Werewolf
 |
A German woodcut from 1722 |
A
werewolf (or
lycanthrope) in
folklore and
mythology is a person who
shapeshifts into a
wolf, either purposely, by using
magic, or after being placed under a
curse. The medieval chronicler
Gervase of Tilbury associated the transformation with the appearance of the
full moon, but this concept was rarely associated with the werewolf until the idea was picked up by modern fiction writers. Most modern references agree that a werewolf can be killed if shot by a silver bullet, although this is more a reflection of fiction's influence than an authentic feature of the folk
legends. A werewolf can be killed by complete destruction of heart or brain; silver isn't necessary. Werewolves are sometimes held to become
vampires after death.
The name is thought most likely to derive from
Old English 'wer' (or '
were') meaning 'man' (male "man" rather than gender-neutral) or possibly the Latin "vir," also meaning man, masculine. It has
cognates in several
Germanic languages including
Gothic 'wair',
Old High German 'wer' and
Old Norse 'var' The second 'word' is '*wlkwo-' or
wulf meaning simply '
wolf'. The two 'words' joined make the word 'manwolf.' The first 'word' is thought to be representative of the
hypothetical Proto-Indo-European roots '*wi-ro-' meaning 'man.' Also thought to be descended from this root are
Latin 'vir'
Old Prussian: 'wirs', and
Irish 'fear' (pl. 'fir'). An alternative etymology looks to
Old English weri (to wear) plus "wolf", thus bearing
wearer of the wolf skin. A similar phenomenon was found amongst the
Norse ulfhednar, a lupine version of the bearlike
berserker said to wear a wolf skin into battle.
Other sources believe it is derived from warg-wolf, where "warg" (or later "werg" and "wero") is cognate with Norse "varg" meaning wolf and as "vargulf" means the kind of wolf that slaughters many of a flock or herd but eats only a bit. This was a serious problem for herders as they had to somehow destroy the individual wolf that had run mad before it destroyed their entire flock or herd. They then used the wolf's hide as a decorative ornament in the bedroom of a young infant, believing it to give the baby supernatural powers. "
Warg" by itself was used in Old English for that specific kind of wolf (see
J. R. R. Tolkien's book
The Hobbit) and it was used as well for what would now be called a serial killer. Possibly related is the fact that, in Norse society, men who suffered outlawry (being banished from society, with people being allowed to kill the outlaw at will with no legal repercussion, and forbidden to give him any aid whatever) were often referred to as "vargr", that is, wolf.
The Greek term
Lycanthropy (a compound of which the first part derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root for "wolf",
*wlkwo-, as the English word) is also commonly used for the "wolf - man" transformation. The term for the
metamorphosis of people into
animals in general, rather than wolves specifically, is
therianthropy (therianthrope means
beast-man). The term
turnskin or
turncoat (Latin:
versipellis, Russian :
oboroten, O. Norse:
hamrammr) is sometimes also used.The French name for a werewolf, sometimes used in English, is loup-garou, from the
Latin noun lupus meaning 'wolf.'
The second element is thought to be from
Old French 'garoul' meaning 'werewolf.' This in turn is most likely from
Frankish '*wer-wulf' meaning 'man-wolf.'
Compare
Shapeshifting.
Many European countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including
France (
loup-garou),
Greece (
lycanthropos),
Spain (
hombre lobo),
Bulgaria (
varkolak, vulkodlak),
Czech Republic (
vlkodlak),
Serbia (
vukodlak),
Russia (
oboroten' ,
vurdalak),
Ukraine (
vovkulak(a),
vovkun,
pereverten' ),
Croatia (
vukodlak),
Poland (
wilkołak),
Romania (
vârcolac),
Scotland (
werewolf,
wulver),
England (
werwolf),
Ireland (
faoladh or
conriocht),
Germany (
Werwolf),
Denmark/
Sweden (
Varulv),
Galicia(
lobisón),,
Portugal(( lobisomem))
Lithuania (
vilkolakis and
vilkatlakis),
Latvia (
vilkatis and
vilkacis),
Andorra (
home llop),
Estonia (
libahunt),
Argentina (
lobizón,
hombre lobo) and
Italy (
lupo mannaro). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into animals including bears and wolves.
In
Norse mythology, the legends of
ulfhednar mentioned in VatnsdÅ"la saga, Haraldskvæði and the Völsunga saga may be a source of the werewolf myths. These were vicious fighters analogous to the better known
berserker, dressed in wolf hides and said to channel the spirits of these animals, enhancing their own power and ferocity in battle; they were immune to pain and killed viciously in battle, like a wild animal. They are both closely associated with
Odin.
In
Latvian mythology, the
Vilkacis was a person changed into a wolf-like monster, though the Vilkacis was occasionally beneficial. A closely related set of myths are the
skin-walkers. These myths probably have a common base in
Proto-Indo-European society, where the class of young, unwed
warriors were apparently associated with wolves.
