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Fragments of fright (5)

From Edouard Brasey's "The Great Encyclopedia of the Marvelous"

Werewolves

Also called: Lycanthropes, varous, haires (Normandie), bête bigourne (Poitou)

According to Collin de Plancy, the French name of werewolves, "loup-garous" means "wolfs (loups) of which one must be wary/avoid (se garer)". The French term dates back to the 12th century under the shape "leu garoul". In English-speaking countries, the term is "werewolf" which comes from the ancient word "wariwulf", "wolf-man". They are man condemned to turn, each full moon night, into a wolf, and to wander in this animal shape while screaming horribly. Other times, they are warlocks who obtained from the devil the ability to take a wolf's shape by putting on a wolf skin, in order to better commit their crimes. Collin de Plancy wrote that werewolves were, for a very long time, the terror of the countryside, because they were sorcerers that had the help of the devil. Still according to de Plancy, "demonologists considered that a werewolf is a warlock that the devil transmutates into a wolf, and the devil forces to wander through the countryside while howling terrifyingly."

The belief in werewolves and lycantrhopes seems to date back to Ancient Greek, and it appeared more precisely in the mountainous and wolf-infested region of Arcadia. Human sacrifices were common there, and human flesh was shared during rituals where the participants turned into wolfs during a period of eight years, at the end of which they returned to being humans, but ONLY if they had refrained from consuming human flesh during the entirety of their metamorphosis. Lycaon, the tyrant of Arcadia, had built a temple to Zeus on the "Wolf mount". To thank him, the king of the gods shared his meal in his palace - but Lycaon served the god the flesh of a killed child. To punish him, Zeus turned Lycaon into a perpetually-hungry wolf, all while leaving in his mind the knowledge and memory of his previous existence. Lycaon, the "wolf-man", gave his name to "lycanthropy". Petrone's Satiricon gives us another example of lycanthropy: in it, Niceros explains how, as he walked at night with a soldier, he saw the latter turning himself into a wolf and fleeing while howling. More Greco-Roman authors of Antiquity shared similar tales: Herodotus, Strabon, Pomponius, Mela, Virgil... Ancient Celts, the Franks and numerous another European countries shared similar folktales and beliefs.

The belief in werewolves massively augmented during the Middle-Ages. It was believed then that the "wolf-men" were forced to live under an animal shape for seven years, as a punishment for a crime or because of a spell cast onto them. They had, each night, to go through seven parishes, and to turn around seven belltowers, for seven years, before they finally could rest... in Hell. The werewolf was also forced to kill and devour the first person he met in his nocturnal travels. It was also believed that the werewolf could devour celestial bodies, thus causing the eclipses of the moon or the sun. The destructive power of the werewolf was strengthened during specific times: the time between Christmas and Candlemass, the Advent period, the solstices, the winter season, and during each new moons (or "black moons").

In the 15th century, the Germanic emperor Sigismund gathered a council of authorities on the matter, which concluded that werewolves were indeed real. In the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous trials were organized against so-called werewolves. In 1521, Pierre Burgot was burned at Besançon on the ground of being a werewolf. In 1542, according to Henri Boguet, one hundred and fifty wolves gathered on a plaza of Constantinople. The 18th of January of 1573, Gilles Garnier was burned alive in Dole, because he had been accused of ripping the throat and devouring several children, including a twelve years-old boy he had attacked the Friday following the Saint-Barthélémy. On top of his abominable crimes, he was also accused of having attempted to commit an act of cannibalism a Friday - not only was the act of eating human flesh a crime, but given Christianity forbade eating fatty food such as meat on Fridays, his crime was double. In 1599, a sieur de Beauvoys de Chauvincourt, an angevin gentilhomme, published a "Discourse of lycanthropy, or of the transmutation of men into wolves". In 1615, Jean de Nynauld published a complete treaty called "Lycanthropy" - in which he also called the condition "lycaony" or "folie louvière" (wolfing madness). We had to wait for an edict of Louis XIV, in 1682, for lycanthropy to be recognized as an actual disease. In the 19th century, it was finally treated as a form of mental disase. The "wolf of the full moon" finally became known as... "lunatics".

