1. Hist. A kind of siege engine.
A translation of lupus belli, occurring in the Flores Historiarum (‘Matthew of Westminster’) in the account of Edw. I.’s siege of Stirling in 1304, where it is said that the battering-ram (aries) proved almost useless, but that the less costly ‘war-wolf’ was much more effective. In an AF. document relating to this siege (Cal. Docum. Scot., II. 405), the same machine is mentioned as ‘le lup de guerre.’ The med.L. lupus is found elsewhere as the name of a military engine, but nothing seems to be known of its nature. The conjecture that war-wolf is a perversion of WERWOLF is unfounded.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 400. Of these Mangonells, Patraries, Trabucks, Bricols, Espringolds, and of that which our ancestors termed the Warwolfe, by which … they discharged volies of mighty huge stones.
1614. Camden, Rem., Artill. (ed. 2), 239. Some kind of Bricol it seemed which the English & Scots called an Espringold, the shot whereof K. Edward the first escaped faire at the siege of Striuelin; wher he with another Engine, named the War-wolfe pierced with one stone,… two vauntmures.
1796. Southey, Joan of Arc, VIII. 534. The war-wolfs there Hurl’d their huge stones.
1810. Jane Porter, Scottish Chiefs, liii. The … war-wolves … sent forth showers of red-hot stones into the midst of the Scottish battalions.
a. 1839. Praed, Leg. Drachenfels, xi. The mightiest engines that ever the trade Of human homicide hath made, Warwolf, balist, and catapult.
2. Used by Scott for: A fierce warrior.
1810. Scott, Lady of Lake, VI. xx. Lightly we’ll tame the war-wolf then. Ibid. (1813), Trierm., III. xvii. He that would win the war-wolf’s skin, May rue him of his boast.
