Werewolf (A.S. were-wulf—wer, 'a man,' wulf, 'a wolf.' The modern Ger. Währwolf is the Middle High German Werwolf, Latinised as garulphus or gerulphus, whence the Old Fr. garoul, the modern name being pleonastically loup-garou). Halliwell quotes from a Bodleian MS. (Dict. Archaic and Provincial Words, s.v. 'a-charmed') a characteristic example of 'Folk-etymology': 'Ther ben somme that eten chyl-dren and men, and eteth noon other flesh fro that tyme that thei be a-charmed with mannys flesh, for rather thei wolde be deed; and thei be cleped werewolfes for men shulde be war of hem.' The following passages from Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia and Richard Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1605) give a summary of belief about the werewolf, one of the most uncanny of the creatures of human imagination. 'Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulphos Galli nominant, Angli vero were-wulf dicunt.' 'The were-wolves are certain sorcerers, who having anointed their bodies with an ointment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certain enchanted girdle, do not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle; and they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in worrying and killing, and most of human creatures.' This superstition was widely spread in ancient and mediæval times, and is still a living fact amongst many savage races, and even in corners of France, not to speak of Russia and Bulgaria. Wlislocki, writing in 1891 (Journal Gypsy Soc.), tells us of a gypsy fiddler's wife at Tóresz in north Hungary, about ten years before, who kept the family in mutton and enabled her husband to start a thriving inn by her nocturnal ravages as a ruvanush. The parson cured the woman by sprinkling her and the house with holy water; the peasants murdered the husband, and two of his slayers were then living in the village. Indeed we may say it is a commonplace of folklore that certain men by natural gift, or magic art, can turn for a time into ravenous beasts, which Dr Tylor calls 'substantially a temporary metempsychosis or metamorphosis.' And Thomas Aquinas lends the weight of his grave authority to a sound theological explanation: 'All angels, good and bad, have by natural virtue the power of transmuting our bodies.' In various forms of mental disease there is a belief in a similar transformation, but this no doubt presupposes an antecedent sane belief in the possibility of such metamorphoses into animals. These insane delusions have been widely prevalent at various times in the history of human society, and have given rise to the name of Lycanthropy. The wolf is of course not the only animal, although the most common in western Europe. But in England he has long been unknown, and the cat has had to be largely employed in witch transformations. Herodotus tells us the Neuri turned to wolves for a few days every year. The Khonds of Orissa think some men have the art of 'mleepa,' and by the help of a god become mleepa tigers to kill their enemies, one of the man's four souls going out to animate the beast. The tribe of Budas again in Abyssinia, ironworkers and potters, have also the evil eye and the power of turning into lyænas, whence they are very properly denied the Christian sacrament. In Virgil's 8th Eclogue we read how Mœris makes himself a wolf by means of poisonous herbs, and how he witches away the crops and calls up dead folk from their graves. Petronius Arbitr has a story of the transformation of a versipellis or turnskin, and here also we find the note so familiar in European stories of werewolves and witches, of how when the wolf is wounded the man who wore his shape is found to bear exactly the same wound. We find werewolf warriors of peculiar ferocity in Scandinavian sagas, and to this day in Denmark a man who is a werewolf is recognised by his eyebrows meeting as if his soul were ready to take flight like a butterfly. The change of shape is often effected by taking off the clothes, putting on a girdle, or rubbing with magic salve. 'Wolf-girdles' are still spoken of at least in Germany, and in December, as Tylor notes, one must not 'talk of the wolf' by name lest the werewolves rend you. During the 16th century France was much infested with werewolves, the trial of Gilles Garnier at Dôle in 1573 being the most famous historical instance; and Olaus Magnus in the same period tells of specially accursed werewolves who were ferocious against the orthodox. But on the other hand we meet a more kindly view in the Bisclaveret of Marie de France's lai, and in the romance of William and the Werewolf—more in keeping with the usual folklore notion of interchangeable transformation and mutual relationship between the human and the animal world.
It is obvious that in all this there is a close connection with the obscure facts underlying Totemism. And, as we have seen, Dr Tylor connects it also with metempsychosis, and both at least agree in a common basis of animism. The mythological explanation (λύκος, 'wolf,' for λευκός, 'shining') is of course inadmissible, for the transformations were not confined to beasts with shining coats. Equally inadmissible is the rationalistic explanation of an innate thirst for blood in some natures breaking out occasionally, together with hallucinations, into cannibalism, the chief victims being peasants whose chief terror was wolves. For the idea of such transformations must already have been familiar and common, rather than exceptional, and thus a belief in these necessarily presupposes a belief in lycanthropy.
The Rev. S. Baring Gould's Book of Were-wolves (1865) contains good examples, but its theories may be neglected. The best account is Dr Wilhelm Hertz's monograph, Der Werwolf (1862). See also Richard Andree in Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (1878), and Dr E. B. Taylor's Primitive Culture; also the articles TOTEMISM, VAMPIRE, and WITCHCRAFT.