Wild man

For other uses, see Wild man (disambiguation).

The wild man (German: Wilder Mann, der Wilde Mann), wild man of the woods is a mythical figure and motif resembling a hairy human that appears in the art and literature of medieval Europe. Generally considered large-statured race of humans who are hairy all over its body, living in the wilderness or woodlands. They are often thought to be covered with moss, or wear green or vegetative clothing, and iconically wield a club or hold an uprooted tree as a staff. They also occur in female versions as wild women.

Wild men support coats of arms in the side panels in Portrait of Oswald Krell (1499) by Albrecht Dürer

—Alte Pinakothek museum, Munich.

The Wilde Mann (Middle High German: wilde man) is attested in Middle High German literature, particularly German heroic epics while the female Wilde Weib (wildez wîp) figures in the Arthurian works, typically appear as adversaries. These beings are also called by names meaning "wood men" and in older forms of the language, "wood wife". In Middle English a corresponding term for the wild man is woodwose or wodewose.

In the folklore of German-speaking areas collected mainly in the 19th century, there are especially the Alpine wild man and wild women. These beings could be man-hunters or otherwise be sinister, but could also endow luck or bounty, exhibiting aspects of woodland spirits.

Even before Albrecht Dürer's times in the late 15th century there was an established convention to depict the wild man as the shield bearers of family coat of arms (cf. fig. right). The folklore that had developed in the mining areas around Harz or Ore mountains by the 16th century regarded the wild man (also known as "mountain monk") as potentially both dangerous and beneficent, guiding humans to the discovery of ore deposits. The Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Brunswick-Lüneburg) also the wild man in their family heraldic device, minting silver thaler ("dollar") coinage with the wild man starting 1539.

The defining characteristic of the figure is its "wildness"; iconography from the 12th century onward has consistently depicted the wild man as being covered with hair. Around the same transition period, biblical or other humans afflicted with madness came to be conventionally depicted with hairiness, and subsequently, literary figures who temporarily loses sanity and live in the wild (Merlin, Ywain) also came to be associated with wild men.

Terminology

Late 15th century tapestry from Basel, showing a wild man being tamed by a virtuous lady

"Wild man" is a technical term in use since the Middle Ages, applied to a hairy human-like creature with certain animal-like traits but which has not quite descended to the level of ape; it may have hairless spots around the face, palms, feet, sometimes elbows and knees, and around the breasts in case of the female "wild woman". If the creature exhibits additional animal-like traits, it may not be a wild man in question, but rather the satyr, faun, or the devil (Bernheimer's definition).

"Wild man" and its cognates in some languages are the common terms for the creature in most modern languages; it appears in German as wilder Mann, in French as homme sauvage. But in Italian uomo selvatico "forest man" is often used.

The German wild man (Der Wilde) also occurs in a more modern folklore tradition, localized in a region spanning from Switzerland to Carinthia, Austria (and often Hesse in Germany) according to the Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (HdA), registered under such names as wilde Frau, Wildfrau, -en, wilde Fraulein, Wildfräulein wilder Mann, Wildmannli, wilde Männle. Wildmännlein Plural forms are: wilde Männer, or wilde Leute or wilde Menschen. Females are also called wildes Weib (pl. wilde Weiber). When the wild men appear in solitary fashion, they are similar to giants and ogres, while the women tend to be more goddess-like.

The "wild man" is attested in Middle High German as wilde man in the 13th century, once in a lyrical poem alluding to Sigenot the older form of which only survived in fragments, and elsewhere in the Arthurian romance Wigamur which gives wilde man (v. 203), as well as the female form wildez wîp (vv. 112, 200, 227ff.) (For additional examples in MHG literature cf. § German epics below).

In Old High German, the term wildaz wîp (lit. 'wild wife, wild woman') together with holzmuoja, holzmoia (lit. 'wood maiden') occurs in a glossary as equivalent to Latin lamia (female monster); the same glossary also has an entry for the form wildiu wîp equated to Latin ulula (lit. 'screech owl', cf. strix of mythology.

Another old example is the mention of "ad domum wildero wîbo" ("house of the wild women"), a piece of landmark or toponymy somewhere in Hessen, mentioned in Codex Eberhardi (c. 1150) by the monk Eberhard of Fulda or a text close to it.

Wood-folk type synonyms

The wild man is referred to as waltluoder in Wolfdietrich, and in the same work, the title hero must deal with the advances of Rauhe Else ("Shaggy Else"), classified as a wild woman (cf. § German epic below).

In the epic Laurin the wild man is referred to as a waltmann (lit. 'wood man'). The same term waltman is used in Iwein to characterize the herdsman as a wild man, and he is also described as being as hairy as a walttôren (lit. 'wood fool') (Cf. Iwein discussed below under § Medieval iconography).

In MHG a synonym for wild woman is holz-wîp (lit. 'wood wife').

In modern regional folklore, the creatures with sylvan (wood-related) names that correspond to the Alpine wild folk are the Holzleuten or Moosleuten (wood- or moss people) of Central Germany, Franconia, and Bavaria; Holzfräulein aka Waldfräulein, Waldweiblein of the Bohemian Forest and the Upper Palatinate; the Waldweiblein and Moosweiblein (lit. 'moss maiden') of the Harz mountains region; the Lohjungfer (pl. Lohjungfern) of Halle in Saxony; and the Buschweiblein (lit. 'bush maiden') of Westphalia.

