The wild man (, ), or 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 they are considered a large-statured race of humans who are hairy all over their body, and live 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.
The () is attested in Middle High German literature, particularly German heroic epics, while the female () 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 maiden", "wood wife", or "wood woman". In Middle English a corresponding term for the wild man is or .
In the folklore of German-speaking areas collected mainly in the 19th century, there are especially the Alpine wild men 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.
The folklore that had developed in the mining areas around Harz or Ore Mountains by the 16th century regarded the wild man of the mines (also known as "mountain monk") as potentially both dangerous and beneficent, guiding humans to the discovery of ore deposits. The house of the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Brunswick-Lüneburg), which controlled one of the silver mines, minted silver ('dollar') coinage with the wild man in their coat-of-arms, starting 1539.
These wild man had already frequently appeared in European family heraldic devices since the latter half of the 15th century. It also became commonplace to depict the wild man as shield-bearers of the family coat of arms (e.g., within a portrait painting by Albrecht Dürer, cf. image right). This period also roughly coincides with the popularization of the concept of the "noble wild man" or "noble savage" as can already be seen in Hans Sachs's "Lament of the Wild Men" (1530), and also reflected in artistic depictions of the wild folk from this period onward.
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.
"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 , in French as . However, in Italian, ("forest man") is often used (var. ).
The German wild man () 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 (HdA), registered under such names as , , , , , . Plural forms are: , or or . Females are also called (pl. ).
The "wild man" is attested in Middle High German as in the 13th century, once in a lyrical poem alluding to the story of the giant Sigenot, i.e., an epic featuring both giant and wild man, from the Dietrich von Bern cycle. Another attestation occurs in the Arthurian romance which gives (v. 203), as well as the female form (vv. 112, 200, 227ff.) (For additional examples in MHG literature cf. below).
In Old High German, the term () together with () occurs in a glossary under the heading of the Latin term lamia (female monster). The same glossary under the heading of Latin ( but here understood to be equivalent to strix of mythology) gives the gloss . There are also the forms (holzwîb), as well as and numerous others.
Another old example is the mention of " " ("house of the wild women"), a piece of landmark or toponymy somewhere in Hessen, mentioned in (c. 1150) by the monk Eberhard of Fulda or a redaction given by Johann Pistorius the Younger (d. 1608).
The wild man is referred to as in Wolfdietrich, and in the same work, the title hero must deal with the advances of ("Shaggy Else"), classified as a wild woman (cf. below).
In the epic Laurin the wild man is referred to as a (). The same term is used in Iwein to characterize the herdsman as a wild man, and he is also described as being as hairy as a () (Cf. Iwein discussed below under ).
A group of OHG glosses for wild woman (lamia, etc.) was already discussed above. In MHG, an attested synonym for wild woman is ().
In modern regional folklore, the creatures with sylvan (wood-related) names that correspond to the Alpine wild folk are the or (wood- or moss people) of Central Germany, Franconia, and Bavaria; aka , of the Bohemian Forest and the Upper Palatinate; the Waldweiblein and () of the Harz mountains region; the (; ) of Halle further east in Saxony; and the () of Westphalia. Usage of names such as Lohjungfer, Holzfräulein, extends further south in Saxon Vogtland.
is synonymous to , which is an exception, since and its extensions (cf. Fänge below) generally refer to females. The variant form is also given in commentary. As for ("goatherd") or ("cowherd"), the wild man may be designated by the name of his profession in a narrative where he is engaged in the herding of livestock.
Cf. also the etymological relation between the term "sylvan" ("of the woods"), the French term meaning "wild", and the Sal- group of names for the wild men used in the Italian Alps (Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol) region under below. Cf. also "woodwose" under .
Folklore in Tyrol and German-speaking Switzerland into the 20th century refers to the wild woman called (var. , ), commented as being equivalent to Selige Fräulein (Salige Frau) This name is thought to be 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 extended form is considered a male noun (ein Wild-fang), but Wild-fang (var. ) is still applied to a female.
