Expert: Jonathan Wright - 8/7/2005

Question
Wow! Very detailed! I'm going to have fun going through all of that and making notes, not to mention checking out the sites. And the dates actually work well for what I'm wanting to do.

You asked how this would help my story. Basically, I'm trying to base different breeds of werewolves on different culture's mythologies. By doing this, I'm saying that all the legends are true to one extent or another instead of picking one and running with it. I'm also trying my best to associate the correct breed of wolf with the breed of werewolf and where it originated. I wouldn't want a breed that originated in England to turn into a wolf that never wandered onto the continent, you know. <wink>

Here's where the trouble comes in. Like your ability to pick out problems with the animals in movies, there will be a small percentage of readers who know the mythologies I'm basing my werewolves on. To avoid problems, I like to base my primary mythology on something with a bit more literary license. In my werewolf research, I found that there is little to no recent literature about werewolves stemming from the British Isles for the simple reason that wolves had already been driven out of the area by that time. There is, however, older works of literature that mention the creatures. This lead me to theorize that, if existance of werewolves were accepted as a fact, they once lived there but were driven out or killed along with the natural wolves. The human side of their nature would have given them the ability to flee before they were hunted to extinction. Because there is little historical or literary reference to werewolves there, I can shape their fictional history to whatever I need.

Unless I find something that contridicts my current idea, my protagonist's pack will be based on a breed that originated in the UK. Sometime around the 15th or 16th century, they were driven out of the area for the reasons stated above and became, by necessity, nomadic. Over the next several generations, the pack tried desperately to hold onto their structure and culture, but it was a losing battle. Without a territory to call their own, they were dying out or losing members by absorbtion into other packs. Finally, when America was discovered, they saw the opportunity to claim land of their own again. Of course, there was already a pack there, based on Native American culture's mythology. Like the European settlers in the history of America, the British pack claimed the land as their own and pushed the Native American pack west of the Mississippi River, breaking the US into two seperate territories. The eastern and western territories, due to longer lifespan and the tendency to hold grudges, are still barely at an armed truce with each other today.

From your letter, my mind is now spinning on ideas for their fictional history. Just by browsing over it, I see that it's pretty established that they were in Scotland and Ireland last, which again works well as I have always pictured my two main characters as being of Irish decent. (I'm primarily Irish on both sides myself, so I tend to have a lot of red-headed Irish characters. In fact, my mother's maiden name was Wright. Perhaps we are related. <grin>)

Thank you again! You have definitely earned a place on my dedications page.

Robin

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Followup To
Question -
Hi! I previously asked you for recommendations of books on wolves for a novel on werewolves I'll be writing in the near future. Again, thank you. I've been finding a wealth of information. I'm also wondering why I never studied these creatures before. They're extraordinarily interesting!

My question this time is, What species of wolves were indegineous to England, Scotland, Ireland? From what I can find, they are pretty much extinct there now, but it would be useful to my story to know which species once took up that area. Also, if you have a rough idea of when they became scarce. I've found some very conflicting information on that spanning anywhere from 200-800 years ago.

Thank you again.

Robin
Answer -
Dear Robin

Thanks for your follow-up question and for your kind comments about my answers to your earlier question.

The British wolf was the same species as the grey wolf i.e. Canis lupus. It belonged to the European wolf subspecies (Canis lupus lupus ).

As you state, the information is very confused, with last reports covering several centuries. The most detailed website is http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html and if I had to choose a site to give a definitive answer to your question, it would be this one. This should give you a lot of useful information for your work. It is very hard to determine when animals became scarce, as wolves were generally considered vermin and there were decrees to exterminate them. Even 'one wolf' would be considered 'one wolf too many'. I don't think anyone would have been bothered about wolves becoming scarce. I have books from the 19th century stating that it will be a good thing when wolves are exterminated completely. By this time, wolves were probably already extinct in the British isles.

I shall list possible extinctions chronologically, using material dating extinctions of wolf populations from different parts of the British isles from the 12th century onwards.

Extinction in the 12th century (Wales)
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html that wolves vanished from Wales in the early medieval period. The last reference dated from 1166.

Extinction in the 14th century
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html says that Edward I (reigned 1272-1307) ordered the extermination of all wolves in England.
http://www.anglianwolf.com/d_front_page/d_ar_article/d_abw_about_wolves/aboutw.h states that wolves became extinct in southern England as early as the fourteenth century.

Extinction in the 15th century (England and Wales)
http://www.bigcats.org/esa/wildboar11.html says that the last wolf south of the Scottish border may have been killed in the 1480s
‘Wolves', Volume 9 in the Marshall Cavendish ‘Animal World' partwork  (1993) says that wolves were wiped out in England and Wales by 1500.

