Misplaced Pages

#675324

157-415: In folklore , a werewolf (from Old English werwulf  'man-wolf'), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος , lykánthrōpos , 'wolf-human'), is an individual who can shape-shift into a wolf , or especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction, often

314-409: A compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign ) that consists of more than one stem . Compounding , composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. Consequently, a compound is a unit composed of more than one stem, forming words or signs. If

471-481: A state of trance ; or it may be no more than the messenger of the human being, a real animal or a familiar spirit , whose intimate connection with its owner is shown by the fact that any injury to it is believed, by a phenomenon known as repercussion, to cause a corresponding injury to the human being. Werewolves were said in European folklore to bear tell-tale physical traits even in their human form. These included

628-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by

785-522: A synthetic language , the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked with a case or other morpheme . For example, the German compound Kapitänspatent consists of the lexemes Kapitän (sea captain) and Patent (license) joined by an -s- (originally a genitive case suffix); and similarly, the Latin lexeme paterfamilias contains the archaic genitive form familias of

942-515: A "disorder of the brain". Although there were continuing reports of extraordinary wolflike beasts, they were not considered to be werewolves. One such report concerned the Beast of Gévaudan , which terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan , now called Lozère , in south-central France. From 1764 to 1767, it killed upwards of 80 men, women, and children. The part of Europe which showed more vigorous interest in werewolves after 1650

1099-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in

1256-529: A bite or the occasional scratch from another werewolf, with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon . Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy , are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228). The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore , existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during

1413-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,

1570-414: A common man, Lycaon wants to test if he is really a god. To that end, he kills a Molossian hostage and serve his entrails to Zeus. Disgusted, the god turns Lycaon into a wolf. However, in other accounts of the legend, like that of Apollodorus' Bibliotheca , Zeus blasts him and his sons with thunderbolts as punishment. Pausanias also relates the story of an Arcadian man called Damarchus of Parrhasia, who

1727-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how

SECTION 10

#1732791282676

1884-447: A compound noun such as place name begins as spaced in most attestations and then becomes hyphenated as place-name and eventually solid as placename , or the spaced compound noun file name directly becomes solid as filename without being hyphenated. German, a fellow West Germanic language , has a somewhat different orthography , whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even

2041-454: A compound noun, resulting in a pleonasm . One example is the English word pathway . In Arabic , there are two distinct criteria unique to Arabic, or potentially Semitic languages in general. The initial criterion involves whether the possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ appears or is absent when the first element is definite. The second criterion deals with the appearance/absence of

2198-426: A formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound white-collar is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a must-have is not a verb but a noun. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B

2355-517: A gradual scale (such as a mix of colours). Appositional compounds are lexemes that have two (contrary or simultaneous) attributes that classify the compound. All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before

2512-401: A hereditary condition manifesting itself in excessive hair growth. Woodward dismissed the possibility, as the rarity of the disease ruled it out from happening on a large scale, as werewolf cases were in medieval Europe. Woodward suggested rabies as the origin of werewolf beliefs, claiming remarkable similarities between the symptoms of that disease and some of the legends. Woodward focused on

2669-539: A member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian , Swedish , Danish , German , and Dutch . However, this is merely an orthographic convention: as in other Germanic languages, arbitrary noun phrases , for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on

2826-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on

2983-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes

3140-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought

3297-620: A significant peak in both interest in and persecution of supposed werewolves , primarily in French-speaking and German-speaking Europe. The phenomenon persisted longest in Bavaria and Austria, with persecution of wolf-charmers recorded until well after 1650, the final cases taking place in the early 18th century in Carinthia and Styria . After the end of the witch trials, the werewolf became of interest in folklore studies and in

SECTION 20

#1732791282676

3454-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in

3611-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond

3768-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from

3925-493: A tail. After returning to their human forms, werewolves are usually documented as becoming weak, debilitated and undergoing painful nervous depression. One universally reviled trait in medieval Europe was the werewolf's habit of devouring recently buried corpses, a trait that is documented extensively, particularly in the Annales Medico-psychologiques in the 19th century. Various methods for becoming