The wild man is called a (corruption of "wild man"), , or in Wälsch-Tirol (present-day Trento Province), which may be spelt or , with usage extending to Lombardy. The wild man is called by Ladin language-speakers in Folgrait (Folgaria) and Trambileno; this is readily recognizable as equivalent to French , where Old French derives from Latin "sylvan, pertaining to forest". Hence the names in this grouping are related to Silvanus, the Roman tutelary god of gardens and the countryside. The (medieval Latin) term 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 in dialect according to modern-day folklore.
The local name or 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 or (diminutive: ) in Carinthia.
It is contended that the or Orke or ; or ; or , , 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 (, ) in the sense of "subterraneans" (âÂÂdwarfs or gnomes), or perhaps rather a "harmless wild folk" version of the orco such as appears 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 (; ) of the Giant Mountains is also considered another regional fabulous being corresponding to the wild woman of the Alpine Region.
In Old English/Anglo-Saxon there has been recorded the term meaning "satyr" or "faun", a compound of "woodland, forest" and of uncertain etymology, though perhaps meaning "forest dweller"; or else it may perhaps be a compound formed from *wÃÂsa "being", from the verb wesan, wosan "to be, to be alive".
From it has derived Middle English Variant spellings include , etc. The ME term wodehose was ambiguously singular or plural. The (modern) pronunciation of varies, and may end in an s-like or z-like stress.
As for examples of usage, Wycliffe's Bible (after 1382 [to 1395]), in Isaiah 13:21, used ( rather than the King James Version's "satyr" to translate the original Hebrew (pronounced , meaning "hairy [one]"). Latin translation gave , and LXX rendered as (daimon).
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1390), Gawain is said to have fought with worms (dragons) as well as a "wodwos" that lived in the craggy rocks; 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 a 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 meaning "wild man" is found embedded in the Anglo-Norman caption to a painting in the Taymouth Hours (14th century) (cf. )
There has been continued use in modern English for "woodwose, woodhouse", though now obsolete, displaced in modern usage by "wild man". The surnames Wodehouse or Woodhouse may derive straightforwardly from "house in the woods", or as a corruption of woodwose.
Verbal descriptions of the wild folk in medieval literature will be mainly discussed here. Visual depictions during the medieval period will be discussed under .
That the German epic Sigenot (cf. image right) featureing both the giant named Sigenot and the wild man was certainly known in the 13th century, as the minnesinger Heinrich Frauenlob sings " (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 mss. and printed editions) as ".
The female character ("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 for Wolfdietrich, when she dips into a spring she sheds her furry skin and transforms into a beautiful maiden, now calling herself Sigeminne. She (, 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.
In the epic Renaud de Montauban, the title hero Renaud turns rebel against Charlemagne, and as fugitives living in the Ardennes forest, they have turned "black and hairy like a bear [on a chain]", so that "neither stone nor rock could scathe" them. Renaud's band thus became ("savage knights") or wild men, in the sense that in medieval society, the outcast consigned to live in forests separating settlements were regarded as a sort of wild man.
The romance of Valentine and Orson, about a civilized brother separated from his bearlike brother Orson living in the wild, may count as an example of a wild man's tale, however, this might be more recognizable as a fictional treatment of the feral child.
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. (under çMedieval parallels) below.
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. ) 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 an 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.
Although emergence of the concept of the "Noble Savage" () had occurred post-discovery of the Americas, according to one observer not inconsistent with the foregoing 16th century examples, much of the scholarship on the Noble Savage pertains to thinking of the Enlightenment Period (18th century). The coinage of the term "noble savage" itself has often been (falsely) attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though refuted; as Rousseau never actually used that term himself, even though the philosopher did profusely use the construct of "savage" to critique various aspects of civilized society.
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.
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 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.
Widlman subtypes/aliases such as the of the highest Alpine regions or the and noerglein () of Tyrol (called by names on the diminutive case) are usually conceived of as dwarfs. Similar to the Orgen are the of Switzerland and the of Alsace, all supposedly corruptions of the name Orc/Ogre.