Other aliases

Folklore in Tyrol and German-speaking Switzerland into the 20th century speaks of a wild woman called Fänge (Faengge, Fankke), which is a post-medieval neologism deriving from the Latin fauna, the feminine form of faun. The wild women of the Alpine region are "identical to or closely related to" the Fänggen or the Salige (Salige Frauen).

The wild man is called a Bilmon (corruption of "wild man") Salvadegh, or Salvanel in Wälsch-Tirol (present-day Trento Province), which may be spelt Salvan or Salvang with usage extending to Lombardy. The wild man is called l'om salvadegh by Ladin language-speakers in Folgrait (Folgaria) and Trambileno; this is readily recognizable as equivalent to French l'homme sauvage, where Old French salvage derives from Latin silvāticus "sylvan, pertaining to forest". Hence these names are related to Silvanus, the Roman tutelary god of gardens and the countryside. The (medieval Latin) term silvaticus was in fact used in the sense of "wild woman" by Burchard of Worms in the 10th century, and it has been suggested he was referring to beings who would have been called Selvang in dialect according to modern-day folklore.

The local name Frauberte or Frau Berta was supposedly current either in Ronchi near Ala, or the aforementioned Folgrait and Trambileno areas. Likewise there are a sort of wild women known as Berchtra or Perchta (diminutive: Perchtel) in Carinthia.

It is contended that the Norgg or Orke or Orge; Lorgg or Lorge; or Nörglein, Nörkel, Örggele in folklore from parts of the Alps, particularly Tyrol, also may correspond to the wild man, with the proviso that these (especially diminutives) are names for "wild dwarf people". This appears to be connected to Italian orco (Neapolitan: huorco, pl. orci) in the sense of "subterraneans", (≈dwarfs or gnomes) or perhaps rather a "harmless wild folk" version of the orco as found in the literary fairy tales of the Pentamerone. The Italian orco is cognate to French ogre, as is modern literary orcs, and is related to Orcus, a Roman and Italic god of death.

The Rüttelweib, Rittelweibe (lit. 'shaking wife'; pl. Rüttelweiber) of the Giant Mountains is also considered another regional fabulous being corresponding to the wild woman of the Alpine Region.

English terms

In Old English/Anglo-Saxon there is recorded wude-wāsa meaning "satyr" or "faun", a compound of wude "woodland, forest" and wasa of uncertain etymology, though perhaps meaning "forest dweller"; or else it may perhaps be a compound formed from *wāsa "being", from the verb wesan, wosan "to be, to be alive".

From it has derived Middle English woodwose, wodewose, woodehouse also used to the present day, (with variant spelling such as wodewese, etc.,) understood perhaps as variously singular or plural. The form wodwos occurs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1390). This wild man (woodwose) has no relation to the Green Knight, but is just another enemy whom Sir Gawain happens to encounter in journey.

The Middle English word is first attested for the 1340s in the context of decorative piece of art depicting a wild man, namely a piece of tapestry of the Great Wardrobe of Edward III, but as a surname it is found as early as 1251, of one Robert de Wudewuse. The Middle English term wodewoos meaning "wild man" is found embedded in the Anglo-Norman caption to a painting in the Taymouth Hours (15th century) (cf. § Manuscript illuminations)

Medieval literature

The Fight in the Forest, drawing by Hans Burgkmair, possibly of a scene from the Middle High German poem Sigenot, about Dietrich von Bern

The fearsome Rûel (considered a wild woman) carrying off Wigalois

Verbal descriptions of the wild folk in medieval literature will be mainly discussed here. Visual depictions during the medieval period will be discussed under § Iconography.

German epic

That the German epic Sigenot (cf. image right) featured both the giant named Sigenot and the wild man was certainly known in the 13th century, as the minnesinger Heinrich Frauenlob sings "Wa kam mit Parcivale /ris' Sigenot unt der wilde man? (Where came the giant Sigenot and the Wild Man, with Parzival?)", but the actual so-called elder Sigenot (13th century) is lost except in a fragmentary state, so the attestations come from the younger Sigenot (15th century) as "wilde man, wild man.

The female character Rauhe Else ("Shaggy Else") in Wolfdietrich is also considered a wild woman example. She is a hairy woman crawling on all fours trying to get Wolfdietrich to marry her, but when he does not comply, casts a spell that turns him into a madman roaming the woods. God commands her to reverse the spell, and Wolfdietrich is now willing to marry her ("so long as the wild woman gets baptized"). Fortunately, when she dips into a spring she sheds her furry skin and transforms into a beautiful maiden, now calling herself Sigeminne. She (Rauch Elss, christened Sygemin) is also mentioned as being the first wife of Wolfdietrich in the Anhang zum Heldenbuch.

In the Arthurian Wigamur there is the wildez wîp (wild woman) who dwells in a hole in a rock. In another Arthurian epic Wigalois, the dwarf named Karriôz is explicitly stated to have a wildez wîp as his mother. In Wigalois there also appears a monstrous female of the woods named Rûel (cf. image right) as an adversary to the title hero, and though she is also described as a "wild woman" by modern commentators, she is not to be confused with Karriôz's mother.

French epic

A "black and hairy" forest-dwelling outcast is mentioned in the tale of Renaud de Montauban, written in the late 12th century.

Welsh and Irish literature

For the Myrddin Wyllt (mad Merlin) Suibhne Geilt (Mad Sweeney) driven to live in the wilderness and interpreted by some modern commentators as exhibiting the Wild Man of the Woods motif, cf. § Celtic mythology (under §Medieval parallels) below.

