Bestiary |
Griffin
By its appearance - usually a combination of eagle and lion - you can tell that this interesting monster comes from the Orient. Like its equally picturesque relatives, the mantichora is an example. The griffin was first introduced to Europe, of course Hellenistic, by Hesiodos, unfortunately we don't know the incriminated work, so the first author, extractible even in modern times, was Herodotus. He mentions one of the most popular and essential pieces of information, namely the affinity of griffins with gold.
Whether digging it out of the ground to make nests (and then, thanks to parental instincts, chasing after gold diggers) or guarding deposits of this precious metal, in any case this trait helped keep them in the popularity charts. In this case, they served the same function in the East as European dragons or gnomes.
Herodotus, describing the war of the griffins with the one-eyed Arimaspans, Aeschylus, and later Pliny were among the few ancient authors who left written accounts of the griffins. The creatures were much more successful in the visual arts, with numerous depictions of them surviving on virtually everything from abdication coins to armor decoration to sarcophagi.
The Middle Ages favored them, too. Griffins, like many monsters, have made their way into heraldic emblems, but they have also received official recognition. While dragons, manticores, centaurs and basilisks generally joined the army of darkness, the griffin took the other side. Although sometimes considered a demon, he was more often identified as a symbol of Christ. Certainly his monstrous combination contributed to this, for both the lion and the eagle are animals of royalty.
By the Middle Ages, then, there were also the first confusions common with mythological creatures today. Marco Polo - and he was not alone - heard the tale of the Ruchch in Madagascar, for example, and interpreted the griffin as its main character. And since the Czech term for the griffin is the Noh the bird, it is not difficult to see that later translators and storytellers of oriental tales also made the same confusion. Since the Ruchch is, however, an entirely different creature, I shall devote to it another, the following story.
Illustration by Martin Schongauer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
9.10.2024 (16.5.2004)
Roc (Ruchch)
is a common bird of somewhat larger size than the griffin. Usually a giant vulture or eagle. It flies in Arabian legends, but also in the legends of Madagascar and Malaya, so its area of operation is the Indian Ocean. You know him well from the adventures of Sinbad.
It is no problem for it to grasp an elephant in its claws, and it hunts them in this way, as Marco Polo reminds us. It simply grabs the elephant, carries it up and drops it on the ground. According to a Malay legend, (unfortunately told in confused and inaccurate children's books, so I'm on the fence about whether to believe it or not) sometimes the Ruchch eats up the city and feeds on the folk.
Unlike the griffin, however, the ruchch is closer to reality, and probably not exaggerating too much. Madagascar was mentioned, and you can guess where I'm going. To the Aepyornithes, the Madagascar ostrich, one of the largest birds ever to live on this planet.
Madagascar ostriches were certainly still alive at the time of the famous European and Arabian explorations, written about in the mid-seventeenth century by Etienne Flacourt and, after all, Marco Polo, adding to the otherwise herbivorous giants a taste for elephants (which probably came into legend under the influence of oriental stories) and the ability to fly. Other, smaller and more inconspicuous animals have also added to the colorful reputation, and if one has encountered a three-and-a-half meter huge bird, and if the animal - if it had the same habit of protecting its eggs as the recent ostriches - has run after it, then it is certainly not to be wondered at.
Illustration by Charles Maurice Detmold (1883-1908), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
9.10.2024 (16.5.2004)
Werewolf
Writing anything about werewolves is a bit of a challenge. You don't think so? On the one hand, one compound-complex sentence would be enough, on the other hand, a hundred-page paper wouldn't fix it. I don't want to do the former, I am not capable of the latter. But I'll do something: I'll take you to – let's call it the staircase of werewolf initiation. From that one sentence to the limit of the aforementioned study.
Enough talk, here we go.
Chapter One: Man turns into a wolf
A werewolf is a man metamorphosing into wolf form. Under the full moon, as the films reveal, for example, from the black and white beginning. Most of the time it's due to a curse or a bite from another werewolf. If vampires expanding their population in a similar way springs to mind, you're not too far off.
Turning into a wolf is also possible through knowledge of the relevant magical practices, as documented, for example, by a number of tales from my country. But not only from there. In the simplest case, you just need to drink from the water caught in the wolf's trail, for further transformations you don't need more than a somersault over a log. Anytime.
Chapter Two: The Monster
Where most modern (literary) werewolves are no different is in the inclination to the Dark Si... sorry, the Evil. Although good werewolves (fighting evil vampires, for example) have become a bit of a cliché, too. The old lycanthropes, especially those of the late Middle Ages and beyond, were indeed demons. For xenophobic reasons, and thanks to the Christian tradition that lumped almost all supernatural beings into that bag. With rare exceptions, all monsters belonged to the Devil's stable; supernatural abilities belonged only to God and the Devil, the former certainly did not waste them, and the latter had to be destroyed.