4082-526: A werewolf have been reported, one of the simplest being the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolfskin, probably as a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin (which also is frequently described). In other cases, the body is rubbed with a magic salve . Drinking rainwater out of the footprint of the animal in question or from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis. Folklore Each one of these, either singly or in combination,

4239-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with

4396-726: A wolf, prowling, he crossed. For him in Polotsk they rang for matins early at St. Sophia the bells; but he heard the ringing in Kiev. The situation as described during the medieval period gives rise to the dual form of werewolf folklore in Early Modern Europe. On one hand the Germanic werewolf, which becomes associated with the witchcraft panic , and on the other hand the Slavic werewolf or vlkolak , which becomes associated with

4553-516: A woman has been reported who during episodes of acute psychosis complained of becoming four different species of animals. The beliefs classed together under lycanthropy are far from uniform, and the term is somewhat capriciously applied. The transformation may be temporary or permanent; the were-animal may be the man himself metamorphosed; may be his double whose activity leaves the real man to all appearance unchanged; may be his soul , which goes forth seeking whomever it may devour, leaving its body in

4710-520: A year a man was chosen by lot from the Anthus' clan. The chosen man was escorted to a marsh in the area, where he hung his clothes into an oak tree, swam across the marsh and transformed into a wolf, joining a pack for nine years. If during these nine years he refrained from tasting human flesh, he returned to the same marsh, swam back, and recovered his previous human form, with nine years added to his appearance. Ovid also relates stories of men who roamed

4867-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge

Werewolf - Misplaced Pages Continue

5024-489: Is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus a white-collar person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a metonym for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include barefoot . Copulative compounds ( dvandva in the Sanskrit tradition) are compounds with two semantic heads, for example in

5181-711: Is McCone (1987). A few references to men changing into wolves are found in Ancient Greek literature and Folklore . Herodotus , in his Histories , wrote that according to what the Scythians and the Greeks settled in Scythia told him, the Neuri , which was a tribe to the north-east of Scythia , were all transformed into wolves once every year for several days and then changed back to their human shape. He added that he

5338-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in

5495-536: Is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which

5652-665: Is actually morphological derivation . Some languages easily form compounds from what in other languages would be a multi-word expression. This can result in unusually long words, a phenomenon known in German (which is one such language) as Bandwurmwörter ("tapeworm words"). Compounding extends beyond spoken languages to include Sign languages as well, where compounds are also created by combining two or more sign stems. So-called " classical compounds " are compounds derived from classical Latin or ancient Greek roots . Compound formation rules vary widely across language types. In

5809-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,

5966-405: Is another type of verb–noun (or noun–verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund , such as breastfeeding , finger-pointing , etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: (a mother) breastfeeds (a child) and from them new compounds mother-child breastfeeding , etc. In

6123-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in

6280-515: Is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore , a compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It

6437-511: Is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore

Werewolf - Misplaced Pages Continue

6594-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this

6751-662: Is explored in Sabine Baring-Gould 's work The Book of Werewolves is that werewolf legends may have been used to explain serial killings . Perhaps the most infamous example is the case of Peter Stumpp , executed in 1589, the German farmer, and alleged serial killer and cannibal , also known as the Werewolf of Bedburg. Common Turkic folklore holds a different, reverential light to the werewolf legends in that Turkic Central Asian shamans after performing long and arduous rites would voluntarily be able to transform into

6908-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that

7065-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within

7222-646: Is inferred from the Middle Low German variant and was most likely borrowed into Old Norman garwa(l)f ~ garo(u)l , with regular Germanic – Romance correspondence w- / g- (cf. William / Guillaume , Wales / Galles , etc.). The Proto-Slavic noun * vьlko-dlakь , meaning "wolf-haired" (cf. * dlaka , "animal hair", "fur"), can be reconstructed from Serbian vukòdlak , Slovenian vołkodlȃk , and Czech vlkodlak , although formal variations in Slavic languages (* vьrdl(j)ak , * vьlkdolk , * vьlklak ) and

7379-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of

7536-414: Is most commonly portrayed as being indistinguishable from ordinary wolves, except for the fact that it has no tail (a trait thought characteristic of witches in animal form), is often larger, and retains human eyes and a voice. According to some Swedish accounts, the werewolf could be distinguished from a regular wolf by the fact that it would run on three legs, stretching the fourth one backwards to look like