Medieval to Renaissance transition

As the name implies, the main characteristic of the wild man is his wildness. Civilized people regarded wild men as beings of the wilderness, the antithesis of civilization. Such had been the medieval view through the High Middle Ages. That is to say, the wild man had been something that civilized people strove to reject..

The regard for the wild man as such an abominable fearsome character began to blunt, and by the 14th century in the example of the Bal des Sauvages held by King Charles VI of France (cf. § In dance and festival) the wild man was being employed in costume, not so much as embodiment of evil and savagery, but as a toything of court nobles.

The paradigm had reversed and the Wild Man became the Noble Savage by the time of Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) and Hans Sachs's Klag der wilden holtzleut uber die ungetrewen welt ("Lament of the Wild Men about the Unfaithful World", 1530) and it became a iconic model. Bernheimer analyzes this as a backlash reaction by the nobility of having to live within the constraints of aristocratic conventions and chivalric code.

Modern recorded folklore

The purported nature of these wild folk or wood people in folklore, like the lore of demons in general, is highly ambiguous, unpredictable and mutable.

Giants or dwarfs

The wild people can be dwarfish or be gigantic in size. And this may not necessarily be regional variations: the wild folk of Bernhardswald (in Schlüchtern Hesse) are purported to be giants or dwarfs depending on the season.

They can be of different temperaments, but may exact vengeance on those who are frightened by them, or mock them In that case, the smaller wild folk are more easily appeased, while the giant types will tear their tormentors apart or curse them with "seven times seven generations of curses and woe"29)

Friedrich Ranke argues that the legends concerning the wild people in Central Germany became less frightening, because the forests themselves shed much of their eeriness due to development and deforestation, so that only the low rolling hills remained. Thus in this regions, the folklore concerned the wild little folk of "harmless good nature",

Alpine wild man

There are also the Alpine wild man recorded by modern folklorists, whose lore is generally found in the lore of Alps (mountainous Italian Tyrol and Italian and German-speaking parts of Grisons, Switzerland). The wild man of the Alps had the reputation of abducting women and devouring humans, particularly children. In Grisons it is also accused of depositing its changeling child, swapping it with a human baby. Allegedly peasants in the Grisons tried to capture the wild man by getting him drunk and tying him up in hopes that he would give them his wisdom in exchange for freedom. This is noted as paralleling the capture of Silenus already described by Xenophon (d. 354 BC), with Silenus being described as a satyr which Midas caught by getting him drunk with wine.

Legend also has it that humans were able to capture it once by getting it drunk, thereby learning the manufacture of cheese.

A legend from Folgrait (Folgaria) has it that a certain man heard the noise of the wild man hunting, and called out to him in rhymed couplet to give him a share, and received half a human corpse at his doorstep, subsequently having to take the trouble to have the hunter take back the unwanted gift. There are also variant versions with different rhymes from Ritten and Barbian. However, in a cognate tale from Vallarsa, the wild hunter is not specified as a "wild man". It is comparable to a similar wild hunter myth from Northern Germany, that if anyone calls out to heckle the hunt, hunter forces a "half portion" (Halb Part) of foul-smelling game or human part, reciting a couplet that if you join in the hunt, you must help out with the chewing.

A legend held that Wildmannli dwelled in the Gross Windgällen mountain in the canton of Uri, Switzerland that disapproved of humans hunting on Sundays, and a hunter who breached the taboo and shot a chamois was turned to stone.

Alpine wild woman

Wilde Frauen/Fräulein of the woods.

—Woodcut by Maria Braun (1921)

See also: Fänggen and Salige Frau

Meanwhile, the Tyrolian and Swiss Fängge (Faengge, Fankke) as well as the Austrian Salige Frau are (subtypes or aliases of the) wild woman.

The wild woman basically matches the female version of the wild man in appearance, and notably has drooping breasts (for which the Tyrolean wild woman has earned the nickname Langtüttin however, she may appear in the form of beautiful women.

The wild woman, the Fängge, and the Salige Frau are all associated with protecting alpine game, especially the chamois The legendary protectress called Kaiserfrau of Nachtberg (a peak situated between Thiersee and Brandenberg, Austria) is not explicitly called a wild woman in the original telling, but is classified as such. In the tale, the tall woman dressed in green robe commands a shepherd to kill all poachers, otherwise she will destroy his entire flock. He obliges, and due to the reputation the Kaiserfrau harms hunters, the stock of game in the forest rebounds.

The wild women of Styria, Austria were said to reside mostly on Mt. Schöckl. They have a hollow or trough-like back (hence comparable to the skogsnuva of Sweden), so they can pretend to be old tree trunks instantly by turning their backs, even when a hiker senses the presence of the beautiful wild woman. The wild women of Schöckl are said to be hunted by the Wild Hunt that travels on flying sleds carrying demons.

Iconography

Wild woman with unicorn, tapestry c. 1500–1510 (Basel Historical Museum).

In art the hair more often covers the same areas that a chemise or dress would, except for the female's breasts (cf. fig. right); male knees are also often hairless. As with the feather tights of angels, this is probably influenced by the costumes of popular drama.

By the 12th century the wild folk were almost invariably came to be described as hairy all over, having a coat of hair covering their entire bodies except for their hands, feet, faces above their long beards, and the breasts and chins of the females.

