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Text of the page (random words):
es like a savage wolf wearing a pelt complete with a rather misleading animated scene of warriors in wolfskins physically transforming into hollywood wolf men nor does it mention the third wolf warrior aspect which is psychic projection of a spectral wolf form while the body lies in torpor this isn t physical werewolfery but it s closer than the warrior who merely channels imagines the strength of an animal in combat onyeka nubia briefly mentions the same trope in an african context merely serving to underline how un werewolf like this idea really is by this point we ve spent a lot of screentime covering things that are mere backstory to the true werewolf of northern european folklore pluskowski mentions the description of accused werewolf peter stumpp whose eyes in the night sparkled like fire the programme suggests that this was a way to tell a werewolf from an ordinary wolf indeed the eyes of a werewolf are sometimes mentioned as somehow noteworthy but this is usually because they are red or sometimes human like stumpp s eyes may allude to red werewolf eyes or to normal shining wolf eyes it s not entirely clear in any case the programme s anatomist joy reidenberg then redundantly explains how ordinary wolf eyes work claiming that people would have mistaken the reflective shine for something demonic of course all wolves have this feature and it s a huge reach to suggest that all wolves spotted at night under some sort of light were automatically thought werewolves especially since domestic dog eyes do the same thing and people had been living with them for thousands of years pluskowski shows us a church mural depicting a man eating wolf in hell as he points out the only animal shown to exist there the narrator explains that the christian church changed the popular view of wolves from something powerful and positive to something evil all of this is good stuff and is at least relevant background to the actual werewolf as a concept unfortunately he then brings in the roggenwolf or rye wolf a ghostly wolf believed to inhabit farmer s fields the documentary narration not pluskowski notably claims that someone bitten by the rye wolf would themselves be cursed to transform into a wolf and then mentions darkening skin ravenous hunger and violent convulsions this leads them and aleks into claiming that this was the result of ergot poisoning they mention the same theory as applied to the salem witch trials a theory that has been thoroughly debunked i m skeptical of it here too since as plausible as it sounds assuming these symptoms really do appear there really is no need to invoke a medicalised explanation for folklore people are very capable of coming up with what now seem like crazy ideas without any external stimulus beyond something like failing crops or ill health they expand it to a general explanation of at least some accused werewolves a claim for which we have no evidence more importantly the rye wolf and the werewolf are not the same thing wikipedia makes the connection pointing to mannhardt roggenwolf und roggenhund 1865 pp 31 32 who says that the rye wolf was sometimes in his time referred to using the word werwolf i e the two myths were conflated in contemporary folklore sources however mannhardt himself emphasises that this is a confusion of two traditionally distinct ideas well after the era of the werewolf trials and points out that there is nothing in werewolf folklore to support the idea that rye wolves were werewolves a good example of wikipedia editors not researching beyond the first source they find worse still reidenberg reappears backed up by mythological consultant richard schwab bringing in the old werewolf medicalisation chestnuts of hypertrichosis excess hair and porphyria a disfiguring sensitivity to light no folklorist or historian of werewolf belief takes these theories seriously as the werewolves of folklore were not hairy men who hid from daylight as the movies depict other perhaps than those suffering from lycanthropy the mere belief that one is a wolf reidenberg also references the full moon suggesting that this explains why werewolves were thought to appear at full moon now contrary to common academic claim today there is an association between humans changing into wolves and the moon the only roman instance of a werewolf petronius s satyricon which is mentioned in the programme a 9th century source in the french bibliothèque nationale and the early 13th century otia imperalia by gervase of tilbury all mention the moon albeit none specify the full moon we can t really speculate what phases the other writers thought were significant but petronius did mention that the moon was shining brightly like high noon which sure as heck sounds like the full moon to me still even if we accept that there was a common belief that werewolves came out on the full moon there s no link here with these medical conditions overall the documentary isn t a total waste of time but like most of its ilk is far too keen to paint the werewolf as a universal trope rather than focus upon the beast for which the werewolf was named the northern european person usually a man who becomes an actual wolf by means of pelt belt or ointment there is precious little of this in the episode and so much rich history of real werewolf belief that could have been included pluskowski in particular makes good contributions but is clearly pursuing his actual research interests of notions of human and animal in general not the werewolf as a discrete historical or folkloric concept although most of the participants had actual credentials few of them knew much about the werewolf of folklore and not one actual folklorist was interviewed unfortunately this is par for the course with this kind of subject matter which is invariably sensationalised since most viewers approach it solely from a popular culture background there were far too many of them as well resulting in precious little screentime for them or the ideas presented it s also unfortunate that the show was clearly made on a very low budget featuring simple digital artwork and very crude and repetitive cgi i m not sure that i dare attempt the vampire episode bshistorian folklore medieval history modern history myths prehistory the paranormal werewolves 1 comment december 31 2023 9 minutes king arthur didn t exist and neither did his sword the almost certainly fake arthur grave cross supposedly found in 1191 in glastonbury from camden s britannia 1 607 p 166 you can t beat king arthur for some good bs history see my previous piece on the supposed bronze origins of the sword in the stone here unfortunately today s complaint is aimed at the subscription tv service history hit which is nearly always excellent i ve worked with them myself not that this is necessarily evidence of them being excellent but i wouldn t work with them if they weren t their king arthur documentary that was recently released for free on youtube but despite the current historiographical trend being strongly sceptical of arthur s historicity they appear wholly accepting that he really was a dark age warlord let me be clear we have no more evidence for this arthur than we do for robin hood and even less reason to believe that he was based on a real historical figure pointing to mentions of random arthurs in early sources and conflating them with the mythical arthur is like me seeing luke in the bible and trying to