Now I Am Free

There was a man who turned into a werewolf and killed sheep and cattle. But one fine day he recovered and got married. One morning his wife asked what he wanted for breakfast.

"You don't have to worry about me," he said, "I'll have breakfast in the woods."

Toward evening he came home looking ragged and tired. She thought that he had been drinking.

The next day they went out to work in the fields. At noon the man went to the woods. But before he left, he said:

"If a wolf comes and attacks you, just call my name."

A while after he left, there came a huge and dangerous-looking wolf. He attacked the woman, but she called her husband's name. The wolf changed right before her eyes - and there stood her husband with a piece of her dress in his mouth.

"You've done well," he said, "now I am free."

(Kvideland and Sehmsdorf 1988, 76. - Migratory Legend type ML 4005 - Collected by Ragnar Nilsson, Bohuslän (Sweden). Printed in Carl-Martin Bergstrand, Bohuslänska sagner (1947), 119.

◎ A werewolf is not to be thought of as a role model.