7693-478: Is not convinced by the story but the locals swear to its truth. This tale was also mentioned by Pomponius Mela . In the second century BC, the Greek geographer Pausanias related the story of King Lycaon of Arcadia, who was transformed into a wolf because he had sacrificed a child in the altar of Zeus Lycaeus. In the version of the legend told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses , when Zeus visits Lycaon disguised as

7850-470: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that

8007-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist

SECTION 50

#1732791282676

8164-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,

8321-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art

8478-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at

8635-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly

8792-430: Is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk

8949-594: Is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of its actual use is scant and anecdotal at best. Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to some other language, since the lengths of the words are theoretically unlimited, especially in chemical terminology. For example, when translating an English technical document to Swedish, the term "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to rörelse­uppskattnings­sökintervalls­inställningar , though in reality,

9106-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,

9263-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in

9420-842: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to

9577-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which

SECTION 60

#1732791282676

9734-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it

9891-655: The Old Brittonic place-name Viroconium (< * wiroconion , 'place of man-dogs, i.e. werewolves'), the Old Irish noun ferchu ('male dog, fierce dog'), and the medieval personal names Guurci ( Old Welsh ) and Gurki ( Old Breton ). Wolves were metaphorically designated as 'dogs' in Celtic cultures. The modern term lycanthropy comes from Ancient Greek lukanthrōpía (λυκανθρωπία), itself from lukánthrōpos (λυκάνθρωπος), meaning 'wolf-man'. Ancient writers used

10048-494: The Old English wer(e)wulf , which is a cognate of Middle Dutch weerwolf , Middle Low German warwulf , werwulf , Middle High German werwolf , and West Frisian waer-ûl(e) . These terms are generally derived from a Proto-Germanic form reconstructed as *wira-wulfaz ('man-wolf'), itself from an earlier Pre-Germanic form * wiro-wulpos . An alternative reconstruction, * wazi-wulfaz ('wolf-clothed'), would bring

10205-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by

10362-625: The medieval period . From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs spread to the New World with colonialism . Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches , during the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period . Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland , especially the Valais and Vaud , in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in

10519-440: The meeting of both eyebrows at the bridge of the nose, curved fingernails, low-set ears and a swinging stride. One method of identifying a werewolf in its human form was to cut the flesh of the accused, under the pretense that fur would be seen within the wound. A Russian superstition recalls a werewolf can be recognized by bristles under the tongue. The appearance of a werewolf in its animal form varies from culture to culture. It

10676-549: The "wolf-men" of Germanic paganism had carried, the associated beliefs and practices had been successfully repressed after Christianization, or if they persisted, they did so outside of the sphere of literacy available to us. We have sources other than those mentioned above. Such examples of werewolves in Ireland and the British Isles can be found in the work of the 9th century Welsh monk Nennius . Female werewolves appear in

10833-473: The 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century. The persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the " witch-hunt " phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy being involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials. During the early period, accusations of lycanthropy (transformation into a wolf) were mixed with accusations of wolf-riding or wolf-charming. The case of Peter Stumpp (1589) led to

10990-757: The 20th century, wolf attacks on humans were an occasional, but still widespread, feature of life in Europe. Some scholars have suggested that it was inevitable that wolves, being the most feared predators in Europe, were projected into the folklore of evil shapeshifters. This is said to be corroborated by the fact that areas devoid of wolves typically use different kinds of predator to fill the niche; werehyenas in Africa, weretigers in India, as well as werepumas (" runa uturuncu ") and werejaguars (" yaguaraté-abá " or " tigre-capiango ") in southern South America. An idea

11147-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined

11304-525: The Danube Steam Shipping"), but there is no evidence that this association ever actually existed. In Finnish, although there is theoretically no limit to the length of compound words, words consisting of more than three components are rare. Internet folklore sometimes suggests that lentokone­suihkuturbiinimoottori­apumekaanikko­aliupseerioppilas (airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student)

11461-851: The Elder. Augustine explains that "It is very generally believed that by certain witches spells men may be turned into wolves..." Physical metamorphosis was also mentioned in the Capitulatum Episcopi , attributed to the Council of Ancyra in the 4th century, which became the Church's doctrinal text in relation to magic, witches, and transformations such as those of werewolves. The Capitulatum Episcopi states that "Whoever believes that anything can be...transformed into another species or likeness, except by God Himself...is beyond doubt an infidel.' In these works of Roman writers, werewolves often receive