Around the same 12th century, the conventions of hairiness came to be extended to certain legendary personages in mentally altered states. A prime example was the biblical Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon who went mad was no longer depicted as a smooth-bodied human, but a hairy creature. Other examples were ascetic saints (cf. § Biblical parallels) or literary hermits such as the Merlin of the Welsh (cf. § Celtic mythology) or Arthurian Ywain who were overcome by a spell of madness or lovelorn dementia (cf. § Celtic mythology).

Thus Bernheimer asserts that in medieval miniature paintings, Nebuchadnezzar was conventionally depicted as a wild man in crouching positions, even though the description in Daniel 4 (Book of Daniel, 2nd century BC) ascribed him feather-like growths of hair like eagles, and bird-like claws.

The wild man was used as a symbol of mining in late medieval and Renaissance Germany. It appears in this context in the coats of arms of Naila and of Wildemann. The town of Wildemann in the Upper Harz was founded during 1529 by miners who, according to legend, met a wild man and wife when they ventured into the wilds of the Harz mountain range. For use as heraldic devices in the German mining area and elsewhere, cf. § Heraldry below.

The Five of Wild Men, by the Master of the Playing Cards, before 1460

Some early sets of playing cards have a suit of Wild Men, including a pack engraved by the Master of the Playing Cards (active in the Rhineland c. 1430–1450), some of the earliest European engravings. A set of four miniatures on the estates of society by Jean Bourdichon of about 1500 includes a wild family, along with "poor", "artisan" and "rich" ones.

Medieval iconography

Some of the earliest evidence for the wild-man tradition appears in the above-mentioned 9th- or 10th-century Spanish penitential. This book describes a dance in which participants donned the guise of the figures Orcus, Maia, and Pela, and ascribes a minor penance for those who participate with what was apparently a resurgence of an older pagan custom.

Manuscript illuminations

Wild people, in the margins of Book of Hours (ca. 1510-1520)

—Syracuse University Library ms. Latin, f.104v

The wild folk are featured in the marginal paintings (drollery) in a number of illuminated manuscripts. There are wild men and women painted in the narrative border around the miniature of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Book of Hours held at the Syracuse University Library (cf. fig. left).

In the Taymouth Hours (15th century), there are a series of miniatures (bas-de-page illustrations) recounting a story of a wild man abducting a maiden. Though the captions in this work are written in Anglo-Norman French, the wild man is called wodewose, which is a Middle English term.

There is also the drollery of a wild man being baited by three dogs, in the Queen Mary Psalter (14th century).

Mural art

The wild herdsman in Iwein

The herdsman character who is only a vilain in Chrétien 's Old French Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (though described as a "wild man" in modern scholarship) is literally a wild man (waltman, "man of the woods") in Hartmann's Middle High German Iwein. The wild herdsman is depicted as a club-carrying wild man on one of the fresco murals of the Iwein cycle at Rodenegg Castle (Castello di Rodengo) in South Tyrol (cf. image right). The wild man is similarly painted on the mural at Schmalkalden Castle (Wilhelmsburg Castle). The man wears a skin with two paws attached to it, perhaps the influence of the Greek hero Hercules (wearing the lion skin).

There is a giantess room series among the Runkelstein Castle (Castel Roncolo) fresco murals, and the label "Fraw Riel" suggests identification with the female Rûel of Wigalois (mentioned above as being categorized as wild woman by some modern commentators). The Runkelstein frescos are themed on a triads of heroes, giantesses, and giants, etc. The giant Schrutan is one of them, who figures in the epic Rosengarten zu Worms as one of the single combat participants. Although clad in knightly armor, he holds an uprooted tree, and the Schrutan in this painting is "encoded as a giant-wild man hybrid" according to one art critic.

Engravings

Classicized Wild Man design for a stained-glass window, studio of Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1525–1528 (British Museum)

Albrecht Dürer depicts the wild man pursuing the maiden in his "Coat of Arms of Death" (1503), of which it is commented that the wild man springs to life from the conventional immobile role as shield-bearer of heraldic device (cf. also another of his work discussed under § Wild Men as shield-bearer below).

English examples

Carved image of a group of wild men (woodwoses) engaged in battle with a beast form a roof boss in Canterbury Cathedral, and is grouped among a number of Green Man bosses present in the cathedral. There is also a furry wild man depicted in the crypt of the Canterbury Cathedral. The visual artistic depictions of the English wild man (woodwose) and the green man merged during the Middle Ages to form a single type.

Classical influences

There are instances where medieval depiction of satyr or faunus lose their beastly traits (hooves and horns), turning into creatures not so far apart from wild men.

Medieval myth and art also adopted a convention of depicting the Greek hero Heracles, clad in lion skin and carrying a club as a wild man, sometimes of a more conventional type or more outlandishly as a tailed monster with clawed feet. (e.g. painting at Schmalkalden, described above)

• Knight saving a woman from a wild man, ivory coffer, 14th century
• "Wild Man", c. 1521/22, bronze by Paulus Vischer
• Tapestry: Wild Men and Moors, c. 1440 (Museum of Fine Arts Boston)
• Gargoyle, Moulins Cathedral
• Wild family, miniature by Jean Bourdichon, from a set showing The Four States of Society

Heraldry

Wild Men as shield-bearer

An early example of the wild man acting as an heraldic supporter appears in the seal of Christian I of Denmark (1450)

Martin Schongauer engraving, Shield with a Greyhound, 1480s.

Wild-man supporter from 1589 (arms of the Holzhausen family)

By the second half of the fifteen century, it became widely conventional to have engravings made of a wild man holding up a shield (escutcheon) bearing the family's coat of arms (cf. images left). Particular examples include the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (cf. also § Numismatics below) and later by the royals of Brandenburg–Prussia.

