hildefons by Gauthier de Coinsi,—

Cil lou desve, cil lou garol,
Ce sunt deable, que saul
Ne puent estre de nos mordre.

Here the loup-garou is a devil. The Anglo-Saxons regarded him as an evil man: wearg, a scoundrel; Gothic varys, a fiend. But very often the word meant no more than an outlaw. Pluquet in his Contes Populaires tells us that the ancient Norman laws said of the criminals condemned to outlawry for certain offences, Wargus esto: be an outlaw!

In like manner the Lex Ripuaria, tit. 87, “Wargus sit, hoe est expulsus.” In the laws of Canute, he is called verevulf. (Leges Canuti, Schmid, i. 148.) And the Salic Law (tit. 57) orders: “Si quis corpus jam sepultum effoderit, aut expoliaverit, wargus sit.” “If any one shall have dug up or despoiled an already buried corpse, let him be a varg.”