11618-521: The English compound doghouse , where house is the head and dog is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of doghouse . An exocentric compound ( bahuvrihi in the Sanskrit tradition) is a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as

11775-628: The French use the term " gerulfi" to describe what the English call "werewolves". Melion and Biclarel are two anonymous lais that share the theme of a werewolf knight being betrayed by his wife. The German word werwolf was recorded by Burchard von Worms in the 11th century and Bertold of Regensburg in the 13th century, but is not recorded in all of medieval German poetry or fiction. While Baring-Gould argues that references to werewolves were rare in England, presumably because whatever significance

11932-551: The Germanic compound closer to the Slavic meaning, with other semantic parallels in Old Norse úlfheðnar ('wolf-skinned') and úlfheðinn ('wolf-coat'), Old Irish luchthonn ('wolf-skin'), and Sanskrit Vṛkājina ('Wolf-skin'). The Norse branch underwent taboo modifications , with Old Norse vargúlfr (only attested as a translation of Old French garwaf ~ garwal(f) from Marie's lay of Bisclavret ) replacing * wiraz ('man') with vargr ('wolf, outlaw'), perhaps under

12089-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in

12246-765: The Irish work Tales of the Elders , from the 12th century, and Welsh werewolves in the 12th to 13th century work, Mabinogion . Germanic pagan traditions associated with wolf-men persisted longest in the Scandinavian Viking Age . Harald I of Norway is known to have had a body of Úlfhednar (wolf-coated [men]), which are mentioned in the Vatnsdœla, Haraldskvæði, and the Völsunga saga , and resemble some werewolf legends. The Úlfhednar were fighters similar to

12403-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at

12560-473: The Slavic "werewolf" tales. The 11th-century Belarusian Prince Vseslav of Polotsk was considered to have been a werewolf, capable of moving at superhuman speeds, as recounted in The Tale of Igor's Campaign : Vseslav the prince judged men; as prince, he ruled towns; but at night he prowled in the guise of a wolf. From Kiev, prowling, he reached, before the cocks crew, Tmutorokan . The path of Great Sun, as

12717-858: The Swiss Vaud region, werewolves were convicted in 1602 and in 1624. A treatise by a Vaud pastor in 1653, however, argued that lycanthropy was purely an illusion. After this, the only further record from the Vaud dates to 1670. A boy claimed he and his mother could change themselves into wolves, which was not taken seriously. At the beginning of the 17th century witchcraft was prosecuted by James I of England , who regarded "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a natural superabundance of melancholic". After 1650, belief in lycanthropy had mostly disappeared from French-speaking Europe, as evidenced in Diderot's Encyclopedia , which attributed reports of lycanthropy to

12874-551: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve

13031-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This

13188-486: The berserkers, though they dressed in wolf hides rather than those of bears and were reputed to channel the spirits of these animals to enhance effectiveness in battle. These warriors were resistant to pain and killed viciously in battle, much like wild animals. Úlfhednar and berserkers are closely associated with the Norse god Odin . The Scandinavian traditions of this period may have spread to Kievan Rus' , giving rise to

13345-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore

13502-752: The codes aim to ensure that "...the madly audacious werewolf do not too widely devastate, nor bite too many of the spiritual flock." Liutprand of Cremona reports a rumor that Bajan, son of Simeon I of Bulgaria , could use magic to turn himself into a wolf. The works of Augustine of Hippo had a large influence on the development of Western Christianity, and were widely read by churchmen of the medieval period. These churchmen occasionally discussed werewolves in their works. Famous examples include Gerald of Wales 's Werewolves of Ossory , found in his Topographica Hibernica , and in Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperiala , both written for royal audiences. Gervase reveals to

13659-512: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Compound (linguistics) In linguistics ,

13816-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of

13973-409: The compound are marked, e.g. ʕabd-u servant- NOM l-lāh-i DEF -god- GEN ʕabd-u l-lāh-i servant-NOM DEF-god-GEN "servant of-the-god: the servant of God" Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. In German , extremely extendable compound words can be found in