claim that this was luke skywalker bad archaeology covered this in 2011 but i most strongly recommend professor nick higham s 2018 book king arthur the making of the legend i don t want to post chunks of it here but luckily he has been interviewed by history s most and there brilliantly summarises his position at the beginning before going into more detail definitely check it out back to history hit in defence of presenter matt lewis he s a proper historian but his period is decidedly later than that claimed for any historical arthur and i doubt he wrote the script despite the title of the video there is a legitimate angle here being the appropriation of arthur by the english however for some reason they stop short of the logical conclusion here ably laid out by higham that before being nicked by the english arthur was likely invented as a british folk hero who would return to reunite wales with the swathes of britain that had been conquered by the anglo saxons arthur had defeated the invaders before and would come again to kick them out once and for all so few people realise that the historical arthur is total bunk so it s a real shame for one of the only factual long form historical documentary makers to not only fail to address this but to outright reinforce the idea that he did exist they also make a specific claim that irked me at 11 21 in the video they say between two stone pyramids 16 feet deep in an oak hollow the monks of glastonbury abbey discovered a grave covered by a large stone that appeared plain when they lifted it the monks found a large lead cross when they removed the cross they found an inscription on the stone underneath it read here lies entombed king arthur with guinevere his second wife on the isle of avalon and so it appeared it really was king arthur s grave buried with guinevere who is described as his second wife though who he d been married to before is nowhere recorded there was a perfectly preserved braid of her golden hair in the grave and one over enthusiastic monk jumped down but when he lifted it up to show it to his brothers it disintegrated and blew away on the wind the monks also found in the grave a perfectly preserved sword the sword of king arthur the legendary excalibur firstly i want to be clear on this there is no evidence that a sword was found at glastonbury none more anon this is important because although some sort of grave was likely excavated and the inscription which was not on the stone famously but rather a lead cross buried with it did physically exist the presence of a sword would make this a warrior grave and thus more plausibly that of an historical arthur in fact i have issues with the way in which all of this information is presented it is presented as factual and at no point is the possibility strong probability in my view of an incorrect interpretation or an outright hoax raised they do point out how lucrative it would have been for the monastery to engage with the story of an early medieval warlord but that s as far as they go they don t question whether arthur really had been found again it s unlikely that he even existed let alone his remains found they reinforce this later on by lamenting the loss of the bones lead plate etc as though if they hadn t been lost we might today have archaeological evidence of the real king arthur let s be clear here this discovery is universally regarded as a hoax by all serious authors even by those who place stock in the existence of an historical arthur i don t for what it s worth our earliest source for it is gerald of wales de principis instructione 1193 96 who is a mixed bag as far as reliability goes he thought that beavers bit off their own bollocks and threw them at their attackers even at the time people had their doubts about at least some arthurian stories as robert bartlett notes in england under the norman and angevin kings 1075 1225 2002 gerald himself informs us that the term a fable of arthur arturi fabula was being used metaphorically by his enemies in the sense of a fictitious and frivolous story still gerald was writing just after the alleged discovery and claims to have seen the cross interestingly not the remains with his own eyes i think we can accept him as a somewhat reliable primary source here indeed many accept that the monks found some sort of interment after all they were sitting on a ton of already centuries old graves although radford s claim to have located the monks excavation is now debunked the problem is that the only part of the find that ties it to arthur other than the claim that his bones and skull were comically large is the supposed lead cross with its inscription hic iacet sepultus inclytus rex arthurus cum weneuereia vxore sua secunda in insula auallonia as nitze wrote in 1934 it is unnecessary to comment on the evidently faked character of this inscription by which he means i suspect that it s not only out of character with any period epitaph it s simply too on the nose not just king arthur but the famous king arthur with specific and curiously redundant mention of the isle of avalon if arthur was so famous why the need to say so if glastonbury was already identified as avalon why would they need to say so regardless of that when have you ever seen a grave marker of any kind that included the place of burial why is arthur called king on the cross when arthur was not referred to as king or inclitus until geoffrey of monmouth s geoffrey historia regum britanniae 1138 the obvious answer to all of this is that the cross was a recent forgery inspired by a mid late 12th century understanding of who arthur was or might have been this is the view of christopher berard whose 2019 arthurianism in early plantagenet england from henry ii to edward i is the most recent and most comprehensive discussion on the cross berard also points to aelred watkin who compares the lettering on this 12th century tympanum in the north doorway of stoke sub hamdon church in somerset at best the cross s lettering is inconclusive and could as easily be ca 1190 as ca 500 the monks had plenty of vintage carvings documents and coins e g the silver penny of cnut that oliver harris suggests is the best match to refer to for something convincingly old although personally i don t think conscious replication of old text would have been a priority in the medieval mind historical accuracy is a recent concept but berard believes the lettering like the cross and the whole shooting match is late 12th century and i think he s absolutely right just to include a welsh author since arthur may have been a pan british myth but our evidence is all welsh thomas price chap writing as far back as 1842 was also sceptical there is a fascinating and very strong hypothesis that part of the motivation for finding arthur s grave was to put paid to arthur as a welsh hero who might yet return and to recreate him as a very heroic but also very demonstrably dead anglo british figure clearly this superstition didn t afflict price an enlightened victorian welshman the association with henry ii is itself dubious since him receiving a tip about the gravesite doesn t make chronological sense henry ii finds out about it 1171 but doesn t bother to act on it before his death years later in 1189 the grave is discovered separately by monks a year or two after that more importantly as charles wood points out in fraud and its consequences savaric of bath and the reform of glastonbury 1991 in essays c a ralegh radford p 273 283 this was ju...