Case file · Folklore / legend
The werewolves of Ossory
Gerald of Wales wrote around 1188 that a priest travelling from Ulster to Meath met a talking wolf who asked him to give the last rites to its dying wife; they were humans from Ossory cursed to live as wolves for seven years.
1188 CE · 52.65, -7.25 · status: legend
The account
The story is in Gerald's Topographia Hibernica, written after he visited Ireland in 1185. Irish and Norse texts also tell of the wolf-people of Ossory.
The sceptical view
A moral and theological tale, written by a Cambro-Norman cleric with clear views about the Irish.