How to recognize a werewolf? Several physical signs ndicated without a doubt a wrewolf. Their eyebrows unite themselves above their nose. Their thumbs are short and large. Their fingers are flat and webbed. It is also believed that when a werewolf is in human shape, he wears his fur "between his leather and his flesh" - that is to stay, he merely needs to "turn his skin" for him to become a wolf. The demonologist Jean de Wier claimed that those suffering from the "wolfing madness" were pale, with deep eyes burrowed within their sockets, and a very dry tongue. Henri Boguet claimed that some families were more likely to become werewolves than others: werewolves are recognized by the fact they look always sad or melancholic, and by how they never go to church. Some werewolves cause their transformation by doing three or nine somersaults. Others rather use magical objects, such as the skin of a hanged man, or a belt made of a wolf's pelt. The demonologist Delancre claimed that werewolf have a great liking for human flesh. They strangle dogs and young children, and eat them willingly and with great appetite. They walk on all fours, howl like real wolves, have large maws, shining eyes and hooked teeth. In their animal shape, male werewolves often mate with she-wolves. Roland de Villeneuve adds that, according to questioned werewolves, they took as much pleasure - if not more pleasure - with she-wolves than with human women. Even though werewolves usually do not keep any memory of their nocturnal metamorphosis, during the day they are typically very tired and do not feel hungry, since they spent their day running around an eating animals.

How to turn into a werewolf? To turn into a werewolf, one simply needs to wear a wolf's skin during a full moon night ; to drink in the same springs wolves come to drink ; to drink the wolf within the paw print of a wild animal ; or to devour the brain of some sort of wild feline. It was also believed that the children of priests and nuns could become werewolves, as their birth doomed them to turn into wolves once every seven years. Other candidates doomed by their birth to become wolves included: children born with a tail-like appendix on their cocyx ; children born with placenta over their head (né coiffé as we say in France), children that were weaned but then breastfed again, the seventh son of a man, or children conceived on sunday's eve or on holy days. For example, in Greece and in Slavic countries, the "child of Saturday" is more likely to become a werewolf - and if they do not become a werewolf, they will either obtain a supernatural strength, or be cursed with a never-ending hunger.

A disease called porphyria is known to increase a person's pilosity and to curl their lips, so that they end up showing their teeth almost constantly. It is likely that many people suffering from it were considered "actual" werewolves. Similarly, the Cryptozoology Society of London claimed to have found in the blood of lycanthropes a retrovirus named the "Lic-V" that acted similarly to the HIV. As for Claude Lecouteux, he invoked a familial atavism that caused some people to be more susceptible to the "divisions" of the self, and thus subject to metamorphosis. According to the "Gospel of the Distaffs", written in Flandre and Picardie in the 15th century, men were destned to become "leu warou", "loup-garou", "werewolves", while women were to become "quauquemaires", "cauchemars", "nightmares".

How to wound or kill a werewolf? Every wound inflicted on a werewolf in beast shape will stay on their human shape. Nennius, in his Historia Britonum, Latin text of the 9th century, told of the "splitting" of the werewolf. He claimed that some men of "Celtic race" had the power from their ancestors to turn, through a diabolical force, into wolves with sharp teeth. They could turn into these beasts at will, and used it to attack sheep - but they fled whenever someone attacked them with staffs or weapons, and they could run very fast for a very long time. When these men wanted to transform, they actually left their human body, and told their friends to keep their bodies without touching them or changing their position - if such a thing happened, the man could never take back his human shape. He also described how when they received a wound in wolf shape, the same wound appeared exactly on the same spot in their human body.

To surely kill a werewolf, one had to shoot it with a silver bullet, preferably a blessed one, because ther skin was so tough it couldn't be pierced by ordinary ammunition. However, according to Collin de Plancy, the blessing of the bullets can only happens during "mysterious hours of the night, in a chapel dedicated to saint Hubert. Only with such a blessing can the sorcerer be killed and his beast shape fade away and disappear forever. But the blessing ceremony of a bullet is a difficult one to perform. For example, the one who blesses the bullet needs to have on themselves items such as a four-leafed clover." In the Bretagne region, to kill a werewolf, one must behead it with an axe or a scythe before throwing its head in a river.

One can also force a werewolf to leave its wolf-shape, by hitting them with a pitchfork right between the two eyes - or by taking the werewolf's wolf-skin (that he always hides somewhere) and burning it. As long as the skin will be burning, the werewolf will scream in agony - but once the skin is done burning, they are free forever of whatever spell or curse trapped them. Other ways of freeing a werewolf from his wolf shape includes hitting the beast with a key, or making sure a few drops of its blood hit the ground. If a wife is attacked by her husband in wolf shape, she merely has to say his name to break the spell and force him to become human again - but a werewolf set free in such a way will keep the ability to understand the language of wolves.

In archaic societies of Europe, the "wolf-man", who wore the skin and head of a wolf, wasn't actually a werewolf, but a type of shaman, a healer-wizard able to communicate with the dead ancestors and the spirits of nature, able to travel in the land of the dead, and as well as able to command to the animals. His role was to protect the tribe to which he belonged.

#fragments of fright #werewolf #werewolves #european folklore #french folklore

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