Wild man
The wild man, 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 its body, living 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 Wilde Mann is attested in Middle High German literature, particularly German heroic epics, while the female Wilde Weib 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 woodwose or wodewose.
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 as potentially both dangerous and beneficent, guiding humans to the discovery of ore deposits. The house of the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, which controlled one of the silver mines, minted silver thaler 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. 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", 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 also came to be associated with wild men.
Terminology
"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."Wild man" and its cognates in some languages are the common terms for the creature in most modern languages; it appears in German as wilder Mann, in French as homme sauvage. However, in Italian, uomo selvatico is often used.
The German wild man also occurs in a more modern folklore tradition, localized in a region spanning from Switzerland to Carinthia, Austria according to the , registered under such names as wilde Frau, Wildfrau, -en, wilde Fraulein, Wildfräulein wilder Mann, Wildmannli, wilde Männle, Wildmännlein. Plural forms are: wilde Männer, or wilde Leute or wilde Menschen. Females are also called wildes Weib.
The "wild man" is attested in Middle High German as wilde man 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 wilde man, as well as the female form wildez wîp .
In Old High German, the term wildaz wîp together with holzmuoja, holzmoia occurs in a glossary under the heading of the Latin term lamia. The same glossary under the heading of Latin gives the gloss wildiu wîp. There are also the forms holzwib, as well as holzvrouwe and numerous others.
Another old example is the mention of "ad domum wildero wîbo", a piece of landmark or toponymy somewhere in Hessen, mentioned in by the monk Eberhard of Fulda or a redaction given by Johann Pistorius the Younger.
Wood-folk type synonyms
The wild man is referred to as waltluoder in Wolfdietrich, and in the same work, the title hero must deal with the advances of , classified as a wild woman.In the epic Laurin the wild man is referred to as a waltmann. The same term waltman is used in Iwein to characterize the herdsman as a wild man, and he is also described as being as hairy as a walttôren .
A group of OHG glosses for wild woman was already discussed above. In MHG, an attested synonym for wild woman is holz-wîp.
In modern regional folklore, the creatures with sylvan names that correspond to the Alpine wild folk are the Holzleute or Moosleute of Central Germany, Franconia, and Bavaria; aka Waldfräulein, Waldweiblein of the Bohemian Forest and the Upper Palatinate; the Waldweiblein and of the Harz mountains region; the Lohjungfer (;
Other aliases
Folklore in Tyrol and German-speaking Switzerland into the 20th century refers to the wild woman called Fänggen, commented as being equivalent to Selige Fräulein 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. The extended form Wild-Fang is considered a male noun, but Wild-fang is still applied to a female.The wild man is called a Bilmon, Salvadegh, or Salvanel in Wälsch-Tirol, which may be spelt Salvan or Salvang, with usage extending to Lombardy. The wild man is called l'om salvadegh by Ladin language-speakers in Folgrait and Trambileno; this is readily recognizable as equivalent to French l'homme, 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 term silvaticus 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 Selvang in dialect according to modern-day folklore.
The local name Frauberte or Frau Berta 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 Berchtra or Perchta in Carinthia.
It is contended that the or Orke or Orge; Lorgg or Lorge; or Nörglein, Nörkel, Örggele in folklore from parts of the Alps, particularly Tyrol, also may correspond to the wild man, with the proviso that these are names for "wild dwarf people". This appears to be connected to Italian orco in the sense of "subterraneans", 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 Rüttelweib, Rittelweibe of the Giant Mountains is also considered another regional fabulous being corresponding to the wild woman of the Alpine Region.
English terms
In Old English/Anglo-Saxon there is recorded wude-wāsa meaning "satyr" or "faun", a compound of wude "woodland, forest" and wasa of uncertain etymology, though perhaps meaning "forest dweller"; or else it may perhaps be a compound formed from *wāsa "being", from the verb wesan, wosan "to be, to be alive".From it has derived Middle English woodwose, wodewose, woodehouse Variant spellings include wodewese, etc. The ME term wodehose was ambiguously singular or plural.
As for examples of usage, Wycliffe's Bible, in Isaiah 13:21, used wodewoos. Latin translation gave pilosi, and LXX rendered as δαιμόνια.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain is said to have fought with worms as well as a "wodwos" that lived in the craggy rocks;
Medieval literature
Verbal descriptions of the wild folk in medieval literature will be mainly discussed here. Visual depictions during the medieval period will be discussed under.German epic
That the German epic Sigenot featureing both the giant named Sigenot and the wild man was certainly known in the 13th century, as the minnesinger Heinrich Frauenlob sings "Wa kam mit Parcivale /ris' Sigenot unt der wilde man? ", but the actual so-called elder Sigenot is lost except in a fragmentary state, so the attestations come from the Younger Sigenot as "wilde man, wild man.The female character 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. Fortunately, when she dips into a spring she sheds her furry skin and transforms into a beautiful maiden, now calling herself Sigeminne. She is also mentioned as being the first wife of Wolfdietrich in the Anhang zum Heldenbuch.
In the Arthurian Wigamur there is the wildez wîp 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 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.