‘Marie’ was the name by which an otherwise anonymous twelfth-century author of a series of lays, or narratives in verse, called herself in the introduction to one of her works; others later styled her ‘Marie de France’. The lays are likely to have been written by a woman who was high-born and of French origin living in England and in regular contact with the Angevin court, where her works were known and circulated. She has been variously identified as Marie, the Abbess of Shaftesbury and half-sister of Henry II; as Marie the daughter of the royal adviser Count Waleran de Beaumont; and as Marie the Countess of Boulogne. For the most part, her stories are concerned with the fashionable subjects of love and desire, but one of her lays addresses the theme of shape-changing. The nobleman who is the hero of the lay is able – or is perhaps compelled by some supernatural instinct – to change his form and become a wolf frequenting the forests which surround his home. Stories of werewolves were common in the medieval period, but these supernatural creatures did not always have the monstrous connotations later attached to them. The Scandinavian Saga of the Volsungs, for instance, tells how the hero Sigmund and his son become wolves for a time to enhance their power and defeat their enemies. For Marie de France, the shape-changer whom she calls Bisclavret (she tells us in her preface that this is the Breton term for a werewolf, and that the Normans called it a ‘Garwaf’) is a rather amiable creature whose betrayal by his wife justifies his attacks upon her and her lover.

Bisclavret the Werewolf

In ancient days many stories were told of men who turned into wolves and made their dwelling in the wild. Each of them became the creature known as the werewolf. This is a savage beast which, as long as it remains in its animal form, goes around devouring people and causing harm, lurking in the depths of the forests. But let me tell you the particular story of the werewolf Bisclavret.