The Last Werewolf Sighting

Patreon: 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.