Page "Cynocephaly" Paragraph 13

The Nowell Codex, perhaps more commonly known as the manuscript containing the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, also contains references to Cynocephali.

One such reference can be found in the part of the manuscript known as The Wonders of the East, in which they are called " healfhundingas " or " half-dogs.

" Also, in Anglo-Saxon England, the Old English word wulfes heafod (" wolf's head ") was a technical term for an outlaw, who could be killed as if he were a wolf.

The so-called Leges Edwardi Confessoris, written around 1140, however, offered a somewhat literal interpretation: “ For from the day of his outlawry he bears a wolf's head, which is called wluesheued by the English.

And this sentence is the same for all outlaws .” Cynocephali appear in the Old Welsh poem Pa Gur?

as cinbin ( dogheads ).

Here they are enemies of King Arthur's retinue ; Arthur's men fight them in the mountains of Eidyn ( Edinburgh ), and hundreds of them fall at the hand of Arthur's warrior Bedwyr ( later known as Bedivere ).

The next lines of the poem also mention a fight with a character named Garwlwyd ( Rough-Gray ); a Gwrgi Garwlwyd ( Man-Dog Rough-Gray ) appears in one of the Welsh Triads, where he is described in such a way that scholars have discussed him as a werewolf.