The Last Werewolf Sighting

  / cambrianchronicles  

"The most recent case of a suspected werewolf in Britain is the Merioneth example, which was seen by an Oxford professor, his wife, and guest in the eighties"
-J. Wentworth Day, 1932

There's an odd tradition found amongst some of the texts belonging to the history of Wales.

Here, we are told that if an individual commits a heinous act, God will punish them not through divine wrath, not by flooding the Earth (again), but instead... by turning them into a wolf.

This state appears to be permanent, unless the individual is able to convince God, or a powerful saint, to change them back.

But these man-wolves are not confined to religious texts, and instead are the antagonists in Arthurian adventures, the protagonists in their own tales of woe throughout Welsh history, and indeed in some cases, truly horrifying spirits attached to cursed skulls and mystical lakes in the wilds of Wales.

These are the stories of the men and women, kings and peasants, cursed to live as wolves throughout the history of Wales.

Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:20 - The Dog-Man Horror of the Valley
5:06 - The Last Wolf in Britain
8:43 - The Wolf-People of the Mabinogion
11:15 - The Other Wolf People of Mabinigion
14:04 - Arthur and the Dog-Heads
19:50 - Saints & Wolves
21:51 - The Last Werewolf

Sources (turn on captions):
Primary Sources
Arthur and Gorglagon, tr. F. A. Milne, notes by A. Nutt Folklore, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1904) 40-67.
The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion, tr. S. Davies, The Mabinogion (Oxford University Press, 2007) 47-64.
Gerald of Wales, The Topography of Ireland, tr. T. Forestor, Ed. T. Wright, Medieval Latin Series (In Parentheses Publications, 2000).
How Culhwch Won Olwen, tr. S. Davies, The Mabinogion (Oxford University Press, 2007) 179-213.
Iolo Goch. To Saint Dewi, tr. D. Johnston, Iolo Goch: Poems, Welsh Classics Vol. 5 (Gomer Press, 1993) 73-82.
King James I/ VI, Dæmonologie, ed. G. B. Harrison, King James the First: Dæmonologie (1597) Newes from Scotland (1591), (The Bodley Head, 1924).
Melion, tr. A. Hopkins, Melion and Biclarel: Two Old French Werewolf Lays, Liverpool Online Series: Critical Editions of French Texts (University of Liverpool, 2005) 51-82.
Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, The Poly-Olbion Project, The University of Exeter & The Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, tr. B. More (Cornhill Publishing, 1922).
Pa Gur, tr. Rachel Bromwich, “The Bardic Image: Names and Places” in: R. Barber (ed.) The Figure of Arthur (Longman, 1972) 69-71.
Pausanius, Description of Greece, tr. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 1918).
Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, tr. & ed. R. Bromwich (University of Wales Press, 2014).
Wentworth Day, J. “The Dog-Man Horror of the Valley” in: J. Canning (ed) 50 Great Horror Stories, (Bell Publishing, 1987) 163-168.
William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, tr. J. A. Giles (Henry G. Bohn, 1847).

Scholarship:
Baring-Gould, S. The Book of Were-wolves: Being an Account of Terrible Superstition (Smith, Elder, & Co., 1865).
Bromwich, R. “The Bardic Image: Names and Places” in: R. Barber (ed.) The Figure of Arthur (Longman, 1972) 54-79.
Davies, S. The Mabinogion (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Frank, S. F. Montague Summers: A Bibliographical Portrait (Scarecrow Press, 1988).
Kittredge, G. L, Arthur and Gorlagon (Ginn & Company, 1903).
Massey, J. “The Werewolf at the Head Table: Metatheatric “Subtlety” in Arthur and Gorlagon” in: L. Tracy & J. Massey (eds) Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination (Brill, 2012) 183-206.
Oman, C. C. “The English Folklore of Gervase of Tilbury” Folklore Vol. 55, No. 1 (1944) 2-15.
Summers, M. The Werewolf in Lore and Legend, reprint (Dover Publications, 2003).

Websites:
The FictionMags Index, Magazine Contents Lists: Page 8145
UKWCT, The Disappearance of Wolves in Britain

----------

Music courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library:
Alien or Cake - Jimena Contreras
Cosmic Nightmares - Jimena Contreras
Under The Rug - Density & Time
Torture - Coyote Hearing
Dream Escape - The Tides
Hypnosis - Godmode
Lucid Haze - Amulets
Wolf Mother - Loopop
Creep - Emmit Fenn
The Quantum Realm - The Whole Other

----------

Images of, and from:
Three Creeks: Sixflashphoto, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ,
Forest: ceridwen / The deep dark forest / CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Lightning: NOAA Photo Library, CC0,
Dewi Sant: Hchc2009, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

All other images are public domain, via the British Library, Yale Center for British Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Internet Archive, Rijksmuseum, Smithsonian, Art Institute Chicago, Getty Search Gateway, National Library of Wales, Digital Commonwealth, National Library of the Netherlands, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Herzog August Library.

Woof.