man-wolf

[egypturnash]

I was thinking about the Noble Amerind Werewolf chiché this morning. I finally realized where it comes from - it's a conflation of two themes in wildlife art, the Noble, Soulful-Eyed Animal, and the Noble, Soulful-Eyed Indian. It's only natural that people who are into that and into werewolves combine them into the Noble, Soulful-Eyed Indian Werewolf!

I played with some thoughts I'd had a while back for doing a more horror-flavored sort of werewolf, and did a quick search on one of the source myths, the French Loup-garou. I found this page in the first page of Google hits on "loup-garou", and discovered a fascinating wrinkle to the French peasant flavor of werewolf: a loup-garou can be rescued from the were-curse by drawing blood. Thing is, if you do this to a loup-garou, neither you nor the former werewolf may speak of it for 101 days, lest the person who breaks the silence early get the were-curse back ten times over.

I found that to be a really beautiful twist. You and the former werewolf now share this horrible, embarassing, dangerous secret. There's a lot of potential metaphor there, for the nasty ties guilt creates between two people.

It's a lot cooler than the Hollywood version, where you just can't kill it with anything but a silver bullet.

Also, I did part of a rough for a nasty urban werewolf drawing on the bus. A pack near the end of a hunt. I played with the idea before the last time I saw too many Noble Were drawings, but didn't nail it accurately enough to make an interesting image.

Comments

[plague-dog.livejournal.com]

Ah. I couldn't agree any better about seeing too many noble were drawings. Speaking of nothing, have you ever heard of a permorming artist/public speaker named James Luna? He gets around quite a bit in California and has this little act called the Shameman, which was oddly appropriate when applied to the whole noble native were thing.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Nah, never heard of him... I don't get out much, yknow. what's the 'Shameman' bit involve? Mocking new agey noble savage stuff?

[plague-dog.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah. I'd describe the act in great detail, but it'd be kind of like trying to explain an awkwardly-delivered punchline and thus kill the joke. You'd kind of have to see it for yourself.. But he's pretty well-known, so there's a fair chance he might speak somewhere in your area one of these days.

Anyway, James is from the La Jolla reservation a few minutes down the road from where I am and spoke at the little community college I go to. Here's a little snippet from an article, which sums up the entire thing pretty well:

"In 'The Shameman,' Luna's sense of humor cuts deeply in two directions: first against 'shamans' who sell spirituality, and secondly, whites who buy it as a commodity."

Think about the term 'wet dream-catcher' for a while, and it'll make more sense.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Any chance of seeing them anyway?

-T'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd scanned them, but a little investigation reveals that I just did an an LJ entry on my ponderings that referrerd to sketch fragments that were never scanned because they didn't quite work for me. I might dig them up and scan when I get home tonight, along with what I started this morning. (I can't wait to work on it some more on the way home.)

[paka.livejournal.com]

Then there's the European (and Navajo!) idea of a werewolf being someone who keeps a wolf skin around and changes by putting it on. Next day the neighbors have lost a kid or a batch of sheep and nobody's the wiser. I think but can't be sure there's French folklore about the would-be werewolf donning their skin at a crossroads, shades of Legba myth there. (Come to think of it, wasn't the voudoun equivalent of a vampire the logarou?)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, wasn't the voudoun equivalent of a vampire the logarou?

That sounds like a cross-fertilization from the French myth to me. I knew about the loup-garou because the Cajuns brought it along with them when they were kicked out of Canada after being previously kicked out of France; the word 'loup-garou' is spoken as something like "loo garoo". Which could easily be spelt as 'logarou'.

I don't know anything about donning the skin at a crossroads, but it sure works for me! Um, conceptually, not in terms of actually turning into a wolf.

I've seen it suggested that werewolf and vampire myths stem from the same physical cause: when you exhume a relatively fresh corpse, the skin's shrunk, and the bones haven't; thus, the teeth look longer, especially the canines. QUite plausible, if absolutely prosaic.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

"I found that to be a really beautiful twist. You and the former werewolf now share this horrible, embarassing, dangerous secret. There's a lot of potential metaphor there, for the nasty ties guilt creates between two people."

Aw hell, I like that idea. You could make a very interesting story out of a plot wrinkle like that.

The Noble, Soulful-Eyed Indian meme...

[(Anonymous)]

...arose out of a 1960's PSA about littering (which was actually quite elegant and moving). The America Indian who played the soulful-eyed etc. in question was named, oddly enough, Iron Eyes Cody. He died just a few years ago, in 1999, at the age of 95.

--Dances With Marmots

[zrath.livejournal.com]

There is also the lesser known variant of the Loup-Garou myth:
the Loup-Ragou.
Legend has it that some werewolves stuck around their victims' camp after consuming
them and sampled some of their cooking. Some werewolves came to prefer the humans'
food instead of the humans themselves. Said humans' food was usually a stew of some
kind, and eventually, these stew-loving werewolves learn to cook for themselves,
leaving the humans alone, except for the occasional stew ingredient raid.
And since the French word for stew is "ragou", these werewolves became known as
"Loup-Ragou".

Nyuck-nyuck.

[zrath.livejournal.com]

And thanks for that Vincennes Loup-Garou link!!
Cajuns and other French mutants are so much fun!

[vagina-dendata.livejournal.com]

Heh... I've read some interesting werewolf myths hailing from my own country. Tiny Baltic country, has been invaded a hundred billion gajillion times, tons of influence from other cultures.

Anyway. One is that you can change a werewolf back into human by feeding it bread from your hand. Obviously would not occur very often...good folk myth material. The changing of skins is also a pretty common theme in folk stories, also: spreading some special ointment to become a wolf and then other variations on that theme.

A great play written by one of our highly respected authors deals with the theme of werewolves, actually. She was the daughter of a witch and her mother was burned after some confusing circumstance, I believe they lived a peaceful life for some time, then... something... happened? Can't remember precisely :P

After the burning some kind people took the girl in since they didn't have any evidence/malice against a child. She however couldn't really abandon what she was (werewolf(witch). Eventually I think she spurned the love of the family son and ran away, though she really did love him , couldn't be together, differences, yadda yadda. Drama, deaths, lives wasted and bladebla. Great play, actually. My description does it no flattery, trust me:P

[vagina-dendata.livejournal.com]

Oh, and: I'm the one who commented recently on the possible psychological component of a sugar rush :P

I've been quietly working my way up your journal. And getting urges to comment... hope you don't mind :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I guessed as much. *grin* Feel free; I may or may not have anything to say to the comments on the Really Old Posts!

I've seen the "ointment" theme in animal transformations, but not the "feed them bread from your hand to lift the curse". That's definitely a good story hook.