To avail themselves to this needs, the engravers came up with the idea of having a prototype or template at hand of a wild man holding up a blank shield, so that the proper emblem can be filled in to cater to the particular patron. Martin Schongauer was one such engraver, four heraldic shield engravings of the 1480s which depict wild men holding heraldic shield (emblems of moor, greyhound, stag, and lion).

Dürer in his Portrait of Oswald Krell (1499) drew two wild men supporting family heraldic shields. The one on the left wears a green garment made of moss, the one on the right is hairy all over (see image at top of page).

• The city of Antwerp introduced supporters for its coat of arms during 1881, with a "wild woman" and a wild man
• Arms of Kostelec nad Černými lesy, Central Bohemia
• Canting coat of arms of the city of Lappeenranta, Finland: the Swedish name of the city is Villmanstrand, originally spelled as Viltmanstrand
• The German Glücksburg dynasty used Heracles as a Hellenic version of a wild man when they became the royal family of Greece
• Coat of arms of the Dutch municipality of 's-Hertogenbosch (den Bosch), capital of the province of North Brabant
• Wild man, blazoned "demi-savage", on crest of Scottish clan Murray

Numismatics

See also: Gnome § Bergmönch of Harz and mine light

Henry the Younger's wild man taler, 1549 mintage.

The so-called Wildemannstaler was a type of taler (thaler, "dollar") denomination coins featuring a standing wild man on the reverse, first struck by Duke Henry the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in 1539, with the silver mined from the Upper Harz mountains. Thus, much of this wild man is really part of silver-mining folklore, rather than alpine or forest region folklore. The standing wild man on the early coin (and some heraldic illustrations) depicts a wild man holding a club (uprooted tree) and a clump of burning flame in the other hand (cf. photo right). The folkloric explanation of the flame is that it represents a light source or beacon of light to guide humans through the dark mine tunnels to the ore source or silver vein, as clarified by the work of Gerhard Heilfurth and Ina-Maria Greverus (1967). Heilfurth regards the wild man in this context to be a type of Berggeist or "mountain spirit" (which is really a generic term or class used by modern folklorists), better known as Bergmönch or "mountain monk" in the folklore of the Harz mountains. The explanation of the "monk" name comes from the historical fact that the neighboring Walkenried Monastery held control of the workings of the Harz mining operation at one time.

The folklore is attested in 16th century writing that in the community of Wildemann (town named after "wild man"):

helt man dafür, daß daß Closter von Walckenred sonderlichen den Wildemanner Zog inne gehabt, beleget vnd gebawet hat, weil sich der Daemon Metallicus, der Bergteuffel, den die Bergleut daß Berg Mänlein nennen, in einer gestalt eines großen Mönchs hat sehen laßen, fürnemlich auff der Zechen Wildemann, da viel guter leute denselbigen gesehen, auch offtmals großen schaden gethan vnd angericht.
(It is believed that the Walkenried Monastery held, occupied, and built upon the Wildemann mine in particular, since the Daemon Metallicus or mountain devil, whom the miners call the "mountain manikin" (Bergmännlein, i.e. gnome), appeared in the form of a large monk, especially at the Wildemann mine, where many good people saw him, and he often caused great damage and destruction.

— Hardanus Hake, parish priest of Wildemann, in Bergchronik (1583)

There is also the political and polemical interpretation of the wild man and flame emblem, namely, Henry the Younger was insinuating threat of violence, even the burning down of townships. When Henry's less quarrelsome son Julius succeeded as duke, the flame on the coin was replaced by a candle or taper, and these coins are known as the Lichttaler or "Light taler" among numismatists. Later, Julius added other objects, the skull, the hourglass, and eyeglasses to the composition.

In dance and festival

Pontus and his train disguised as wild men at the wedding of Genelet and Sidonia. Illustration of a manuscript of a German version of Pontus and Sidonia (1400, manuscript CPG 142, fol. 122r, c. 1475).

A (,agnus) ludus de homine salvatico, a large-scale Pentecostal play about the wild man was put on in Padua in the year 1208, and 1224; not much is known about these except it featured giants (gigantibus). Another ludus was held in Aargau, Switerland in 1399.

King Charles VI of France and five of his courtiers were dressed as wild men and chained together for a masquerade at the tragic Bal des Sauvages which occurred in Paris at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, 28 January 1393. They were suited up "six quilts of fabric coated with pitch then stuck with flax (linen) fibers in the form and shape of hair", making themselves out to be "hommes sauvages, covered in hair from head right up to the soles of their feet". A careless torch set the costumers aflame, and all but one of the courtiers died; the king's own life saved by his aunt the Duchess of Berry, who covered him with her dress. There exist paintings of this scene in copies of Froissart's Chroniques (as green men; compare similar image right). It is supposed that "dyed tufted flax" was used to simulate the hair.

The Burgundian court celebrated a pas d'armes known as the Pas de la Dame Sauvage ("Passage of arms of the Wild Lady") in Ghent in 1470. A knight held a series of jousts with an allegoric meaning in which the conquest of the wild lady symbolized the feats the knight must do to merit a lady.

It was also fashionable at one time for participants in the carousels at court festivals to dress up as club-carrying wild men (cf. image right).

