Ahead of the trailer of Werwulf on June 29 — should the whisper prove true, and should the moon indeed be made herald unto Robert Eggers’ next visitation — I have gone again unto those elder verses wherein the wolf is no mere beast, nor the man merely cursed, but flesh divided against itself. For “werewolf” is no dainty word. It cometh of old speech: wer, man, and wulf, wolf; and in that joining there is already a wound, for the creature is named by the breach before ever it entereth the wood.
This is the terror which the old poems understand. Not the clean terror of silver bullets, nor the theatre of fur and fang alone, but the fear of household things made strange: the wife beside the fire, the husband returning from the hunt, the garment hidden beneath a stone, the ring that undoeth a human shape, the bloody hand where a paw should be. The werewolf, in these poems, is oft not an invader from without. It is kin. It is spouse. It is lord. It is the thing one hath loved, named, fed, married, and trusted; and therefore its horror entereth by the same door as bread, warmth, marriage, and confession.
First cometh Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s “Der Loup Garou,” a black little hearth-song set among children, snow, owl-screech, and the old nurse’s warning tongue. Here the beast is summoned less by sight than by sound: the chain shaken below, the rafters cracking above, the woods muttering beyond the door. The children, Pierrot and Caton, are bade sit still by the fire, for out in the crossing of wet roads goeth the Loup Garou, crooked of eye, dragging his chain, barred from the pious yet free to seize the wicked with his long, long tooth. The poem telleth of a greedy merchant and a drunkard whose face is eaten until cheek and eye are made bone and hollow; and as the tale deepens, the safe room itself seemeth to shrink, for snow presseth the window, the storm taketh voice, and the house becometh a frail Christian lantern set against a howling Pyrenean dark.
This one is most fit for Eggers’ candle. It hath no need to show the wolf whole. It knoweth that terror may enter as a nursery correction, as a tale told to make children quiet, as a moral instruction so vivid it curdleth into nightmare. The beast is outside, aye, yet the voice that gives it form is within the house, and so the poem’s true dread is this: every hearth hath its shadow, every elder hath a demon ready in the mouth, and every child learneth early that obedience and fear are of one root when the wind is high.
Then cometh Rosamund Marriott Watson’s “A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,” published under the name Graham R. Tomson: a Scots-shadowed tale of chimney-corner, wet night, husband, wife, and the dead bairns between them. The gudeman returneth from the fight and boasteth that he hath wounded the grey wolf that took their two children. He hath cut away its forepaw and brought the trophy home. Yet when the bundle is cast before the gudewife, no wolf-paw lieth there, but a bloody human hand; and she, standing cold in the firelight, unwinds her own arm and showeth that the hand is gone.
Here the horror is terrible for its swiftness. There is no forest chase stretched into romance, no learned apparatus, no priest, no spell named aloud. The whole world is one room, one flame, one marriage, one revelation. The man hath avenged his children and thereby condemned his wife. The wife hath slain as beast what she bore or tended as woman. The poem doth not pause to explain her inward state. It simply setteth the evidence in the lap. Paw becometh hand. Animal wound becometh domestic truth. The old home is judged by blood.
Next standeth “A Werewolf in Auvergne,” the nineteenth-century poem by J. G. De Wilde, drawn from the older loup-garou legend found in Henri Boguet’s witchcraft writings. A hunter rideth through Auvergne, meeteth a great she-wolf, and with a cutlass severeth the creature’s paw. He carrieth it back as a prize, but when the trophy is shown, it is no longer claw and hair but a woman’s bleeding hand. Then the lady herself casteth aside her covering and revealeth the handless wrist: she was the Loup-garou.
This tale is cousin to Watson’s ballad, yet it hath a more juridical chill. It is not merely the fright of the hearth, but the fright of accusation. The wound becometh proof. The body testifieth against itself. In such old tales, the werewolf is not discovered by confession, but by correspondence: what is cut from the beast is missing from the human. The old world loved this terror, for it made the supernatural legible. It said: strike the monster in the wood, and thou shalt find the sinner bleeding at home.
