The Woodwose (Anglo-Saxon: wuduwasa) or hairy wildman of the woods is a mythological figure that appears in the artwork of medieval Europe. Albrecht Dürer (ˈalbʀɛçt ˈdyʀɐ ( May 21, 1471 &ndash April 6, 1528) was a German painter, Printmaker Christian I (1426 &ndash 1481 Danish monarch and union king of Denmark (1448 &ndash 1481 Norway (1450 &ndash 1481 and Sweden (1457 &ndash Prussia ( Latin: Borussia, Prutenia; Prūsija Prūsija Prusy Old Prussian: Prūsa) was most recently a historic state Images of woodwoses appear in the carved and painted roof bosses where intersecting ogee vaults meet in the cathedral of Canterbury, in positions where one is also likely to encounter the vegetal Green Man. In architecture, a boss is a knob or protrusion of stone or wood Ogee is a shape consisting of a concave arc flowing into a convex arc so forming an S-shaped curve with vertical ends A Vault (French voute Italian volta German Gewölbe Polish sklepienie, Spanish Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a A Green Man is a Sculpture, Drawing, or other representation of a face surrounded by or made from leaves. The woodwose, pilosus or "hairy all over", and often armed with a club, was a link between civilized humans and the dangerous elf-like spirits of natural woodland, such as Puck. An elf is a creature of Norse mythology. The elves were originally imagined as a race of minor nature and fertility gods, who are often pictured as youthful-seeming Puck is a mythological Fairy or mischievous Nature Spirit. Puck is also a generalised personification of land spirits The image of the wild man survived to appear as supporter for heraldic coats-of-arms, especially in Germany, well into the 16th century. Heraldry in its most general sense encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms. A coat of arms or armorial bearings (often just arms for short in European tradition is a design belonging to a particular person (or group of people Early engravers in Germany and Italy were especially fond of wild men, wild women, and wild families, with examples from Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, and Giovanni Battista Palumba, among others. Martin Schongauer (c 1448 &ndash February 2, 1491) was a German Engraver and painter. Albrecht Dürer (ˈalbʀɛçt ˈdyʀɐ ( May 21, 1471 &ndash April 6, 1528) was a German painter, Printmaker
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Term
Various spellings of the word have been used over the centuries, for example wodewose, woodhouse and wodehouse (pronounced "wood-house", with the accent on the first syllable, as in the surname of the author P. G. Wodehouse); wodwo, the Middle English version, appears (as "wodwos", the plural) in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knyght; it was used by poet Ted Hughes as the title of a poem and, in 1967, a volume of his collected works. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975 (ˈwʊdhaʊs was an English Comic novelist who enjoyed enormous popular success Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Edward James Hughes OM ( 17 August 1930 &ndash 28 October 1998) was an English Poet and children's
Woodwoses and Christianity
The woodwose was unsettling to Christian writers. Augustine reports the Gaulish name of "Dusii" in City of God XV, ch. 23: Et quosdam daemones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, adsidue hanc immunditiam et efficere, plures talesque adseuerant, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur — "Certain demons, whom the Gauls call Dusii, consistently and successfully attempt this indecency [intercourse with women]. This is asserted by many witnesses of such character that it would be an impertinence to deny it," and perhaps the early 7th century encyclopedist Isidore of Seville has picked up Augustine's reference for his Etymologies book viii:
- Pilosi, qui Graece 'panitae', Latine 'incubi' appellantur - hos daemones Galli 'Dusios' nuncupant. Saint Isidore of Seville ( Spanish: es ''San Isidro'' or es ''San Isidoro de Sevilla'' Latin: latin ''Isidorus Hispalensis'' (c Quem autem vulgo 'Incu-bonem' vocant, hunc Romani 'Faunum' dicunt — "Satyrs are they who are called Pans in Greek, Incubi in Latin, these daemons the Galls call Dusi. What vulgarly are called "Incu-bonem", these the Romans name "Fauns".
Another variant of the Gaulish Dusi may lurk in the misunderstanding of fauni ficarii "fig Fauns" in Jerome's Vulgate translation of Jeremiah 50:39, describing the coming desolation of Babylon: "Therefore shall dragons dwell there with the fig fauns. Jerome (c 347 – September 30, 420) ( Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος The Vulgate is an early Fifth Century version of the Bible in Latin, and largely the result of the labours of Jerome, who was commissioned by Jeremiah ( jirmɛ'jahu; Septuagint Greek: Ἰερεμίας was one of the 'greater prophets ' of the Hebrew Bible. " Fig fauns exist nowhere except in dictionaries mentioning this passage. Is this a slip of the copyists for Jerome's fauni Sicarii ("fauns of the Sicarii", the ancient tribe of Gauls in Sicily)? Apparently, the King James' Version committee thought so, rendering the passage "Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. Sicily ( Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia) is an autonomous region of Italy. " (See [1]) No modern English translation of the Bible mentions dragons or fauns in this passage.
Other early references
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Life of Merlin (ca 1150), describes the agonized mourning of Merlin after a bloody battle, when
a strange madness came upon him. Geoffrey of Monmouth ( Gruffudd ap Arthur or Sieffre o Fynwy) (c The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network ( MERLIN) is an Interferometer array of Radio telescopes spread across England and the He crept away and fled to the woods, unwilling that any should see his going. Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pasture of the glades. Sometimes he would follow them, sometimes pass them in his course. He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from trees and of the blackberries in the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods, as if dedicated to the woods. So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.