Extinction in the 16th century (England)
http://www.lioncrusher.com/animal.asp?animal=35 states that wolves have been extinct in England since the 1500's. This agrees with
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html, which states that wolves were extinct in England by the time of Henry VII (1485-1509).
http://www.bigcats.org/esa/wildboar11.html says that some people suggest Lady Jane Grey killed a wolf in the 1540s. http://www.stormfront.org/archive/t-118821.html states that wolves became extinct in England around the middle of the 16th century.

Extinction in the 17th century (Scotland)
http://www.uksafari.com/wolves.htm says that the wolf was hunted to extinction in the UK towards the end of the 17th century.
http://www.wolftrust.org.uk/a-lastwolves.html states that there were British wolves in 1622, but wolves were probably extinct in Scotland in 1680. Later accounts are dubious.
http://www.bigcats.org/esa/extinctions.html says that officially, Sir Ewan Cameron of Locheil killed the 'last wolf' in Lochaber in 1680.
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html says that wolves survived in Scotland until the 17th century. http://www.wolftrust.org.uk/faqfallacies.html says that the wolf probably died out in Britain during the 17th century.
http://www.bigcats.org/esa/wildboar11.html says the last positive record of wolf presence was in Sutherland in 1691.

Extinction in the 18th century (Scotland and Ireland)
The Sixth Edition of Walker's Mammals of the World (1999) says that the last wolves in the British Isles were exterminated in the 18th century.
http://www.stormfront.org/archive/t-118821.html states that small pockets of the wolves remained in Ireland and Scotland until the 18th century.
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html states that the entire wolf population of the British Isles was exterminated by about 1760.
http://www.wolftrust.org.uk/a-lastwolves.html, http://www.lioncrusher.com/animal.asp?animal=35 and http://www.bigcats.org/esa/extinctions.html state that wolves became extinct in 1743. Legend states that MacQueen killed the last British wolf in the Scottish Highlands in 1743, because the wolf had ‘killed two children'.  
http://www.bigcats.org/esa/extinctions.html states that Thomas Pennant said that wolves were extinct in Scotland in 1769.
http://www.anglianwolf.com/d_front_page/d_ar_article/d_abw_about_wolves/aboutw.h states that the last wolf was shot in Scotland in the mid seventeen hundreds at the height of a pan-European frenzy of wolf-hatred and superstition.
‘Wolves', Volume 9 in the Marshall Cavendish ‘Animal World' partwork  (1993) says that the last Irish wolf lived around 1770, wolves were wiped out in Scotland by 1740.
http://www.wolfsongalaska.org/disappearance_of_wolves.html says that the last stronghold of wolves in the British Isles was Ireland. Wolves were regarded as being fairly common in the country and legislation was passed promoting their destruction in 1652, 1653 and 1662. There are reports of wolves being killed in County Cork in 1709 and 1710 and the last reports came from County Wicklow in the mid-1700's.

Extinction in the 19th century (Scotland)
http://www.wolftrust.org.uk/a-lastwolves.html states a report by Harting that wolves lived in Scotland in 1848.

So where does that leave you with your research. I'll try to give you a rough idea about when wolves probably died out in various parts of the British Isles.
Wales: possibly in the 12th century?
England: 1500-1550?
Scotland: 1680-1769? I think the 19th century account is very unlikely.
Ireland: 1710-1770?  
I think you might find http://www.lioncrusher.com/animal.asp?animal=35&page=5, although I may have mentioned this in my earlier answer.

I'm sorry if this is very confusing, but I hope that the websites will help0 you with your research.

All the best

Jonathan

P.S. In my earlier reply, I gave a few examples of mistakes in films. In 1994, John Cleese starred in a version of the 'Jungle Book'. In one scene, he is walking through the forests with some schoolgirls and asking them to identify primates. I saw the film in 1995 and remember the conversation as follows:
Cleese: "What are these?"
Girl: "They are macaque monkeys"
Cleese: "Very good. And what are these?"
Girl: "They're langur monkeys".
Cleese: "You have been doing your lessons well".

My girlfriend at the time saw the second "monkeys". "They're lemurs, aren't they?" The "langur monkeys" were ring-tailed lemurs from Madagascar and even the habitat did not blend well with the rest of the film. Unfortunately, i can't remember much more of the film, so I don't know if there were other big msitakes.  

Answer
Dear Robin

Thanks for your very detailed reply and for offering to include me in your dedications. I've never appeared on the dedications page of a book before.

It looks like you've done your homework and hopefully you'll have a lot of success with your book.

If you want any more help, don't hesitate to ask.

By the way, my father's side of the family came from Sunderland, which is not too far from the Scottish border. I must admit that none of my family have red hair, so I don't know if we're related or not.

Good luck

Jonathan