14130-510: The compound may be similar to or different from the meaning of its components in isolation. The component stems of a compound may be of the same part of speech —as in the case of the English word footpath , composed of the two nouns foot and path —or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in the case of the English word blackbird , composed of the adjective black and the noun bird . With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem. As

14287-567: The concept of the revenant or vampire. The eastern werewolf-vampire is found in the folklore of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Romania and the Balkans, while the western werewolf-sorcerer is found in France, German-speaking Europe and in the Baltic. Being a werewolf was a common accusation in witch trials. It featured in the Valais witch trials , one of the earliest such trials, in

14444-508: The context of Christianity, although stories of humans turning into wolves take their roots in earlier pre-Christian beliefs. Their underlying common origin can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European mythology , where lycanthropy is reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the kóryos warrior class, which may have included a cult focused on dogs and wolves identified with an age grade of young, unmarried warriors. The standard comparative overview of this aspect of Indo-European mythology

14601-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With

14758-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across

14915-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in

15072-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by

15229-591: The discussion of a regulation on tendering of Danube steamboat shipping company captain hats") etc. According to several editions of the Guinness Book of World Records , the longest published German word has 79 letters and is Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerkbau­unterbeamten­gesellschaft ("Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Electric[ity] Maintenance Building of

15386-430: The emerging Gothic horror genre. Werewolf fiction as a genre has premodern precedents in medieval romances (e.g., Bisclavret and Guillaume de Palerme ) and developed in the 18th century out of the "semi-fictional" chapbook tradition. The trappings of horror literature in the 20th century became part of the horror and fantasy genre of modern popular culture . The Modern English werewolf descends from

15543-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in

15700-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as

15857-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to

16014-527: The first half of the 15th century. In 1539, Martin Luther used the form beerwolf to describe a hypothetical ruler worse than a tyrant who must be resisted. In ' Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus ' (1555), Olaus Magnus describes (Book 18, Chapter 45) an annual assembly of werewolves near the Lithuania-Courland border. The participants, including Lithuanian nobility and werewolves from

16171-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies

16328-494: The head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching. English compound nouns can be spaced, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a semantic identity that evolves from a mere collocation to something stronger in its solidification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus

16485-725: The humanoid "Kurtadam" (literally meaning "Wolfman"). Since the wolf was the totemic ancestor animal of the Turkic peoples, they would be respectful of any shaman who was in such a form. Some modern researchers have tried to explain the reports of werewolf behaviour with recognised medical conditions. In 1963, Dr Lee Illis of Guy's Hospital in London wrote a paper entitled On Porphyria and the Aetiology of Werewolves , in which he argues that historical accounts on werewolves could have been referring to victims of congenital porphyria , stating how

16642-574: The hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past. In French , compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in chemin-de-fer 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and moulin à vent 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'. In Turkish , one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: yeldeğirmeni 'windmill' ( yel : wind, değirmen-i : mill-possessive); demiryolu 'railway' ( demir : iron, yol-u : road-possessive). Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form

16799-405: The idea that being bitten by a werewolf could result in the victim turning into one, which suggested the idea of a transmittable disease like rabies. However, the idea that lycanthropy could be transmitted in this way is not part of the original myths and legends, and only appears in relatively recent beliefs. Lycanthropy can also be met with as the main content of a delusion, for example, the case of

16956-474: The incident as follows, "When I look for my buddy I see he'd stripped and piled his clothes by the roadside... He pees in a circle round his clothes and then, just like that, turns into a wolf!... after he turned into a wolf he started howling and then ran off into the woods." Early Christian authors also mentioned werewolves. In The City of God , Augustine of Hippo gives an account similar to that found in Pliny

17113-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore

17270-466: The influence of the Old French expression leus warous ~ lous garous (modern loup-garou ), which literally means 'wolf-werewolf'. The modern Norse form varulv (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) was either borrowed from Middle Low German werwulf , or else derived from an unattested Old Norse *varulfr , posited as the regular descendant of Proto-Germanic * wira-wulfaz . An Old Frankish form *werwolf

17427-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just

17584-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring

17741-454: The joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., must-have , hunter-gatherer) . If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., footpath , blackbird ). If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator ), then the result – at least in English – may be an open compound . The meaning of

