Anyone here who's familiar with the fairy tale of Bluebeard will also know the story that Charles Perrault based his tale on the historical figures of Gilles de Rais and Cunmar the Accursed(or Comorre the Cursed). Cunmar the Accursed is said to have killed five wives (the last, Triphine, was killed but then sent back to life again. Anyone who's researched Bluebeard will know what I'm talking about) In researching these legends, I discovered that in one variant of the CTA legend, he's actually forced to wander around the countryside, living an undead existence as a werewolf and eating human flesh as punishment for his cruelty. As soon as I read that, the wheels in my head started turning, and I got an idea for a story based on this aspect of the legend (an idea which I'm not working on for a while for obvious reasons) along the lines of "Evil ruler gets transformed into werewolf as a punishment, then has descendants who are cursed with a longing for human flesh that is very hard to control."

OK. My question is, anyone familiar with the legend or Breton folklore (or just plain Celtic/Western European folklore) know where this belief might have originated? Are there any other stories of evil people being transformed into werewolves? I know (from research into folklore, which is one of my fantasy interests. I got my username from another one) that the Wild Hunt in some versions is led by the Devil and made up of the damned, which means that if you sin when you're alive and you're a Christian, supposedly you'll be forced to join the Hunt (I'm only talking about the Christianised version of the Hunt). But I've never heard of lycanthropy as a punishment for evil in the permanent way, except in this legend. Does that concept (of lycanthropy, werewolfism as a permanent punishment for sin) occur in other stories? And where does it come from anyway? Anyone have a clue?