On She-Wolves and Red Riding Hoods

We could think that the numerous stories the European folklorists have collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on werewolves are something like the remains or ruins of mythical old buildings that have been crumbling. But those stories do not reveal their origins or only provide slight indications of them. A possible source could be the witchcraft trials—explosions that extended throughout the seventeenth century, contaminating popular beliefs through their spectacularity. The folkloric narrations collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could be like splinters festering from the trials that were embedded in the popular imagery. In addition, they are ancient remains or fragments of the dogmatic accusations of judges and inquisitors that, without a doubt, were mixed in with other legends, giving way to hybrid stories. The resulting piecework is a difficult-to-understand hodgepodge, especially if we take into account the fact that legends migrate and spread, crossing cultural borders.