17898-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as

18055-774: The language of chemical compounds, where, in the cases of biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in length, mostly because the German rule suggests combining all noun adjuncts with the noun as the last stem. German examples include Farb­fernsehgerät (color television set), Funk­fernbedienung (radio remote control), and the often quoted jocular word Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmütze (originally only two Fs, Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company captain['s] hat), which can of course be made even longer and even more absurd, e.g. Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitänsmützen­reinigungs­ausschreibungs­verordnungs­diskussionsanfang ("beginning of

18212-889: The late attestation of some forms pose difficulties in tracing the origin of the term. The Greek Vrykolakas and Romanian Vîrcolac , designating vampire-like creatures in Balkan folklores, were borrowed from Slavic languages. The same form is found in other non-Slavic languages of the region, such as Albanian vurvolak and Turkish vurkolak. Bulgarian vьrkolak and Church Slavonic vurkolak may be interpreted as back-borrowings from Greek. The name vurdalak (вурдалак; 'ghoul, revenant') first appeared in Russian poet Alexander Pushkin 's work Pesni , published in 1835. The source of Pushkin's distinctive form remains debated in scholarship. A Proto-Celtic noun * wiro-kū , meaning 'man-dog', has been reconstructed from Celtiberian uiroku ,

18369-566: The lexeme familia (family). Conversely, in the Hebrew language compound, the word בֵּית סֵפֶר bet sefer (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally means "house-of book", with בַּיִת bayit (house) having entered the construct state to become בֵּית bet (house-of). This latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages , though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of

18526-421: The material limbs of any animal.' Marie de France 's poem Bisclavret (c. 1200) is another example, in which the eponymous nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behavior at court

18683-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes

18840-629: The name versipellis ("turnskin"). Augustine instead uses the phrase "in lupum fuisse mutatum" (changed into the form of a wolf) to describe the physical metamorphosis of werewolves, which is similar to phrases used in the medieval period. There is evidence of widespread belief in werewolves in medieval Europe. This evidence spans much of the Continent, as well as the British Isles. Werewolves were mentioned in Medieval law codes, such as that of King Cnut , whose Ecclesiastical Ordinances inform us that

18997-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds

19154-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across

19311-491: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By

19468-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in

19625-453: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process

19782-513: The plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian grattacielo 'skyscraper', French grille-pain 'toaster' (lit. 'toast bread'). This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are spoilsport , killjoy , breakfast , cutthroat , pickpocket , dreadnought , and know-nothing . Also common in English

19939-697: The possessive marker li-/la ‘for/of’ when the first element is preceded by a cardinal number . A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun. In Spanish , for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for the second person singular imperative followed by a noun (singular or plural): e.g., rascacielos (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. 'scratch skies'), sacacorchos 'corkscrew' (lit. 'pull corks'), guardarropa 'wardrobe' (lit. 'store clothes'). These compounds are formally invariable in

20096-652: The reader that belief in such transformations (he also mentions women turning into cats and into snakes) was widespread across Europe; he uses the phrase "que ita dinoscuntur" when discussing these metamorphoses, which translates to "it is known". Gervase, who was writing in Germany, also tells the reader that the transformation of men into wolves cannot be easily dismissed, for "...in England we have often seen men change into wolves" ("Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia per lunationes homines in lupos mutari..."). Further evidence of

20253-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual

20410-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide

20567-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context

20724-518: The second of Gervase of Tilbury's werewolf stories, about a werewolf by the name of Chaucevaire. Marie also reveals to us the existence of werewolf belief in Breton and Norman France, by telling us the Franco-Norman word for werewolf: garwulf, which, she explains, are common in that part of France, where "...many men turned into werewolves". Gervase supports this terminology when he tells us that

20881-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to

21038-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take

21195-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore

21352-583: The spot and used as compound nouns in English too. For example, German Donau­dampfschifffahrts­gesellschafts­kapitän would be written in English as "Danube steamship transport company captain" and not as "Danube­steamship­transportcompany­captain". The meaning of compounds may not always be transparent from their components, necessitating familiarity with usage and context. The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as suffixes or prefixes , as in employ → employment ) should not be confused with nominal composition, as this

