The interweaving of history and fiction is fascinating. Waldenses who paint religious art with their own blood? That's the kind of detail that would never even have occurred to me. Of courses, Waldenses existed, but this is a fascinating look at what an isolated group of them might have evolved into.
It's also historically true that churches were often built on the ruins of old temples, and that Apollo was sometimes associated with wolves. The first literary wolves I can think of are found in the myth of King Lycaon and his sons, turned to wolves by Zeus because of their impiety. The story reminds me of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, of which it was said that people who prayed there would lose their shadows and become wolves for seven years. If they managed to abstain from human flesh, they would be restored to human form at the end of that time.
Bill, I can’t express in words how grateful I am for this comment. Truly generous. Thank you so much. Yes, I’ve been reading through Montague Summers’s “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend,” which can be a bit of a slog since he cites sources and doesn’t bother to translate them. But, yes, the origin stories of the werewolf in Graeco-Roman times is really fascinating to me, what with Ovid’s story of Lycaon and such. It’s funny how the manufactured myths about werewolves have taken on a life of their own. I’m thinking of things like the “silver bullet” legend which is nowhere in the original sources, but caught on after the Wolf-Man with Lon Cheney Jr. seems to have given birth to it. Vampires and werewolves in early modern Europe seem to have been almost indistinguishable from one another. In some places in the Balkans were also considered undead creatures and the Vyrkolok (hair man), which I think Nosferatu is supposed to be based on, was a fusion of both. If you recall in “Dracula”, the main character holds sway over wolves and can transform into one himself.
Yes, the vampire-werewolf cross fertilization worked both ways, with silver migrating from the werewolf lore into the vampire one. But where werewolves have the Lycaon prototype, the vampire has no such clear Greek origin. There are a number of creatures that eat people or drink their blood, but none of them are reanimated corpses if I recall correctly.
There is a piece circulating on the Internet that claims to be an ancient Greek origin story for vampires, but apparently, it only goes back to the 19th century, though the setting is ancient Greek.
I think I missed a chapter somewhere, so I'm gonna have to catch up. But I really love how you've grounded this story in a mix of historical sources and traditional lore while creating something completely novel in the werewolf genre. The reference to Apollo Lycegenes made me smile :-)
“Hermann floated in his dream on the breath of a demon”
That’s a fantastic opening line, Daniel. It immediately draws you in to this dark and dangerous world of stories and monsters
I’m still very much enjoying the tales within tales element that gives the impression of the curse being ancient and malignant for many centuries before this story even began
The interweaving of history and fiction is fascinating. Waldenses who paint religious art with their own blood? That's the kind of detail that would never even have occurred to me. Of courses, Waldenses existed, but this is a fascinating look at what an isolated group of them might have evolved into.
It's also historically true that churches were often built on the ruins of old temples, and that Apollo was sometimes associated with wolves. The first literary wolves I can think of are found in the myth of King Lycaon and his sons, turned to wolves by Zeus because of their impiety. The story reminds me of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, of which it was said that people who prayed there would lose their shadows and become wolves for seven years. If they managed to abstain from human flesh, they would be restored to human form at the end of that time.
Ah, so many things resonate here...
Bill, I can’t express in words how grateful I am for this comment. Truly generous. Thank you so much. Yes, I’ve been reading through Montague Summers’s “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend,” which can be a bit of a slog since he cites sources and doesn’t bother to translate them. But, yes, the origin stories of the werewolf in Graeco-Roman times is really fascinating to me, what with Ovid’s story of Lycaon and such. It’s funny how the manufactured myths about werewolves have taken on a life of their own. I’m thinking of things like the “silver bullet” legend which is nowhere in the original sources, but caught on after the Wolf-Man with Lon Cheney Jr. seems to have given birth to it. Vampires and werewolves in early modern Europe seem to have been almost indistinguishable from one another. In some places in the Balkans were also considered undead creatures and the Vyrkolok (hair man), which I think Nosferatu is supposed to be based on, was a fusion of both. If you recall in “Dracula”, the main character holds sway over wolves and can transform into one himself.
Yes, the vampire-werewolf cross fertilization worked both ways, with silver migrating from the werewolf lore into the vampire one. But where werewolves have the Lycaon prototype, the vampire has no such clear Greek origin. There are a number of creatures that eat people or drink their blood, but none of them are reanimated corpses if I recall correctly.
There is a piece circulating on the Internet that claims to be an ancient Greek origin story for vampires, but apparently, it only goes back to the 19th century, though the setting is ancient Greek.
I think I missed a chapter somewhere, so I'm gonna have to catch up. But I really love how you've grounded this story in a mix of historical sources and traditional lore while creating something completely novel in the werewolf genre. The reference to Apollo Lycegenes made me smile :-)
“Hermann floated in his dream on the breath of a demon”
That’s a fantastic opening line, Daniel. It immediately draws you in to this dark and dangerous world of stories and monsters
I’m still very much enjoying the tales within tales element that gives the impression of the curse being ancient and malignant for many centuries before this story even began
Brilliantly done 👍🏼
from 'desiccated friars' to 'carrion birds,' another great chapter. Looking forward to when the whole book appears.