Werewolves
in European Literature
A
vivid description of King Lycaon's metamorphosis was
given in later centuries by Ovid, the Roman poet. With
this tale, the werewolf entered popular literature that
provided plenty of eerie accounts. It held the attention
of medieval literature for almost three centuries.
Certain
people of Poland and Lithuania were widely regarded
as sorcerers who turned themselves temporarily into
wolves once a year. Similar ritualistic transformation
seems to echo in the tales of Livonia (now part of Soviet
Union's Estonian and Latvian republics) describing ceremonies
occurring during the Christmas seasons: Christmas, because
of its association with the winter solstice, was traditionally
a period of magical activity of all kinds. Ireland was
a similar repository of werewolf lore; perhaps because
wolves thrived there long after they were hunted to
extinction in England. At one time the Emerald Isle
was even known as wolf-land and Saint
Patrick himself was believed to have transformed Vereticus,
the king of Wales, into a wolf.
Romanticized
stories involving werewolves persisted for years in
Europe. England's Gervase of Tilbury, a scholastic writing
between 1210 and 1214, noted that "in England we often
see men changed into wolves at the change of the moon."
Gervase's Otia Imperialia, a collection of medieval
legends and superstitions, includes the tale of Raimbaud
of Auvergne, a former soldier turned outlaw, who turned
himself into a werewolf and began a series of attack
on children and adults alike until a carpenter chopped
off his hand.
A similarly curious twelfth century werewolf tale came
from Ireland. In his Topographis Hibeniae the ecclesiastic
Gerald of Wales related the tale of a priest and a boy
who met with a werewolf couple on their journey to Meath.
Medieval
writers of romance started to construct airy fictions.
Werewolves were figured as wicked-step mother and lost-heir
of a throne. The Lay of the Werewolf was such a story
describing the cruel infidelity of a woman.