Medieval parallels

Old High German had the terms schrat, scrato or scrazo, which appear in glosses of Latin works as translations for fauni, silvestres, or pilosi, identifying the creatures as hairy woodland beings. Some of the local names suggest associations with characters from ancient mythology. Slavic has leshy "forest man".

Scandinavian folklore

The wild women of Styria, Austria were said to reside mostly on Mt. Schöckl. They have a hollow or trough-like back (hence comparable to the skogsnuva of Sweden

Celtic mythology

Main articles: Myrddin Wyllt, Suibhne Gelt, and Lailoken

Further information: Dusios

There are medieval Welsh, Irish, and Scottish mythical narratives about men going mad and living in the wilderness, considered as part of the Celtic Wildman tradition according to scholars.

The Welsh tradition regarding Myrddin Wyllt ("mad Merlin") is that he went mad after the Battle of Arfderydd which took place in 573 AD in the wake of the battle death of Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio who was the king he served, according to the annals, then Myrddin fled to the forest, living life as man of the woods, according to Giraldus Cambrensis (12th century). The battleground (Arfderydd) became identified as a place near the Scottish border, making plausible the legend that Merlin's flight to Caledonian Forest in Scotland. Geoffrey of Monmouth recounts the Myrddin Wyllt legend in his Latin Vita Merlini of about 1150, and the attachment of the madness motif may or may not have been Geoffrey's invention.

The legend of the Scottish Lailoken who lost his wits in battle is so similar in background to the Myrddin legend, it is considered a version of the same myth, and in fact, there is an aside comment that Lailoken might have been Merlin of Britain though that cannot be ascertained in the source itself, namely the Lailoken fragment or more precisely the Latin fragmentary The Life of Saint Kentigern. There is also a geographical proximity of the battlegrounds involved, pinpointable as present-day Arthuret in Cumbria, England.

The Irish analogue is the legend of Suibhne Geilt ("mad Sweeny"), a king of the Dál nAraidi who himself went mad during the combat of the Battle of Mag Rath of 637 AD The legend is accounted for in Buile Shuibhne (The Frenzy of Sweeney, 9th century).

It is commented by James George O'Keeffe (1913) the Welsh and Irish versions exhibit the dispersed Wild Man (of the Woods) tradition.

In Chrétien's Arthurian Romance Yvain, the episode when the title hero estranged from his lover Laudine lose his wits and lives in the wilderness, this has been characterized as a wild man episode by modern commentators. Bernheimer lists Yvain, Lancelot, and Tristan among the Arthurian knights who chose to live as wild men in the aftermath of mental anguish having earned the disfavor of their beloved lady.

The fragmentary 16th-century Breton text An Dialog Etre Arzur Roe D'an Bretounet Ha Guynglaff (Dialog Between Arthur and Guynglaff) tells of a meeting between King Arthur and Guynglaff ("a sort of wild man of the woods"), who predicts events which will occur as late as the 16th century.

King's mirror

The notion of the Irish geilt, gelt (madness), which Grimm's notes glosses as equivalent to wilder mann or waldmann. This Irish geilt, gelt is discussed in the Old Norse Konungs skuggsjá (Speculum Regale or "the King's Mirror", written in Norway about 1250), which points to the Northmen having learned about the Suibhne legend from Ireland.

There is also another item of Irish Mirabilia considered possibly relevant, namely, a sort of beast-man with a horse-like mane, which stooped when walking, and could not surely demonstrate the ability to comprehend speech. Meyer thought this may have been a version of the "half-ox man" related by Giraldus (cf. Gir. II.21) William Sayers (1985) thought it may be connected to the Irish water horse (each uisge) despite lack of connection with water,

Slavic mythology

Wild (divi) people are the characters of the Slavic folk demonology, mythical forest creatures. Names go back to two related Slavic roots *dik- and *div-, combining the meaning of "wild" and "amazing, strange".

Among the Bohemian populace, the wild man is known as lesní muž (pl. lesní mužove, lit. 'forest man'), who abducts a girl to forcibly make her his married wife. The Bohemian wood woman has the reputation of forcing a girl to dance the night, but to undertake the yarn-spreading chore the girl missed, in fact endowing her an inexhaustible supply of yarn, but if the dancing partner is a boy, the wood woman tickles him to death. The female Bohemian wild woman is called divý žena or divá žena (pl. divé ženy).

In the East Slavic sources referred: Saratov dikar, dikiy, dikoy, dikenkiy muzhichok – leshy; a short man with a big beard and tail; Ukrainian lisovi lyudi – old men with overgrown hair who give silver to those who rub their nose; Kostroma dikiy chort; Vyatka dikonkiy unclean spirit, sending paralysis; Ukrainian lihiy div – marsh spirit, sending fever; Ukrainian Carpathian dika baba – an attractive woman in seven-league boots, sacrifices children and drinks their blood, seduces men. There are similarities between the East Slavic reports about wild people and book legends about diviy peoples (unusual people from the medieval novel "Alexandria") and mythical representations of miraculous peoples. For example, Russians from Ural believe that divnye lyudi are short, beautiful, have a pleasant voice, live in caves in the mountains, can predict the future; among the Belarusians of Vawkavysk uyezd, the dzikie lyudzi – one-eyed cannibals living overseas, also drink lamb blood; among the Belarusians of Sokółka uyezd, the overseas dzikij narod have grown wool, they have a long tail and ears like an ox; they do not speak, but only squeal.

Ancient parallels

Figures similar to the European wild man occur worldwide from very early times. The earliest recorded example of the type is the character Enkidu of the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.