A woodwose is described in Konungs skuggsjá (Speculum Regale or "the King's Mirror"), written in Norway around 1250:
It once happened in that country (and this seems indeed strange) that a living creature was caught in the forest as to which no one could say definitely whether it was a man or some other animal; for no one could get a word from it or be sure that it understood human speech. Konungs skuggsjá ( Old Norse for "King's mirror" Latin: Speculum regale, modern Norwegian: Kongsspegelen Norway ( Norwegian: Norge ( Bokmål) or Noreg ( Nynorsk) officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Constitutional It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet; but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are, and down the back it had a long coarse mane like that of a horse, which fell to both sides and trailed along the ground when the creature stooped in walking.
King Charles VI of France and five of his courtiers were dressed as woodwoses and chained together for a masquerade at the tragic Bal des Sauvages (later known as the Bal des Ardents) at the Queen Mother's Paris hôtel, January 28, 1393. Charles VI (3 December 1368 &ndash 21 October 1422 called the Well-loved (le Bien-Aimé and the Mad (French le Fol or le Fou) was the A masquerade ball (or bal masqué) is an event which the participants attend in Costume wearing a Mask. Charles VI (3 December 1368 &ndash 21 October 1422 called the Well-loved (le Bien-Aimé and the Mad (French le Fol or le Fou) was the In French contexts an hôtel particulier is an urban "private house" of a grand sort Events 1077 - Walk to Canossa: The Excommunication of Henry IV Holy Roman Emperor is lifted They were "in costumes of linen cloth sewn onto their bodies and soaked in resinous wax or pitch to hold a covering of frazzled hemp, "so that they appeared shaggy & hairy from head to foot"". [1] In the midst of the festivities, a stray spark from a torch set their highly flammable costumes ablaze, burning several courtiers alive; the king's own life was saved through quick action by his aunt, the Duchesse de Berry, who hid him under her dress.
Other uses
The term wood-woses or simply Woses is used by J. R. R. Tolkien to describe a fictional race of wild men, which are called also Drúedain. The Thaler (or Taler or Tolar) was a Silver Coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred Years Its name lives on Brunswick (Braunschweig was a historical state in Germany. Originally the territory of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in the Holy Roman Empire, it was established The Harz is a mountain range in central Germany It is the highest mountain chain in northern Germany occupying parts of the German states of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt In J R R Tolkien 's Legendarium, the Drúedain are a fictional race of Men which were counted amongst the Edain. According to his legendarium, other men, including the Rohirrim, mistook the Drúedain for goblins or other wood-creatures and referred to them as Púkel-men (Goblin-men). Tolkien's Legendarium (ISBN 0-313-30530-7 is a collection of scholarly essays edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F In J R R Tolkien 's Middle-earth, the Rohirrim were a Horse people, settling in the land of Rohan, named after them In J R R Tolkien 's Fantasy writings Orcs or Orks are a race of creatures who are used as soldiers and henchmen by both the greater and lesser villains He allowed the fictional possibility that his Drúedain were the "actual" origin of the Woodwoses of later traditional folklore. Fiction is the telling of stories which are not real More specifically fiction is an imaginative form of Narrative, one of the four basic Rhetorical modes.
Both folklorists and cryptozoologists apply the term "wild men" to European woodwoses. History The concept of folklore developed as part of the 19th century ideology of Romantic nationalism, leading to the reshaping of oral traditions to serve modern ideological Cryptozoology (from Greek κρυπτός kruptos, "hidden" + Zoology; literally "study of hidden animals" is the study of and search "Wild men" has a wider definition than "woodwoses"; it is also used for worldwide reports of hair-covered bipeds resembling Bigfoot, but tends to be most often applied to beings that seem more human than ape, or that have strong mythological or supernatural overtones. Bigfoot or Sasquatch is alleged to be an Ape -like creature inhabiting remote forests mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada The word mythology (from the Greek grc μυθολογία mythología, meaning "a story-telling a legendary lore" The term supernatural or supranatural ( Latin: super, supra "above" + natura "nature" pertains to entities events
Neil Gaiman makes reference to this creature in his poem "Going Wodwo", which is itself part of the anthology Fragile Things. Neil Richard Gaiman (ˈgeɪmən (born November 10, 1960) is an English author of Science fiction and Fantasy short stories and Fragile Things Short Fictions and Wonders is a collection of Short stories and Poetry by English author Neil Gaiman.
See also
Notes
- ^ Barbara Tuchman;A Distant Mirror, 1978, Alfred A Knopf Ltd, p504
References
- Richard Bernheimer, Wild men in the Middle Ages, Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1952; New York : Octagon books, 1979, ISBN 0-374-90616-5
- Timothy Husband, The wild man : medieval myth and symbolism, Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980, ISBN 0-87099-254-6, ISBN 0-87099-255-4
- Rebecca Martin, Wild Men and Moors in the Castle of Love: The Castle-Siege Tapestries in Nuremberg, Vienna, and Boston, Thesis (Ph. The Almas, Mongolian for 'wild man' is a cryptozoological species of presumed hominid reputed to inhabit the Caucasus and Pamir Mountains In Basque mythology, the basajaun (plural basajaunak were an ancient human race of stout hairy wild men who were megalith builders Bigfoot or Sasquatch is alleged to be an Ape -like creature inhabiting remote forests mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada Am Fear Liath Mòr (also known as The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui or simply The Greyman) is the name of a presence or creature which is said to haunt the summit and The Leszi or anglicized as Leshiy (Лісовик ле́ший is a woodland spirit in Slavic mythology who protects wild animals and forests D. ), Chapel Hill/N. C., 1983
- Michael Newton. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ( UNC, North Carolina, or simply Carolina) is a public, Coeducational Research Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology: A Global Guide to Hidden Animals and Their Pursuers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005. ISBN 0-7864-2036-7
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