Then we must go back, further and deeper, unto Marie de France’s “Bisclavret,” that great medieval lay wherein the werewolf is both feared and pitied. The poem openeth by saying that such creatures were known in old days: savage things that ate men, wrought evil, and roamed the deep wood. Yet Bisclavret himself is no simple fiend. He is a noble knight, absent from his house three days each week, until his wife, pressing him past caution, learneth his secret. He must shed his clothing to become the wolf, and if those garments be stolen he cannot return to man’s estate. His wife betrayeth him, sendeth another to steal the clothes, and Bisclavret is trapped in the wood until the king’s hunt findeth him. He runneth not as a dumb brute, but kneeleth at the king’s stirrup, begging mercy in beastly form.
There is cruelty in Bisclavret, yet also a strange dignity. The wolf is more courteous than those who wrong him. The beast keepeth faith where the human household breaketh it. At court he is fed, protected, and wondered at; and when his betrayers appear, his violence hath the terrible clarity of recognition. He attacketh the man who took his wife, and when the wife herself approacheth, he teareth the nose from her face. The punishment is not only bodily but hereditary, a mark carried onward, as though treachery hath entered the bloodline and must be read upon the face.
Then cometh “Melion,” rougher, stranger, more bestial in its imagining. Melion too is a knightly man brought into wolf-shape, yet his transformation is wrought through a magic ring rather than hidden garments. His wife desireth venison from a stag, and he, to serve her appetite, changeth himself into a wolf by means of the ring’s stones. But she taketh the ring and fleeth to Ireland, leaving him locked in the animal shape. Thereafter Melion doth not merely suffer in the forest; he maketh war. He ravageth livestock, moveth through woodland and waste, and gathereth ten wolves to him, so that the wronged man within the wolf-body becometh captain of a lupine host.
This is the lay wherein the werewolf draweth nearest unto vengeance as campaign. Melion retaineth mind and memory; he is not dissolved into beastliness, but sharpened by it. His wolf-body giveth him the means to enact what his human honour could not prevent. He stalketh the land that received his faithless wife; he maketh the countryside pay for the theft of his shape. The terror here is not loss of reason, but reason preserved inside animal violence. A mere beast is dangerous. A thinking wolf is worse.
Last among these is “Biclarel,” another medieval redaction of the werewolf tale, sterner and more punitive in its temper. Biclarel is a knight of Arthur’s court who, for certain days each month, becometh a wolf and abideth in the forest. His wife, having drawn from him the secret of his hidden clothes, stealeth them that he may not return to human form, then prepareth herself for another marriage. But Arthur’s hunt cometh upon the beast, and Biclarel, like Bisclavret, seeketh the king’s protection rather than savaging him. Brought to court, he beareth himself well until he findeth the woman who betrayed him. Then the beast knoweth her, and the court is made to understand that such violence hath cause.
Biclarel is colder than Bisclavret. It feeleth more like an exemplum, a warning set in iron. The monthly change, the stolen clothing, the public recognition, the forced confession: all proceed with the grim order of a trial. The wolf is dreadful, yet the poem’s deeper mistrust falleth upon secrecy within marriage, upon the peril of revealing one’s hidden nature to one who may use it as a weapon. In this, the werewolf is not only a monster but a figure for vulnerability itself. To tell what thou art may be to place thy skin in another’s hand.
So, upon this full moon’s eve, these old wolf-poems gather like shapes at the tree-line. Droste-Hülshoff giveth us the chain at the door and the old woman’s warning. Watson giveth us the bloody hand in the wife’s lap. De Wilde giveth us the she-wolf unmasked by her wound. Marie de France giveth us the noble beast wronged by human treachery. Melion giveth us the wolf as strategist and raider. Biclarel giveth us the courtly beast whose violence becometh testimony.
And if Eggers’ Werwulf cometh as his former works have come, it shall not be enough that a man turn wolf. The older terror asketh more. Who knew him? Who trusted him? Who locked the door? Who kept the clothes? Who saw the wound? Who heard the chain before admitting that the sound was real? The full moon is oft spoken of as master of the werewolf, yet in these poems the moon seemeth less a ruler than a witness. It looketh down upon the house, the road, the chapel stone, the hunting field, the marriage bed, and it seeth what daylight hath hidden.
Therefore the title may stand as omen: Of Them Whom The Full Moon Doth Fear. For mayhap the moon doth not fear the wolf because it is wild. Mayhap it feareth the wolf because the wolf remembereth.