Shape-shifters similar to werewolves are common in myths from all over the world, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves. See
lycanthropy and
therianthropy for more information.
In
Greek mythology the story of
Lycaon supplies one of the earliest examples of a werewolf legend. According to one form of it Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh; one of those who were present at periodical sacrifice on Mount Lycaon was said to suffer a similar fate. The Roman
Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes,
[ 22/34] says that a man of Anthus' family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in
Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus.
Herodotus in his
Histories tells us that the
Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of
Scythia were annually transformed for a few days, and
Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves.
In the novel
Satyricon, written about year
60 by Gaius
Petronius, one of the characters recites a story about a man who turns into a wolf during a full moon.
There are women, so the
Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf's skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives' children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall as prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form.
France in particular seems to have been infested with werewolves during the
16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. In some of the cases —
e.g. those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet in Angers, all occurring in the year
1598 — there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases, as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in
1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf, but none against the accused. Yet while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in
1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the
loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christian position of being simply a "man-wolf-fiend".
The
lubins or
lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive
loup-garous.
In
Prussia,
Livonia and
Lithuania, according to the bishops
Olaus Magnus and
Majolus, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than "true and natural wolves", and their heterodoxy appears from the Catholic bishops' assertion that they formed "an accursed college" of those "desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law".
The wolf was still extant in
England in 1600, but had become extinct by 1680. At the beginning of the
17th century the punishment of
witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by
James I of England, and that pious monarch
regarded "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a natural superabundance of melancholic".
Many of the werewolves in European tradition were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. In
Marie de France's poem
Bisclaveret (c.
1200), the nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described in the lai, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing, needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behavior at court was so gentle and harmless than when his wife and her new husband appeared at court, his attack on them was taken as evidence of reason to hate them, and the truth was revealed. Others of this sort were the hero of
William and the Werewolf (translated from French into English about
1350), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the German
fairy tales, or
Märchen. See
Snow White and Rose Red, where the tame bear is really a bewitched prince, and
The Golden Bird where the talking fox is also a man.
Indeed, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints.
Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra ("All angels, good and
bad have the power of transmutating our bodies") was the dictum of
St. Thomas Aquinas.
St. Patrick transformed
Vereticus, a king in Wales, into a wolf; and
St. Natalis cursed an illustrious Irish family with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werewolves through incurring the wrath of the devil.
Some werewolf lore is based on documented events. The
Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that reportedly terrorized the general area of the
former province of
Gévaudan, in today's
Lozère département, in the
Margeride Mountains in south-central
France, in the general timeframe of
1764 to
1767. It was often described as a giant wolf and was said to attack livestock and humans indiscriminately.
In the late 1990s, a string of man-eating wolf attacks were reported in
Uttar Pradesh, India. Frightened people claimed, among other things, that the wolves were werewolves.
Historical legends describe a wide variety of methods for becoming a werewolf. One of the simplest was the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolf skin, probably a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin which also is frequently described. In other cases the body is rubbed with a magic salve. To drink water out of the footprint of the animal in question or to drink from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis. Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula. Ralston in his
Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia. It is also said that the seventh son of the seventh son will become werewolf. Another is to be directly bitten by a werewolf, where the saliva enters the blood stream.
In Galician, Portuguese and Brazilian folklore, it is the
seventh of the sons (but sometimes the seventh child, a boy, after a line of six daughters) who becomes a werewolf. This belief was so extended in Northern Argentina (where it is called the "lobizón"), that seventh sons were abandoned, ceded in adoption or killed. A law from 1920 decreed that the
President of Argentina is the godfather of every seventh son. Thus, the State gives him a gold medal in his baptism and a scholarship until his 21st year. This ended the abandonments, but it is still traditional that the President godfathers seventh sons.
Various methods also existed for removing the beast-shape. The simplest was the act of the enchanter (operating either on himself or on a victim), and another was the removal of the animal belt or skin. To kneel in one spot for a hundred years, to be reproached with being a werewolf, to be saluted with the
sign of the cross, or addressed thrice by
baptismal name, to be struck three blows on the forehead with a knife, or to have at least three drops of blood drawn have also been mentioned as possible cures. Many European folk tales include throwing an iron object over or at the werewolf, to make it reveal its human form.
In other cases the transformation was supposed to be accomplished by Satanic agency voluntarily submitted to, and that for the most loathsome ends, in particular for the gratification of a craving for human flesh. "The werwolves," writes
Richard Verstegan (
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,
1628), "are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, doe not onely unto the view of others seeme as wolves, but to their owne thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they weare the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in wourrying and killing, and most of humane creatures." Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote. The ointments and salves in question may have contained hallucinogenic agents.
