A werewolf in folklore and mythology is a person who changes into a
wolf, either by purposefully using magic or by being placed under a
curse. In fictional treatments starting in the 19th century and in
popular modern superstition, this transformation takes place during
the full moon, either for a few nights every month or permanently.
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.
Origins and variations of the word
The name is thought most likely to derive from the
Proto-Indo-European roots *wi-ro-, "man" (c.f. Latin Vir, German:
we(h)r, we(h)ren (Abwehr, Feuerwehr, Bundeswehr: group of men
engaged in defense) Old Prussian: wirs: meaning men and Old English
wer (or were) and *wlkwo-, "wolf." The compound thus yields
man-wolf. An alternative etymology looks to Old English weri (to
wear) plus "wolf," thus bearing wearer of the wolf skin.
Other sources believe it is derived from warg-wolf, where "warg"
(or later "werg" and "wero") is cognate with norse "varg" meaning
murderer or predator 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. "Warg" by itself was used in Old English for that
specific kind of wolf (see J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit) and
it was used as well for what would now be called a serial
killer.
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 animal-man). The term turnskin
or turncoat (Neo-Latin: versipellis, Russian : oboroten, O. Norse:
hamrammr) is sometimes also used.
Compare Shape-shifting.
History of the werewolf
Many European countries and cultures have stories of werewolves,
including Greece (lycanthropos), Bulgaria (varkolak, vulkodlak),
Serbian (vukodlak) Russia (volkodlak), Poland (wilkoÂłak), Romania
(vⲣolac), England (werwolf), Germany (Werwolf), France
(loup-garou), Galicia, Portugal and Brazil (lobisíťíźŻem>,
lupisomem), Lithuania (vilkolakis and vilkatlakis) and Estonia
(libahunt). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people
changing into bears. In Norse mythology, the legends of berserkers
may be a source of the werewolf myths. Berserks were vicious
fighters, dressed in wolf or bear hides; they were immune to pain
and killed viciously in battle, like a wild animal. 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 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, says (Historia Naturalis viii. 22) that a man of
the Antaeus 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 (iv. 105) tells us that the Neuri, a tribe he
places to the north-east of Scythia (thus essentially
"Hyperboreans", were annually transformed for a few days, and
Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves
(see Eclogues viii. 9
. 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.
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 a 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; in all the cases, with hardly an exception, there was that
extraordinary readiness in the accused to confess and even to give
circumstantial details of the metamorphosis, which is one of the
most
inexplicable concomitants of medieval witchcraft. 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." In Province of 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." In
England, however, where at the beginning of the 17th century the
punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I
of England, the wolf had been so long extinct that that pious
monarch was himself able (Demonologie, lib. iii.) to regard
"warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a naturall
superabundance of melancholic." Only small creatures such as the
cat, the hare and the weasel remained for the malignant sorcerer to
transform himself into, but he was firmly believed to avail himself
of these agencies.
The werewolves of the Christian dispensation were not, however, all
considered to be heretics or viciously disposed towards mankind.
"According to Baronius, in the year 617, a number of wolves
presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several
friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by God
tore the sacrilegious thieves of the army of Francesco Maria, duke
of Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of
Loreto, A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head
of St. Edmund the martyr, king of England. St. Odo, abbot of Cluny,
assailed in a pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a
wolf" (A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 1872, vol. ii. p.
145). Many of the werewolves 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. Of this
sort were the "Bisclaveret" in Marie de France's poem (c. 1200),
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 M䲣hen. See "Snow White and Rose Red," where
the tame bear is really a bewitched prince. The lubins or lupins of
France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive
loup-garous.
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.
Becoming a werewolf
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 werwolves 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 when a woman gives birth to six female
children, the seventh will be a male and a werewolf.
In Galician, Portuguese and Brazilian folklore, it is the seventh
of the sons.
This belief was so extended in Northern Argentina, that seventh
sons were abandoned, ceded in adoption or killed.
A law from 1920 decreed that the President of Argentina is the
godfather of the 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.
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, 162, "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.
Theories of origin
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 is 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.
Like most attempts to use modern science explain away religious
beliefs and folklore, this theory is controversial. For example, it
does not explain why outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria and legends
of animal transformations exist around the world, including in
places where there is no ergot. Hysteria and superstition have
existed across the world for all of recorded history, and,
generally speaking, fungus poisoning is not to blame.
Similarly, some modern researchers have tried to use conditions
such as rabies, hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth over the
entire body) or porphyria as an explanation for werewolf beliefs,
although the symptoms of those ailments don't match up well with
the folklore or the evidence of the episodes of hysteria
either.
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.