21509-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this

21666-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For

21823-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during

21980-599: The surrounding areas, gather to test their strength by attempting to jump over a castle wall's ruins. Those who succeed are regarded as strong, while weaker participants are punished with whippings. There were numerous reports of werewolf attacks – and consequent court trials – in 16th-century France. In some of the cases there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism , but no association with wolves. In other cases people have been terrified by such creatures, such as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, who

22137-466: The symptoms of photosensitivity , reddish teeth, and psychosis could have been grounds for accusing a person of being a werewolf. This is argued against by Woodward, who points out how mythological werewolves were almost invariably portrayed as resembling true wolves, and that their human forms were rarely physically conspicuous as porphyria victims. Others have pointed out the possibility of historical werewolves having been people with hypertrichosis ,

22294-475: The term solely in the context of clinical lycanthropy , a condition in which the patient imagined himself to be a wolf. Modern writers later used lycanthrope as a synonym of werewolf , referring to a person who, according to medieval superstition, could assume the form of wolves. The European motif of the devilish werewolf devouring human flesh harks back to a common development during the Middle Ages in

22451-500: The time of Lycaon. If they abstain from tasting human flesh while being wolves, they would be restored to human form nine years later, but if they do not abstain, they would remain wolves forever. Lykos (Λύκος) of Athens was a wolf-shaped herο, whose shrine stood by the jurycourt, and the first jurors were named after him. Pliny the Elder likewise recounts another tale of lycanthropy. Quoting Euanthes, he mentions that in Arcadia , once

22608-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with

22765-478: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as

22922-464: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included

23079-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into

23236-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following

23393-559: The widespread belief in werewolves and other human-animal transformations can be seen in theological attacks made against such beliefs. Conrad of Hirsau , writing in the 11th century, forbids the reading of stories in which a person's reason is obscured following such a transformation. Conrad specifically refers to the tales of Ovid in his tract. Pseudo-Augustine, writing in the 12th century, follows Augustine of Hippo's argument that no physical transformation can be made by any but God, stating that "...the body corporeally [cannot], be changed into

23550-469: The woods of Arcadia in the form of wolves. Virgil , in his poetic work Eclogues , wrote about a man called Moeris, who used herbs and poisons picked in his native Pontus to turn himself into a wolf. In prose , the Satyricon , written circa AD 60 by Gaius Petronius Arbiter , one of the characters, Niceros, tells a story at a banquet about a friend who turned into a wolf (chs. 61–62). He describes

23707-465: The word would most likely be divided in two: sökintervalls­inställningar för rörelse­uppskattning – "search range settings for motion estimation". A common semantic classification of compounds yields four types: An endocentric compound ( tatpuruṣa in the Sanskrit tradition) consists of a head , i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example,

23864-536: Was convicted of being a werewolf. A peak of attention to lycanthropy came in the late 16th to early 17th century, as part of the European witch-hunts . A number of treatises on werewolves were written in France during 1595 and 1615. In 1598, werewolves were sighted in Anjou . In 1602, Henry Boguet wrote a lengthy chapter about werewolves. In 1603, a teenage werewolf was sentenced to life imprisonment in Bordeaux . In

24021-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of

24178-404: Was gentle, until his wife and her new husband appeared at court, so much so that his hateful attack on the couple was deemed justly motivated, and the truth was revealed. This lai (a type of Breton sung-poem) follows many themes found within other werewolf tales – the removal of clothing and attempting to refrain from the consumption of human flesh can be found in Pliny the Elder, as well as in

24335-615: Was the Holy Roman Empire . At least nine works on lycanthropy were printed in Germany between 1649 and 1679. In the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, belief in werewolves persisted well into the 18th century. As late as in 1853, in Galicia , northwestern Spain, Manuel Blanco Romasanta was judged and condemned as the author of a number of murders, but he claimed to be not guilty because of his condition of lobishome , werewolf. Until

24492-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published

24649-428: Was turned into a wolf after tasting the entrails of a human child sacrificed to Zeus Lycaeus. He was restored to human form 10 years later and went on to become an Olympic champion. This tale is also recounted by Pliny the Elder , who calls the man Demaenetus quoting Agriopas . According to Pausanias, this was not a one-off event, but that men have been transformed into wolves during the sacrifices to Zeus Lycaeus since

#675324