Becoming a werewolf simply by being bitten by another werewolf as a form of contagion is common in modern fiction, but rare in legend, in which werewolf attacks seldom left the victim alive to transform.
A recent theory has been proposed to explain werewolf episodes in
Europe in the
18th and
19th centuries.
Ergot, which causes a form of
foodborne illness, is a
fungus that grows in place of
rye grains in wet growing seasons after very cold winters. Ergot poisoning usually affects whole towns or at least poor areas of towns and results in
hallucinations,
mass hysteria and
paranoia, as well as
convulsions and sometimes
death. (
LSD can be derived from ergot.) Ergot poisoning has been proposed as both a cause of an individual believing that he or she is a werewolf and of a whole town believing that they had seen a werewolf. However, this theory is controversial and unsatisfactory. Witchcraft hysteria and legends of animal transformations, as well as hysteria and superstition in general, have existed across the world for all of recorded history. Even if ergot poisoning is found to be an accurate explanation in some cases, it cannot be applied to all instances. An over-reliance on any one theory denies the diversity and complexity of such occurrences.
Some modern researchers have tried to use conditions such as
rabies,
hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth over the entire body) or
porphyria (an enzyme disorder with symptoms including hallucinations and paranoia) as an explanation for werewolf beliefs. Congenital erythropoietic porphyria has clinical features which include photosensitivity (so sufferers only go out at night), hairy hands and face, poorly healing skin, pink urine, and reddish colour to the teeth.
There is also a rare mental disorder called
clinical lycanthropy, in which an affected person has a
delusional belief that he or she is transforming into another animal, although not always a wolf or werewolf.
Others believe werewolf legends arose as a part of
shamanism and
totem animals in primitive and nature-based cultures. The term
therianthropy has been adopted to describe a spiritual concept in which the individual believes he or she has the spirit or soul, in whole or in part, of a non-human animal.
The process of
transmogrification is portrayed in many
films and works of
literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless of the moral character of the person when human. The form a werewolf takes is not always an ordinary wolf, but is often
anthropomorphic or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to
silver objects (usually a
bullet or blade). This negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns. Current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involves
lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf.
More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken an even more sympathetic turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen by some authors as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature.
Examples of werewolves in recent fiction:
*
Remus Lupin, in
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter series.
*Sergeant Delphine Angua von Ãœberwald, and the rest of the von Ãœberwald family, from
Terry Pratchett's
Discworld series.
*Lupine, from
Reaperman, also by Terry Pratchett, though in his case, the transformation was from wolf into human, instead of human into wolf.
*Captain Hans from the manga
Hellsing.
*Vivian and many other characters in
Blood and Chocolate by
Annette Curtis Klause.
*Scott Howard (portrayed by
Michael J. Fox) in
Teen Wolf.
In
World War II, the German
SS formed an irregular network of
Partisan like units to resist the occupation of allied forces. These units were to be known as "werewolves". These units were under the leadership of the SS, and were comprised of members of that group, along with members of the
Heer and
Hitler Youth. Between the years of 1945, and up until 1948 they fought a campaign of resistance. See
Werwolf.
*
Lycanthropy*
Clinical lycanthropy*
Rougarou*
Shapeshifting*
Therianthropy (mythology)*
Vampire*
Hypertrichosis*
Wolfsangel*
Beast of Gévaudan*
Werwolf*
Vârcolac*
Werecat*
Werewolves in fiction*
Witchcraft*
Baring-Gould, Sabine.
The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. London: Smith, Elder, 1865. ISBN 0766183076
*Douglas, Adam.
The Beast Within: A History of the Werewolf. London: Chapmans, 1992. ISBN 038072264X
*Prieur, Claude.
Dialogue de la Lycanthropie: Ou transformation d'hommes en loups, vulgairement dits loups-garous, et si telle se peut faire. Louvain: J. Maes & P. Zangre, 1596. (By a Franciscan monk, in French)
*
Rev. Montague Summers,
The Werewolf London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1933. (1st edition, reissued 1934 New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966 New Hyde Park, N.Y: University Books, 1973 Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 2003 Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, with new title
The Werewolf in Lore and Legend). Written by an individual claiming that werewolves are real, it is understandably filled with a number of bizarre conclusions but has an impressive bibliography. ISBN 0766132102
*Wolfeshusius, Johannes Fridericus.
De Lycanthropia: An vere illi, ut fama est, luporum & aliarum bestiarum formis induantur. Problema philosophicum pro sententia Joan. Bodini ... adversus dissentaneas aliquorum opiniones noviter assertum... Leipzig: Typis Abrahami Lambergi, 1591. (In Latin; microfilm held by the
United States National Library of Medicine)
*
Arby Stones, "Hellhounds, Werewolves and the Germanic Underworld"*
The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
*
Therianthropy History Timeline*
Allen Varney, "The New Improved Beast" (Originally InQuest, Wizard Press, 1995).