Classical parallels

Further information: Satyr, Faun, and Silvanus (mythology)

Classical wild races

"Classical antiquity like the Middle Ages, had its wild men", according to Bernheimer. This included savage races of (sometimes hairy) humans supposedly found in exotic places. Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC),'s wild men and wild women supposedly lived in western Ancient Lybia (a vast region west of the Nile, not just the present-day nation) where there also lived marvels such as men with eyes in their chest (headless men) and dog-faced humanoids (cynocephaly). Ctesias (fl. 5th century BC)'s Indika and Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC)'s conquest influenced Europeans into thinking that such wild men (and the marvelous prodigies too) lived rather in the East, in the Indian subcontinent.

Megasthenes (died c. 290 BCE), wrote of two kinds of men to be found in India whom he explicitly describes as wild: first, a creature brought to court whose toes faced backwards; second, a tribe of forest people who had no mouths and who sustained themselves with smells. Both Quintus Curtius Rufus and Arrian (1st and 2nd centuries AD) refer to Alexander himself meeting with a tribe of fish-eating savages while on his Indian campaign. Seleucus I Nicator's ambassador to Chandragupta Maurya, wrote of two kinds of men to be found in India whom he explicitly describes as wild: first, a creature brought to court whose toes faced backwards; second, a tribe of forest people who had no mouths and who sustained themselves with smells. Both Quintus Curtius Rufus and Arrian refer to Alexander himself meeting with a tribe of fish-eating savages while on his Indian campaign.

The wild man races described by the learned writings of ancient historians may have had influence on the Medieval wild man folklore but establishing the degree would be difficult given the separation in time. But one can catalogue which ancient pieces of writing were accessible to medieval men.

Distorted accounts of apes may have contributed to both the ancient and medieval conception of the wild man. In his Natural History Pliny the Elder describes a race of silvestres, wild creatures in India who had humanoid bodies but a coat of fur, fangs, and no capacity to speak – a description that fits gibbons indigenous to the area. The ancient Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator (fl. 500 BC) reported an encounter with a tribe of savage men and hairy women in what may have been Sierra Leone; their interpreters called them "Gorillae," a story which much later originated the name of the gorilla species and could indeed have related to a great ape. Similarly, the Greek historian Agatharchides describes what may have been chimpanzees as tribes of agile, promiscuous "seed-eaters" and "wood-eaters" living in Ethiopia.

Silvanus

The medieval wild man lends itself to easy comparison with a number of classical woodland divinities. However, the aforementioned definition laid out by Bernheimer clearly distinguishes the faun and satyr from the wild man. Grimm states that the German shaggy wood-sprite schrat answers to the classical faun, satyr, and perhaps even Silvanus. Old High or Middle High German glossaries equating forms of the word schrat with faunus or sylvestri hominus. Grimm speculate on the possibility schrat might have been a being of larger stature in olden times.

The medieval wild man typically depicted holding an uprooted tree may have derived form the classical Silvanus who is lord of the gardens and uprooter of trees, though the latter is more prone to be holding a cypress sapling he is about to transplant. The centaur is more likely to hold a club, though this creature is of course, half horse.

Biblical parallels

The Christian Saint John Chrysostom (died 407) purportedly had grown hair all over his body during his life in the wilderness, Late medieval legends.

Earlier Christian writings on Desert Fathers as found in the Apophthegmata Patrum ("Sayings of the Desert Fathers") are similar, but less outlandish: typically their head of hair has grown long enough to cover their naked bodies. A general term for to describe such ascetics living in the wilderness was Grazers (Ancient Greek: βοσκοί, romanized: boskoí) coined among the Greek or Eastern Christians. There is the hypothesis that notion of the "noble wild man" that emerged in the 15th century (after the European discovery of the Americas) may have been influenced by the notion of these "grazers".

In modern fiction

Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1611), the dance of twelve "Satyrs" conflates wild men and satyrs. The dance is held at the rustic sheep-shearing (IV.iv), described by a servant:

Masters, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair, they call themselves Saltiers, and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufrey of gambols...

Pedro Gonzalez. Anon, c. 1580

Petrus Gonsalvus (born 1537) was referred to by Ulisse Aldrovandi as "the man of the woods" due to his condition, hypertrichosis, and it is believed that his marriage to the lady Catherine inspired the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.

The term wood-woses or simply Woses is used by J. R. R. Tolkien to describe a fictional race of wild men, the Drúedain, in his books on Middle-earth. According to Tolkien's legendarium, other men, including the Rohirrim, mistook the Drúedain for goblins or other wood-creatures and referred to them as Púkel-men (Goblin-men). He allows the fictional possibility that his Drúedain were the "actual" origin of the wild men of later traditional folklore.

British poet Ted Hughes used the form wodwo as the title of a poem and a 1967 volume of his collected works.

The fictional character Tarzan from Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes has been described as a modern version of the wild man archetype.

See also

• Am Fear Liath Mòr
• Animal (Muppet)
• Basajaun
• Bigfoot
• Bugbear
• Caveman
• Enkidu
• Fangga
• Green Man
• Hamadryad
• Human zoo
• Krampus
• Leshy
• List of hominid cryptids
• Moss people
• Nittaewo
• Noble savage
• Straw bear
• Tengu
• Valentine and Orson
• Yeren
• Yeti
• Tarzanesque

References

Bibliography

• Bartra, Roger (1997). The Artificial Savage: Modern Myths of the Wild Man. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472107575.

