Something About Werewolves

Merchant of Venice Act IV, Scene I - Page 2
GRATIANO:
O, be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!(130)
And for thy life let justice be accus'd.
Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit(135)
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, sterved, and ravenous.(140)
 
I did a lot of research on werewolves when I decided to create a werewolf character (Howard Richard Deacon III and his father). I looked all over, including at the history of werewolves, myths about them, and film. And what I learned is that Hollywood has twisted things so much that what historically was known about werewolves is almost nothing what people think about them today.

So, some of these sources are from Wikipedia, but others I have gleaned from different websites around the net.  I'm afraid I lost most of the references. The ones that corroborated I kept. I also gathered information on actual wolf attacks, as any really good werewolf stories have to be based on fact somewhere. Today, I'm going to share the historical facts.

Random (Historical) Werewolf Facts

 Werewolf legends are famous throughout the world, extending from Europe to Asia to the Americas. Herodotus’s recorded a story about a tribe of werewolves in his Histories. The Gimm Brothers accounted for man-eating wolves in various tales. Ovid mentions werewolves specifically in his Metamorphoses as beings roaming in the woods of Arcadia, the place where Lycon originated. Some believe the Norse brought tales of werewolves to the Americas where they tell of man-eating wolf skinned witches. Though there are other origin werewolf tales among the Native Americans that claim a wolf god turned two boys into the first werewolves to use the form for hunting. But werewolf legends are most prominent in Europe, especially Germany and France. However, there is a notable lack of werewolf tales in England…which, considering the familiar and famous popular song Werewolves of London, seems kind of odd.

 

For the record, wolves are not the only kinds of were-beings that exist in folklore. In other parts of the globe there are stories of werejackals, werehyenas, weretigers…basically any kind of carnivorous animal that might frighten a population and combine it with cannibalistic man. In fact, werewolfism is often connected with vampirism and witchcraft in most ancient legends. Only in modern literature and film have they been divided. 

 

One of the earliest legends of werewolves comes from Greek mythology when Zeus turned Lycon into a wolf as punishment for feeding him human flesh at a feast. Thus comes the word lycanthrope.

 

Beyond Lycon, some famous werewolves are: 

 

Vseslav of Polotsk, the ruler of what is now Belarus 1044 was claimed to have been a sorcerer. After his death the locals described him as a werewolf who would race from town to town as a wolf, as written in The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.

 

Pierre Burgot, Michel Verdun, and Philibert Monot were known as the werewolves of Poligny—accused in France in 1521 after Michel was found dripping with blood. Confessions were tortured out of Pierre and Michel.

 

Gilles Garnier of Dole France, in 1573, was put on the rack and tortured to confess to the disappearance and mauling of children of the town. He was burned at the stake.

 

Jacques Roulet, in 1598, known as the werewolf of Angers/Caud—two towns where apparently he confessed to mutilating a boy. Though he later was just committed to an insane asylum.

 

Claudia Gaillard of Burgundy was one of many who had also been tried as a werewolf, seen as a wolf without a tail. And, of course, they tortured a confession out of her. I can’t find the date for this one, though.

 

Jean Grenier of Gascony, France in 1603, a boy of 13-14 years, boasted to being the wolf that kidnapped children and attacked a local 13 year old girl on the full moon. The girl saved herself from being bitten, using a sharp iron staff.

 

Griefswald Werewolves in Germany in 1640 were said to have a large population, enough to terrorize a town so much that they finally gathered up all their silver things and melted them down to bullets to kill them off.

 

Hans the Werewolf of Estonia, 1651, was convicted of witchcraft and lycanthrope. He claimed to have been bitten by a man dressed in black, but was still considered guilty of witchcraft and was therefore put to death.

 

The Wolf of Ansbach, Germany—1685. A man-eating wolf was hunted and killed after it preyed on livestock then moved on to people. Assumed to be a werewolf, they dressed it up in a man’s clothing and hung its body from a pole.

 
Peter Stubbe of Bedburg Germany, who in 1839 who was tried and executed for murdering several women and children and eating their flesh.


Names for werewolves around the world:
Loup-garou (French), Vulkodlaks (Serbian), Je-rouges (Haitian), Vilkacis (Latvian), Ulfhednar (Norwegian), Mai-cob (Navajo), Wendingo (Algonquian), Nahual (Mexican), Kurtadam (Turkish)…. Etc.

Now according to the old legends, setting aside all Hollywood mythos…
The original signs of a werewolf were:

• A mono-brow
• Bristles under the tongue
• Curved fingernails
• Low set of ears
• Fur sticking out of a cut or wound
• A swinging stride
• Manic depression

Signs a wolf is not a true wolf:

• No tail
• Larger or human eyes
• Eating freshly buried corpses

According to most ancient legends, being bitten by a werewolf DOES NOT make you a werewolf.

You can become a werewolf by:

• Putting on a wolf’s skin
• Drinking rainwater out of a wolf foot print
• Rubbing on a magic salve
• Saying a certain incantation
• Sleeping outside in the summer with the full moon shining on your face
• Accident of birth (tough luck), such as being born on the new moon or having epilepsy.

Werewolf vulnerabilities are numerous. Here are a few in the old legends:

• Aversion to silver, is actually a modern invention of novelists starting in the 18^th century.
• Certain plants, such as rye, mountain ash, and mistletoe… though wolfsbane (Aconite) is still quite famous for either killing or curing werewolves. 
• Garlic also seems to be a modern invention.

Legendary cures for werewolf-ism include:

•  Using wolfsbane
• Purging though exhaustion
• Exorcism
• Conversion to Christianity
• Or the brutal method of just bashing them over the head with sharp objects

Why all the hype about werewolves?

Lots of people try to explain why there are so many legends about werewolves, searching for proof they existed in a more realistic sense. Medical conditions such as hypertrichosis (where an excessive hair growth on the face definitely looks wolf like) are often been given, along with down syndrome, rabies, and ergot poisoning. But personally, I think the people of the past had to explain why some psycho-lunatics decided to brutally murder/rape/torture other people… because such behavior does not make any human sense.

Whatever the case, be careful out there under the full moon.

 (Bu wa ha ha….)