>I thought this might be interesting to mention here. Anybody have something >to add? I'd love to learn more on this subject!
>I've done a bit of reading on the topic of lycanthropy and such because of my >interest in TF, and since I also really enjoy linguistics, I've been trying to >compare human-animal myths in the Indo-European languages to see if >there are any similar features.
You might want to also consider Asian language families. Mongolian and Turkish myths, for example, frequently feature wolves.
>I read an intersting piece written in Old Welsh (and translated - I don't know >much Welsh, being Canada-born)
The Welsh language is quite similar to Breton, the Celtic tongue spoken in the former French province of Britanny. There are many Breton myths about werewolves. The medieval lay of "Bisclavret" is especially well known.
>about King Arthur and Gorlagon, a man who was turned into a wolf with the >mind of a man by his cuckolding wife. She gets a nice reward at the end - >has to keep the severed head of her affair-lover with her at all times!
Here's a RPG website I found about "The Arthurian Werewolf."
http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/a-were.html
>There's actually evidence to suggest that those who committed a serious >enough crime or who were socially deviant (in particular, homosexual, it >would suggest) were cast out and it was said "Thou art a wolf." This >expression or at least variants of it exist in Hittite and the Germanic >languages. There was, however, a way for these outcasts to redeem >themselves - by doing a brave, valorous deed . . .
More information on this subject is posted here:
http://www.collasius.org/LITERATUR/04-H ... rewolf.htm
>I can't remember off the bat who, but there are several other examples in >other Indo-European sultures that have the fighters associate somehow with >wolves or bears.
The Dacians, an ancient group whose homeland roughly corresponds to modern Romania, had many wolf myths. They supposedly had a military initiation rite involving transformation of a soldier into a wolf. See
http://www.angelfire.com/in/cih/dacians.html
Note - this website also mentions some ancient Iranian wolf lore.
Wikipedia has an article,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans,
claiming that early Indo-Europeans had a separate warrior class of wolf-men. No real evidence is cited, making one wonder if this is an analogy to "Dog Soldier" groups found among American tribes, for example.
>While the bear was called something the souded like hhurt-kyos, spelled by >convention *h2r.tk^os (really the dot's supposed to be a circle under the r, >and the ^ is supposed to be on top of the k), it was often referred to by other >names, such as "the brown one", from whence we get the English "bear" >and "bruin". Another big reference was "the honey-eater," as it is called in >many Slavic languages.
"Medved," the current Russian word for -- bear --, is an example. A more accurate translation may be -- honey-knower --, as bears not only eat honey but also know where to find it.
>Supposedly, there were only bears in the north.
While some bears are found in the tropics, wolves do not naturally occur in tropical habitats. Ethiopian wolves occur in tropical Africa, but only high in the mountains where the climate is temperate.