Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 13

Native American tribes tell of bear-people, wolf-people, fox-people, and so forth, and state that in the beginning of human history, people were like animals andanimals were more human-like. Stories of women who gave birth to were-creatures are common among the North American tribal myths.

Early cultures throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa formed totem clans and often worshipped minor deities that were half-human, half-animal. Norse legends tell about hairy, human-like beings that live in underworld caves and come out at night to feast on the flesh of unfortunate surface dwellers.

The prefix were in Old English means “man,” so coupled with wolf it designates a creature that can alter its appearance from human to beast and become a “man wolf.” In French, the werewolf is known as loup garou; in Spanish, hombre lobo; Italian, lupo manaro; Portuguese, lobizon or lobo home; Polish, wilkolak; Russian, olkolka or volkulaku; and in Greek, brukolakas.

In the Middle Ages, large bands of beggars and brigands roamed the European countryside at night, often dressing in wolf skins and howling like a pack of wolves on the hunt. In the rural areas of France, Germany, Lower Hungary, Estonia, and other countries, these nocturnal thieves were called, “werewolves.” The old Norwegian counterpart to werewolf is vargulf, literally translated as “rogue wolf,” referring to an outlaw who separates himself from society.

Psychologists recognize a werewolf psychosis (lycanthropy or lupinomanis) in which persons so afflicted may believe that they change into a wolf when there is a full moon. Those so disturbed may actually “feel” their fur growing, their fingernails becoming claws, their jaws lengthening, their canine teeth elongating.