Against the strong pagan influences, medieval Christianity used something that we do not associate with that time today - rationality and, in a way, a materialistic understanding of the world. The behavioral formula was simple - unnatural things came from the Devil. The Middle Ages tried not to believe in witches and denied supernatural phenomena, with rare exceptions, passing them off as delusions and charms. It was only much later, when the old gods had really gone, that the supernatural dared to be adopted, living on in the surviving ruins of former beliefs and in the tales of the people. And only then did the first witches flare up.
What the officially sanctioned werewolf of the time looked like is revealed, for example, by the Bishop d'Auvergne of Paris. He describes a case in which the devil possessed a man, and made him believe that he was becoming a wolf and that in this form he was committing terrible sins. He carried him away to hidden places, but the man remained in his skin, only deeply asleep. The wolf form was, of course, the Satan himself.
The lycanthropes of later times adopted their ways from the devil, attacking cattle in wolf form, sucking milk from udders, scaring people, and suffocating them in their sleep. If you have some suspicion of other supernatural beings, then wait for the last chapter.
Chapter Three: the Curse
Even in the devil-obsessed Middle Ages, there were exceptions. According to older beliefs, the transformation of a man into a wolf was possible, so tales of victims of the curse have survived. An example from Brittany – the tale of the Bisclaveret.
The familiar motif of the discarded garment appears in this story. While the fairy tale swan princesses have to hide their feathered garments in order to remain in human form, the opposite was true for the Breton nobleman who turned into a wolf. When his not-so-honorable wife discovered that her husband was a werewolf, she asked where he hid his clothes before his metamorphosis and then stole them. The poor baron remained a wolf.
Fortunately, the story ends well – the wolf had infiltrated the king himself while hunting. Tame behaviour contrasted with attacks on the only person in the royal court (the unfaithful wife) revealed that this was no ordinary animal. The nobleman was given a dress and the adulteress a well-deserved punishment.
Chapter Four: The Skin-changer
Usually (not always) a werewolf was an evil demon. In pagan times, transformation into an animal was not a bad thing; even crowned heads took pride in it, especially among the southern and eastern Slavs. From the Slavs, in fact, Europe adopted the werewolf in its almost present form. (Voluntary metamorphosis is known elsewhere. And not only into a wolf.)
The wolf is, of course, a significant apotropaic animal. Revered and worshipped, in Bulgaria it was considered a good omen when it took a sheep, in French legend it saved the honor and life of a certain lady... For a long time, the other – the man in wolf's skin, or werewolf – was the evil one, but in the very beginning the transformation into a wolf was nothing bad or exceptional.
Back to the Slavs for a moment. They, as you already know, spread the belief in vampires to their neighbors. It didn't take much, and instead of flying transfusion stations, hairy monsters were running around at night, old legends were the same. Or mixed. We know the Serbo-Croatian tales of werewolves rising from the grave and attacking ladies and travelers. The origin of the species was similar: the werewolf used to be the fruit of strange unions of witches. A child, who is born feet first. The one conceived at a new moon could become a werewolf, too. Even a child endowed at birth with pre-milking teeth, which is another superstition later attributed to vampires. The transformation itself, as noted above, may have been a not too difficult gymnastic act, but sometimes metamorphosis was only possible on the solstice.
More bizarre are the later folklore tales where a man might transform during an unspecified incantation, with a stick tucked behind his belt to represent a wolf's tail. While I do not believe that this practice is a memory of any wolf mysteries, it is certain that the belief persisted.
If we take our binoculars for a moment and look into the jungles of East Asia, we can find lycanthropes there as well. Not in the form of wolves, of course, but tigers. This is understandable, given the aforementioned function of the wolf in European cultures.
Chapter Five: The Doppelganger
Here we come to the roots. Behind lycanthropy lies something truly ancient and worldwide - the belief in the Double. Indeed, a slight shake is all it takes to shake off a cursed man or demon and reveal the old superstitions. In its pure form, the above story by d'Aubergny shows that the Double, the soul of man, leaves the body mostly in sleep. It usually moves in the form of some animal, whether a wolf or a bear (or a tiger, as I recalled in the Asian look-back), and above all: everything the Double experiences is reflected back to the sleeping man. Not only does he see through the doppelganger's eyes, he also takes all the wounds that the doppelganger in animal form has taken, hence the farm boy in the Czech tale who, as a werewolf, rampaged through the woods and sheepfolds, lost an eye when the wolf was scratched by one of the dogs that ran on his trail.
Behind the werewolf, then, is a human soul enjoying a momentary independence. And here I'll stop, because, on the one hand, the topic would spill out of the cup, and on the other hand, I can refer you with a clear conscience to Claude Lecouteux's Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Fées, Sorciéres et Loups-garous au Moyen Age, Historie du Double, 1992), which covers the whole topic in full and, above all, in a clever way.
The attack of the werewolf was recorded in an engraving in the sixteenth century by Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
14.11.2024 (23.5.2004)
.jpg){kind=link}
