The Lycanthropic Launch of the Transformational Terror

n                  So, we’ve looked at vampires andnFrankenstein’s Monster and, as they say (although just who they arenremains an open question), these things come in threes, so to complete thisninhuman trio, the subject for today is the werewolf. ‘Werewolf’ has two elementsn– were and wolf; the final bit is easy enough, as it’s a word wenstill use today for the animal today, although in the past it could be used tondescribe any animal, (as could the word hund or hound).  

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nWerenmeans an adult male human and is still used in some dialects (it’s a word Inhave used when speaking Lancashire dialect, although it is rare), and isnrelated to the Latin word for a man – vir, as in virile or virility, thenWelsh – gŵr and the Gaelic – fear meaning ‘a man’. It occurs in weregeldn– ‘man-price’ – the compensation paid to a family or clan if a member wasnkilled, (the Danegeld – ‘Dane-price’ – was paid to the Vikings tonprevent them from ravaging England). Some say that the werewolf was anwarrior who wore a wolf-skin into battle, just as the berserkers worenbear-skins, (serkr is Old Norse for shirt or coat, cognate with thenScots sark – as in Cutty Sark – ‘a short shirt’.) but I find thisna little fanciful (they would be Úlfhéðnar, surely). Others have thoughtnthe werewolf derives from wargwolf, as a warg was a rogue wolf,noften running alone, which slaughtered flocks of domestic animals, but thisnstrikes me as a tautology (although a ‘wolfs-head’ was once the term fornan outlaw who could be killed without impunity and who it was forbidden to aid).nMore usually, the werewolf is a man who transforms into a wolf, usually whennthe moon is full.

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nIn Classical mythology, there arennumerous references to men who turn into wolves. In Book IV of his Histories,nHerodotus writes about the Neuri, a tribe of men who transform into wolves oncenevery year. Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, writes of “That wolf whoncounterfeits a human shape” (Book VII). The legend of Lycaon tells how thisnKing of Arcadia murders Nyctimus, one of his fifty sons, and serves thenbody to Zeus at a feast, in an attempt to test Zeus’s omniscience. In a fury,nZeus kills the rest of Lycaon’s sons with thunderbolts, restores Nyctimus tonlife, and transforms Lycaon into a wolf. 

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nPausanius, in his Description ofnGreece, (Book VIII), gives a variation, in that Lycaon sacrifices a childnto Lycaean Zeus and sprinkles the blood on the altar, whereupon he is changedninto a wolf. Thereafter, a man at the sacrifice to Lycaean Zeus will always bentransformed into a wolf, for nine years if he does not eat human flesh andnforever if he does. The Greek word for wolf is λύκος (lýkos) and ‘human’nis άνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) – giving us another term for the werewolves – lycanthropesn(wolf-men).

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nThe legend of the werewolf isnfound across continental Europe although it not common in England, maybenbecause wolves were eradicated during Anglo-Saxon times (the last English wolfnwas killed at Humphrey Head, Lancashire in about 1390), although there are manyntales of ghostly or devil dogs. In countries where wolves are scarce or absent,nthere are tales of were-lions, were-tigers, were-bears, were-hyenas and so on,nwhich indicates that the concept of men transforming into predatory animals isnuniversal. The literature of the werewolf in the nineteenth century was largelyna retelling of various medieval romances and legends and there are no realnnotable works; Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and ThenCount of Monte Christo, wrote The Wolf Leader in 1857, a shortnnovella that has been described as “Dumas’s drabbest hack-work.” 

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nThenbest non-fiction work from the period is Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book ofnWerewolves (1865), which brings together and examines the werewolfnphenomena from myths and legends, together with cases of ‘real’ werewolves fromnmedieval history, and remains one of the best source books on the subject. InnBram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the hero Jonathan Harker travels to thenCarpathians, where he hears people speaking of  

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nAs with Dracula andnFrankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman featured in early films; the first, fromn1913, The Werewolf is now lost, as is the German Werewolf (1932).nWolfblood (1925) is an oddity, a silent film set in a Canadian loggingncamp, where Dick Bannister, a new manager, is attacked by thugs from a rivalnlogging concern and left for dead. He urgently needs a blood transfusion butnthe lumberjacks refuse to help, so the doctor uses the blood of a wolf insteadn(!) and Bannister begins to dream of running with wolves. The rival loggersnbegin to be killed by wolves and the rumour that Bannister is a werewolf beginsnto circulate. Edith, owner of the camp, had been engaged to the doctor but shenhad broken it off when she fell for Bannister, and the doctor tells her thatnBannister will become more and more like a wolf, in a vain bid to win her back.nEventually, the doctor confesses that the wolf blood will do no harm tonBannister, who rides off into the distance with Edith. 

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nIn 1935, Werewolf ofnLondon featured the first bipedal, anthropomorphic wolfman, with make-up bynJack Pierce (who created Karloff’s Frankenstein), but failed at the box office,nwhere it was seen as too similar to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde released threenyears earlier. 

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nIn 1941, Lon Chaney Jr starred in The Wolf Man, a filmnwhich set the standard for all future werewolf films and is referenced by manynof them, not least in the verse: – 

nLarry Talbot, the main character,nis transformed into a wolfman after being bitten in the chest by a werewolf andngoes on a killing spree in the local village. Eventually, his father beats himnto death with his own a silver-headed cane. Chaney, playing Talbot, reprievednthe role in a number of sequels over the years. 

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nThe cinematic wolfmen fall intontwo broad categories, the vicious, mindless killers or the tragic, haunted victims,nand many of the ‘traditions’ of the werewolf come from the films – then‘infection’ by the bite of a werewolf, the transformation at the full moon, thenimmunity to all weapons bar the silver bullet, the increased speed andnstrength, the interaction with real wolves and so on and so forth. The werewolfncontinues to appear in modern films (I won’t list them… ) and in televisionnprogrammes (… but I will mention the BBC’s superb Being Human), as wellnas in books and graphic novels.

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nAnd, of course, I cannot endnwithout mentioning the song with what was voted by BBC Radio 2 listeners as thenbest opening lines of a pop song ever – Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London.

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