Werewolves of Ossory (also called the Man-Wolves of Ossory)

The priest had made his fire at the edge of the trees, on the road that runs from Ulster down into Meath, and he was settling into the long discomfort of a night outdoors when a wolf walked into the light. He reached for nothing. There was nothing to reach for. The animal stopped a few paces off, close enough that he could see the rise and fall of its ribs, and then it spoke, and told him not to be afraid.

What the wolf said was that it was not a wolf. Or not only a wolf. There were two of them, it explained, a man and a woman, both born in Ossory, and through the curse of an abbot named Natalis they were bound every seven years to shed their human shape and leave the dwellings of people behind. They became wolves and lived as wolves. If they survived the seven years, another pair took the burden in their place, and the two were free to go home and be themselves again. The wolf spoke of God while it said all this, plainly, the way a neighbour might.

It had come for a reason. Its companion, the she-wolf, was old and dying somewhere back in the dark, and it begged the priest to come and give her the last rites of the Church before she went. The priest followed. He found her where she lay, her breath shallow and warm against the cold air, and he did what his office required, but at the sacrament itself he faltered. To place the host in the mouth of a beast felt like blasphemy. So the he-wolf came forward and, with paw and teeth, drew the wolfskin down from the she-wolf’s head and shoulders the way a hood is folded back, and underneath was an old woman, grey, human, entirely herself. The priest finished what he had begun.

This is the strange centre of the whole legend, and it should be said plainly. The Ossory werewolves are not the snarling shape-shifters of later horror. They do not lose themselves. The wolf body is something closer to a garment, a skin worn over a person who remains a person inside it, with a person’s mind and a person’s faith, and the skin can be peeled back to prove it. They are people who happen, for a while, to be wearing wolves.

How they came to be wearing them depends on who is telling the story. Gerald of Wales, who set the tale down in his Topographia Hibernica after travelling through Ireland in the 1180s, gives the curse to Saint Natalis, an abbot, laid on the people of Ossory for sins now lost to memory. A later Norse account in the King’s Mirror tells it differently and more harshly: when Saint Patrick preached to one stubborn clan, they mocked him by howling at him like wolves, and he prayed that God would make the insult fit the men, so the whole clan was condemned to become what they had only pretended to be. Older still is the Irish tradition behind the name itself. The medieval text Cóir Anmann remembers Laignech Fáelad, the first man who went into a wolf-shape, whose children went wolfing after him and killed herds in the manner of wolves, and whose line ran down into the kings of Ossory. A werewolf, in that version, is not a victim of any saint. It is an inheritance.

The seven years themselves were not gentle. A cursed pair moved through the woods as any wolves would, padding the deer-trails, taking livestock off the edges of farms, keeping well clear of the houses and the firelight and everything they had been told to leave. They hunted to eat. They were, in every practical sense, wolves, and the woods were full of ordinary wolves and ordinary hunters who could not tell the difference.

What set them apart was carried on the inside. They kept their speech, as the priest learned to his lasting unease. They kept their reckoning of time, counting down the years. The he-wolf, before it led the priest back out of the trees, gave him a string of prophecies about Ireland and the foreign armies then arriving on its coasts, which is the sort of knowledge a plain wolf does not have. Related Irish accounts push the idea further, describing men who left their sleeping human bodies behind entirely when they went wolfing, so that a wound taken in the wolf would open on the body at home, and a body moved while its owner was away could never be returned to.

The cost was that none of it was chosen. The curse did not ask permission. A pair took the wolf-shape because the seven years had come round again, served their term in the cold and the wet with the constant risk that they would not live to be relieved, and could only hope another two would be found to carry it next. Gerald, weighing the theology, leaned on Augustine and decided that nothing real had changed at all: God permits the senses to be deceived, and what looks like a wolf is only a man God has allowed to seem so. It is a tidy answer. It does very little for the old woman in the woods.

The priest’s story did not end at the fire. He was called before a synod convened by the Bishop of Meath, and on Gerald’s own advice was sent on toward Rome to lay the matter before the Pope. Gerald never met the priest himself; he had the account from the bishop’s clerks, secondhand, which is how most werewolf stories travel. What survives is the shape of it: a dying woman in a wolfskin, a frightened man with the host in his hand, and a country where the line between a person and a beast had worn thin enough to step across.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Werewolves of Ossory?

The Werewolves of Ossory are figures from medieval Irish legend: people from the kingdom of Ossory who were cursed to live as wolves for seven years at a time. Unlike later horror-style werewolves, they keep their human minds, speech, and Christian faith while in wolf form, and the wolf shape can be peeled back like a skin to reveal the person underneath.

Who cursed the Werewolves of Ossory?

According to Gerald of Wales, who recorded the legend in his Topographia Hibernica around 1188, the curse was laid by Saint Natalis, an abbot, on the people of Ossory. A later Norse version in the King’s Mirror instead credits Saint Patrick, who is said to have cursed a clan that mocked his preaching by howling at him like wolves.

How long does the curse of the Ossory werewolves last?

The curse runs in seven-year cycles. A man and a woman from Ossory must take wolf form and leave human settlements for seven years; if they survive, another pair replaces them and the first two return to human shape and their home.

What happened when the priest met the wolf?

A priest traveling from Ulster to Meath was approached by a talking wolf, who explained the curse and asked him to give last rites to his dying she-wolf companion. To prove she was human, the male wolf drew back her wolfskin to reveal an elderly woman, and the priest gave her communion before being led safely out of the woods with prophecies about Ireland’s future.

Are the Werewolves of Ossory evil?

No, the Werewolves of Ossory are not evil. They are presented as devout Christians and unwilling victims of a curse, keeping their human conscience throughout their time as wolves, and the legend treats them with sympathy rather than horror.

Related Entries

Banshee, Dagda, Morrigan, Sídhe, Kelpie, Nuckelavee, Werewolf, Wulver, Loup-garou, Lycaon, Lagahoo, Pricolici, Fenrir, Garmr