• Bernheimer, Richard (1952). Wild Men in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; snippet; Reprint: New York : Octagon books, 1979, ISBN 0-374-90616-5

• Graber, Georg [in German], ed. (1914). "VII. Wildeleute. Die wilde Jagd. Berchta.". Sagen aus Kärnten. Leipzig: Dieterich. pp. 73–95.

• Grimm, Jacob (1875). "XVI. Weise Frauen; XVII. Wichte und Elbe". Deutsche Mythologie. Vol. 1 (4 ed.). Göttingen: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen. pp. 328–362, 363–428.
  • Grimm, Jacob (1878). "(Anmerkung von) XVII. Wichte und Elbe". Deutsche Mythologie. Vol. 3 (4 ed.). Göttingen: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen. pp. 122–149.
  • Grimm, Jacob (1880). "XVII. Wise Women". Teutonic Mythology. Vol. 1. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen. pp. 396–488.
  • Grimm, Jacob (1883). "XVII. Wights and Elves §Elves, Dwarves". Teutonic Mythology. Vol. 2. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen. pp. 439–517.
  • —— (1888). "(Notes to) XVII. Wights and Elves §Elves, Dwarves". Teutonic Mythology. Vol. 4. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen. pp. 1407–1436.

• Harte, Jeremy (2021). "3. Forest Murmurs. Wood and Wild in the Making of England". In Cheeseman, Matthew; Hart, Carina (eds.). Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland. Routledge. ISBN 9781000440430.
• Heyl, Johann Adolf (1897). Volkssagen, Bräuche und Meinungen aus Tirol (in German). Berlin: Kath.-polit. Pressverein.

• Husband, Timothy (1980). The wild man: medieval myth and symbolism, Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Cloisters. with the assistance of Gloria Gilmore-House. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9780870992544. (alt url@books.google).

• Leyen, Friedrich von der; Spamer, Adolf [in German] (1910). "III. Der Teppich der wilden Leute". Die altdeutschen Wandteppiche im Regensburger Rathause (in German). Regensburg: J. Habbel. pp. 16–32.

• Mannhardt, Wilhelm (1875). Der baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer nachbarstämme: Mythologische Untersuchungen (in German). Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger.
• Mannhardt, Wilhelm (1904) [1875]. Wald- und Feldkulte (in German). Vol. 1 (2 ed.). Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger. (reprint: Elibron Classics, 2005, ISBN 978-1-42124740-3)

• Ranke, Friedrich (1924). "7. Die wilden Waldleute". In Leyen, Friedrich von der (ed.). Die deutschen volkssagen. Vol. 4 (2 ed.). München: C. H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung. pp. 176–195.

• Rushing, James A., Jr. (2016) [1875]. Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9781512809459.

• Schneller, Christian [in German], ed. (1867). "II. Sagen / III. Wilder Mann, wilde Jäger, wilde Weiber / 1, and 2.". Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol (in German). Innsbruck: Wagner'sche Buchhandlung.

• Schwarz (1941). "Wilde". In Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns [in German]; Hoffmann-Krayer, Eduard (eds.). Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. Vol. 9. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 968–980.

• Stopp, F. J. (1970). "Henry the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel: wild men and werewolf in religious polemics, 1538-1544". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 33: 200–234. doi:10.2307/750896. JSTOR 750896.

• Strasenburgh, Gordon R., Jr. (1975), "Perceptions and Images of the Wild Man", in Sprague, Roderick; Walker, Deward E., Jr. (eds.), Northwest Anthropological Research Notes, vol. 9, Moscow, Idaho: Northwest Anthropology, pp. 281–298

• Tatlock, Lynne (2015). "Communion at the Sign of the Wild Man". In Engelstein, Stefani; Niekerk, Carl (eds.). Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture. Cardiff: Rodopi. pp. 115–138. ISBN 9789042032958.

• Thomas, Neil (Spring 2000). "The Celtic Wild Man Tradition and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini: Madness or Contemptus Mundi?". Arthuriana. 10 (1/Essays on Merlin): 27–42. JSTOR 27869519.

• White, Hayden (1972). "The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an Idea". In Dudley, Edward; Novak, Maximillian E. (eds.). The Wild Man Within : An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 3–38. ISBN 9780822975991.

• Yamamoto, Dorothy (2000). The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198186748.

• Zaunert, Paul (1921). "5tes Buch. Der Wald/Die wilden Leute". Deutsche Natursagen: I. Von Holden und Unholden. Illustrated by Marie Braun. Jena: Eugen Dietrich. pp. 66–. (reprint: Paderborn: Salzwasser Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-84600253-7)

• Zingerle, Ignaz Vincenz (1855). "Einiges über den wilden Mann". Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde. 3: 196–203.
• Zingerle, Ignaz Vincenz, ed. (1859). Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Tirol (1 ed.). Innsbruck: Wagnersche Universitäts-Buchhandlung.
• Zingerle, Ignaz Vincenz, ed. (1891). Sagen aus Tirol (2 ed.). Innsbruck: Wagnersche Universitäts-Buchhandlung.

Further reading

• Bartra, Roger (1994). Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of the European Otherness. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472104772.
• Bergholm, Anna Aune Alexandra. "King, Poet, Seer: Aspects of the Celtic Wild Man Legend in Medieval Literature". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. pp. 4-9.
• Martin, Rebecca. Wild Men and Moors in the Castle of Love: The Castle-Siege Tapestries in Nuremberg, Vienna, and Boston, Thesis (Ph.D.), Chapel Hill/N. C., 1983