The Legends

Examining the presence of the myth of the werewolf in European folklore is like picking up the dispersed fragments of a vase that has been shattered on the floor. We do not even know if the pieces come from a single vase or from several, nor do we know how many pieces are lost forever. It is extremely difficult to detect the evolution and origin of the legends that narrate tales of the werewolf. It is virtually impossible to formally connect the narrations from one region with similar legends from other remote areas. In addition, the collection of legends about werewolves that has been compiled by folklorists is very irregular, given that in some regions there is an abundance of information and in others, little fieldwork has been done to gather popular narrations on this myth. We can add the fact that the popular legends of pagan origin that were manipulated by the Christian judges and demonologists are interwoven with the werewolf myth. Given this complexity, the anthropologist, Willem de Blécourt, has declared that “there is no werewolf history”. Blécourt, the great specialist in werewolves, prefers to define different clusters or groups of narrations on lycanthropes. He believes that the idea of the werewolf is not equally expressed in different languages, that the werewolf is not the same in each language. He does not think it can be assumed that the English werewolf is similar to the French loup-garou, the German Werwolf, the Danish varulf, or the Latvian vilkatis letón, nor does he believe werewolves can be assumed to be associated with lycanthropy, the Greek term for a mental illness. He supposes that there are actually different specific cultural types that form groups that do not signify the same thing, not even for those who speak the same language. He gives the example of werewolves in the cinema, based on the British and American (the United States) cultural context.