Werewolves

In dusty archives around the world there are stories about sad werewolves like Stubb, judged to abandon their humanity for the wolves bestialic acts. This animal - a cunning, shy, fast and a greedy creature - is what often plays the main charactor in the stories. Maybe did the wolf catch people's imagination since it during a big part of history been an actual threat to women and men. Their ravages were a serious problem for the people in villages and on farms. Even today histories pops up in the media about wolves who, chased by hunger, attacks people in Europe and the Middle East.

The people who were facing these powerful beasts of prey incorporated them in their legends; dangerous, powerful people were considered to have been taken the animal's character. Sometimes just the behaviour which were most like a wolf's. Romulus and Remus, the two mythological twins who founded Rome, were raised by a she-wolf - and as a result taken her fierceness. The tradition was taken by the Roman infantry; which were organized and disciplined according to the pack's behaviour, and that was almost invincible.

According to the historian Polybius the soldiers who showed much courage in battle were allowed to wear wolfskin, while those who showed cowardice was torn to pieces by their friends.

Sometimes a wolflike behaviour was seen not only as an imitation but as a real transform from a human to an animal. Many centuries ago this was told to occur through the will of the Gods, through magic or through the use of magical drugs. Later authors wanted to see the "transformation" as a paranormal phenomena or saw it as hallucinations caused by a mental or physical illness.

The intense attention which were turned to such alleged metaphors intimates the enormous attraction this superstition had and still has. The werewolflegend have also been exploited by Hollywood. And obviously there are people who truly belive in this phenomenon. In 1988 Fox Broadcasting Company opened a "werewolf-line" during six weeks. They received more than 340 000 phonecalls from viewers who reported that they had seen werewolfs and gave them the blame for different murders that the police couldn't solve.

After several centuries of stories a profile of the werewolfs can be appointed. In a human shape it usually had bushy eyebrows meeting over the bridge over the nose, red teeth, an extremly long indexfinger, long almond shaped nails with a nyance of blood, and ears who had a tendency to sit far back and low on the head. The person's eyes and mouth are dry and he's often thirsty. (According to a french judge who often attended torture sessions the werewolf, like the witch, couldn't cry.)

The skin is rough, often scratched and with cutmarks from were the bushes which the werewolf runs through in the shape of a wolf, and often had a yellowish, rosy or greenish tone, with a tendense to be hairy. A man who obviously not were hairy but yet saw himself to be a werewolf, maintained that his hair were growing inwards, under the skin. To examine this he got flayed here and there on the body, and if they couldn't find anything they handed him over to a doctor. It's not so surprising that he died shortly after.

Except for this physical characterization the werewolf showed a few marked psychological characteristics. For exemple it prefered the night and wanted to be on his own. As a victim to a deep melancholy ("very dark and fervent", as the french 1600's-author Simon Goulert describes it) the person in question were a frequent visitor at the graveyards and was known to at some occassions dig up corps and guzzle on it.

February were the werewolves cruelest month, this is what Tommaso Garzoni maintains in his Hospital of Incurable Fooles, published in the year 1600. Garzoni tells us how the "werewolf" in February "leaves the house at night like a wolf, and is hunting among the graves with horrible howls, digging up the dead's bones from their graves and carries them on the streets, to a big surpise and fear to the once who meets him". Goulert describes how he personaly met one of his friends, a werewolf, who in a deep melancholic attack carried "on his shoulders a whole leg from a dead man".

The victim's change from a human being to a beast was told to be achieved through different waves. The werewolves, just as witches, smeared their bodies with magical herbs and ointments of different characters. The ingredients in these could be various, but many contained psycho-active alkaloids with a strong hallucinatory effect, which could lead to the apprehension that the body was changing.

And two of the pharmacopeial most common herbs - belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, and henbane - could really produce the illusion that he or she transformed to a wolf by eating it or absorbe it through the skin. Pig-grease, terpentine and olive oil were the base in this ointment. Later, when they had learnt how to distil liquor, alcohol was used as a solvent for the herbs. As a beverege they became more active.

To help the illusion the werewolf often wore a wolfskin or a girdle of the wolf's skin, and to increase the effect of the ointments and the drinks magical formulas was used. They were chanted as prays inside the circle made in dirt and demanded an experienced and respectful treatment to be effective.

These medieval rituals doesn't show until late in the legends. They have been used by those who wanted to be werewolves. In the early legends werewolves was considering to be cursed. A story like that is the Greek story about Lykaios. In a version of this legend the great shape-changer Zeus, this time disguised to a wanderer, had an audience at an evil arcadian king called Lykaios. This man, who recognized the god, served him, in an attempt to kill Zeus a dinner made on human meat.

But the allmighty Zeus discovered the horrible trick and didn't eat. Furious as he was did he drove Lykaios away from the castle, destroyed it, and as a conclusive punishment he banished the king to the country side and condemned him to live the rest of his life as a wolf, the animal he was most alike.

A lively description of the king's metaphor was told by the Roman poet Ovidius. Lykaios' "clothes changed to hair, his arms and legs. His own wild nature showed in the rabid jaws, and now he turned towards the sheep with his native bloodthirst. He even yearned for it... the blood. But even if he were a wolf, he maintained some things from his time as a human being. The grey in his hair was still there, his face showed the same ravage, his eyes glowed as before and he showed the same wildness".

The story were only an expression for a violent Arcadian tradition. According to ancient historians transformationrites was held which contained human sacrifices in the Arcadian temple on the mountain Lykaion, within which holy area neither man or woman casted a shadow or could stay alive more than one year.

Sacrificing made the cult members transform to wolfs. It was told that such a transformation lasted for nine years - unless the animals eat human flesh. Then they were condemned to remain beasts for all eternity.

With Ovidius story did the werewolftradition climb in to the popular litterature, which could show several spooky stories. The Roman Petronius captured his readers with a story about a former slave by the name Niceros. One night this young man left Rome to visit his mistress who lived on a farm a few kilometers from the city. He talked a soldier - "a man so cordial as the devil himself" - into joining him on his way. "We left at dawn", Niceros told, "and the moon was shining so bright like it was in the middle of the day". When they passed a graveyard the soldier left the road and walked among the stones, to rest it seemed.

But Niceros got really surprised when his companion took all his clothes off and left them in a pile by the road. Even stranger was that he urinated in a circle, which obviously had a magical purpose; because within minutes he had changed into a wolf. Howling did the insane soldier disappear into the woods. The stunned Niceros tried to pick up the man's clothes but found that they had been transformed into stone.

"Terrified to death", did Niceros come to his mistress, who he found in an agitated state. If he only had came earlier, she said, he could've helpt. A wolf had broken in to the farm and been ravaged among cows and sheep. But the marauder didn't get away unharmed, she told him; one of the farm-hands had beaten him in the back of his neck with a pike.

After a few days Niceros went back home to his master. When he came to the place were the stoned clothes had been he found a pool of blood. And when he arrived home he found the soldier lying in a bed and were he got taken care of by a doctor who was looking at a wound in his neck. Niceros didn't need any more proof than these to know that his friend had supernatural powers "and after this I couldn't eat nor drink together with him; no, not even if they had killed me to do so". Wound-duplication - a phenomenon which means that a wound on a werewolf is shown in his human shape as well - was seen then as well as later that this was a sure evidence that someone was a werewolf.