They can be of different temperaments, but they 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".
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 these regions, the folklore concerned the wild little folk of "harmless good nature".
The wild man stereotypically carries an uprooted fir tree, or an iron club or an iron pole, etc.
There are also the Alpine wild men 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 men of the Alps had the reputation of abducting women and devouring humans, particularly children. In Grisons, they are also accused of depositing their 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 BCE), 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. The is also considered to be a thief of milk, but who has taught humans how to produce butter and cheese in return.
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, the hunter forces a "half portion" () 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. They were also styled , and according to another telling from the canto of Uri, these wild folk lived in areas called Ruosstalbalm (aka Heidenbalm) or Hornefeli in Isenthal. According to legend they provided chamois cheese that would grow back to size if not completely used up, but were driven away by advent of hunters who preyed on their chamois. They are said to have feet pointing backwards. Another tale from an informant of Isental told that a certain hunter had been promised by the Wildmandli he would be provided by a fresh buck every Saturday hung right as his door, in exchange for ceasing to hunt the chamois on his own. The hunter (which the informant insisted must have been an outsider, probably from the Canton of Nidwalden) broke the promise, and went hunting, and as punishment the man was bound up in white clothe by the Wildmandli and hurled down the cliff. According to lore, appear in high altitude regions of Tyrol, in the valleys of ÃÂtztal, Stubaital, Zillertal, , and have spread to the The Dolomites.
Meanwhile, the Tyrolian and Swiss Fängge () 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 ) 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 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 a green robe commands a shepherd to kill all poachers, otherwise she will destroy his entire flock. He obliges, and due to the reputation that 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.
Wild people of Russian folklore are called (, ; ) or (, plural only). The names derive from two related proto-Slavic roots *dik- and *div- that combine the meanings of "wild" and "amazing, strange". The latter (div- form) names especially are given to mythical forest creatures in the pan-Slavic folk demonology, and their cognates are (); (); ; ; ("wild forest woman"); Moravian dialects: (female) (male). There is some latitude in the descriptions of this group, often close to the boginka of the West Slavs and vila of the South Slavs.
Wild people of the former (dik-) group are of somewhat different character. The wild man of this group are identifiable by such names as () or , (. "wild little fellow"), perhaps equitable or comparable to the leshy. In fact, dikar, dikoy, dikenkiy muzhichok are among the circumlocutions to refer to "leshy", which is taboo to name directly, according to ethnographer Dmitri Zelenin. This type according to the lore of the Saratov Oblast is a short man with a big beard and tail; which resembles the appearance of the Ukrainian () â old men with overgrown hair who give silver to those who rub their noses. These may also be compared to the (, "wild evil") of the Kostroma Oblast.
In the old Vyatka Governorate (now in Kirov_Oblast) the () was an unclean spirit that causes paralysis; the Ukrainian (, "evil div") was a marsh spirit blamed for outbreaks of fever; the Ukrainian and Carpathian (transl|) was an evil seductress captivating men with her allure; she also wore seven-league boots, stealing children and drinking their blood, while leaving changelings behind. The Belarusians of the Vawkavysk district tell of the (, "wild people" ) which are "single-eyed and large-eared, tailed mythical creatures that eat people" dwelling over the sea, while Belarusians of Sokolsky Uyezd (around Sokóà Âka) similarly told of the (, "wild folk") living overseas who are covered in fur, have a long tail and ears like an ox, and cannot speak, but only .
East Slavic folklore of these mythical beings often coincide with accounts of the ( "wondrous folk") found in the medieval romance of Alexander the Great. Russians from the Ural region believe that the divyi lyudi are short, beautiful, have a pleasant voice, live in caves in the mountains, and can predict the future.
Among the Bohemian populace, the wild man is known as (pl. , ), who abducts a girl to forcibly make her his married wife. The Bohemian wood woman (;