Songs about Lycanthropy

Subject: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 10:27 AM

Can anybody name/recommend any songs in the English tradition about Lycanthropy or similar. That is, turning into a wolf/fox etc.

Obviusly, there are the transformation bits of Tam Lin, the girl/swan in Polly Vaughan, but can anybody name any others to look at.

Thanks.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 10:52 AM

Bold Reynardine (whose teeth did brightly shine)?

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: pavane
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 11:36 AM

In The Two Magicians, they turn into various things, including animals

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 11:42 AM

"Loup Garou" by the Canadian folk group Tanglefoot, recorded on their CD THE MUSIC IN THE WOOD, is in my opinion a brilliant affirmative action update of this legend. The lyrics are attributed to Dawn Callan and Joe Grant.

"The Grisly Bride" is a fine traditional ballad that has been collected in Australia as well as the UK. It also features a female warewolf.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 11:42 AM

On the Kinks' Sleepwalker album is a great song called, I think, Another Full Moon, about being a werewolf. Great song.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Nerd
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 11:59 AM

This is a rare theme in traditional songs from England. Reynardine, as I've argued in a recent article, was almost never believed to be about a fox traditionally, and the name was almost never "Reynardine" in tradition either. Although the claim had been made by Herbert Hughes in the early twentieth century that the song was about not a werefox but a "faery who takes the shape of a fox," it was Bert Lloyd who popularized the lycanthropic version in the 1950s. He also added all the fox-like characteristics to it (Lloyd added "sly" and "bold" AND the line about R's teeth shining brightly). Look at a broadside of the song, or any version from oral tradition, and you'll see little to suggest lycanthropy.

The "Griesly Bride" is also not a traditional song. I believe it was written by John Manifold, who was sometimes a folklorist but always a poet. People get confused about his roles sometimes, attributing his own songs to tradition and vice versa. I'm not as familiar with the song's history as Reynardine's. It IS a really spooky song when performed well. Has it really been collected in the UK? I wasn't aware of it.

There are the various ballads in which a witch transforms a person against his/her will: Alison Gross, The Laidly Worm, etc. That's as close as I think of...but I'm sure someone else will remember the ones I'm overlooking!

It seems likely that Celtic British tradition had such stories; one of the Lais of Marie de France is a very detailed Werewolf legend from Brittany. Perhaps a Welsh mudcat member knows something about Welsh equivalents?

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 12:10 PM

Polly Vaughan?

In all the versions of it I've heard, she's not transformed into anything. It's simply a white apron, and the sun in the lovers eyes.
The swan on the lake does not occur in all versions, and it seems to be wishful thinking of the lover, nothing more.


From the DT.

So the trial came on and pretty Polly appear,
Saying : "Uncle, dear uncle let Jimmy go clear,
For my apron was wrapped round me when he took me for a swan,
And his poor heart lay bleeding for Polly his own."

Bunnahabhain.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 01:38 PM

Not trad, but of course, lycanthropically, there's Sting's "When the moon shines on Bourbon Street".

Kitty

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:06 PM

!Warning! Filk comment.


I've got to mention Mike Whitaker's "Cry of the Wolf" on his CD "Shattered Dreams". More info Here

Nigel

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: wildlone
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:18 PM

Again not traditional but,
Barry Dransfield sang a song called "The Werewolf" on the Polydor/Folkmill LP "Barry Dransfield" Polydor Super 2383 160, produced 1971.
He also sang it on the Free Reed produced CD "Up to Now" FRDCD 18.
dave.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 02:51 PM

Nred-

You're mostly correct about the "Griesly Bride," at least more correct than I was. Here are some notes by Harry Tuft from the Mudcat thread:

The Griesly Bride

Tom Campbell read a poem called "The Griesly Wife" by John Manifold, an Australian poet, in a high school text book called Sound and Sense, An Introduction to Poetry, edited by Laurence Perrine and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (New York). He adapted the text and added the melody that I sing here. Griesly, by the way, is the correct spelling; it means "uncanny". I've heard that the story of wolves assuming human form to take revenge on hunters and trappers can be found in the folklore of a number of countries. I try to sing this as close as I can to the way Tom sang it into a cassette recorder for me at the Cafe York in Denver around 1972.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, who's too lazy to change in the light of the full moon

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 04:10 PM

Again, not trad, but almost anything on the Bobby 'Boris' Pickett and the Cryptkicker 5 album 'Monster Mash'... there's a great one by 'Fabian', who declares that he's a werewolf....

LTS

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Susan of DT
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 04:37 PM

See Mister Fox

also Black Fox - devil to fox, so not quite the same, but fun

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 06:39 PM

Susan - that'll be John Pole's Mr Fox?

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Nerd
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 06:49 PM

The Black Fox is also not a traditional song, but I'm forgetting who wrote it: Graham Pratt, perhaps? Susan is right, it's a fun song.

Barry Dransfield's song was written by Michael Hurley. It's also a good, spooky (and sexually charged) song.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 06:55 PM

Creedece clearwater revival.

Bad moon rising as a werewolf song?

From the DT
Cho: Don't go 'round tonight.
Well it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 07:24 PM

I don't think there's a single genuine traditional song in the English or Gaelic languages about lycanthropy. Some modern ones, though. Michael Hurley's Werewolf (as later recorded by Barry Dransfield) is mentioned above, and particularly striking.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Flash Company
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 10:08 AM

Not Lycanthropy, but Shape-changing in Clerk Colvin,

Then she becam a fish again, and gaily lep't intea the flood

FC

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:04 AM

Not traditional, Adrian Mitchell's excellent "21st Century Werewolf". I'm sure Malcolm D is right, there are no traditional songs on the subject.We dont have behaviour like that in England, only foreigners turn into wolves.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 01:03 PM

"AH-OO-OO
werewolves of London
AH-OO-OO-OO..."

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 05:57 PM

HK - Moon Over Bourbon Street is about a vampire, so not lycanthropic either!

Mick

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 09:33 PM

The Great Silkie

Not a wolf but "I am a man upon the land; I am a silkie in the sea."

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Mudlark
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 10:21 PM

It's odd, really, that there isn't a vast Hound of the Baskervilles folk music tradition. Wolves are so prevalent in myth and story, I wonder why there aren't lots of werewolf songs. I am a lupophile myself, and have read a lot about wolves through the ages...they've had a pretty bad press, which usually makes for good folkmusic.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 25 Feb 05 - 10:56 PM

There are plenty of traditional songs in the English language which involve transformation into all sorts of mammals, fish, birds and reptiles, but the question was specifically about lycanthropy. Seals can look a bit like dogs facially, but that's stretching the point rather too far!

You'll find "black dog" stories current to this day, but no old songs about them that I can think of. Wolves appear in plenty of songs, but they aren't people: they are very much other.

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 04:21 AM

Could the lack of traditional lycanthropic songs be because Britain didn't really have a tradition of werewolves? I know we've had wolves in Britain for centuries, wild, free and caged, but no real werewolf stories. Any songs therefore, are bound not to be more than a few decades old.

Britian, being a sea-bound country, tended to go for silkies (selkies) which were seals that turned into beautiful people when on land. Their seal skins were the secret to their changing. If you stole the skin of a selkie when it was in human form, that selkie would then be your 'companion' until you chose to give the skin back or they found it's hiding place.   There have been several songs written about this creature, in the DT. Search for Silkie and you find at least 3.

I'm pretty sure that the werewolf, like the human vampire is a product of the 17-1800's and the great surge of Gothic, horror fiction by the likes of Poe, Shelley and Stoker. It may be based on older folk tales, but they are probably not British in origin.

LTS

Subject: RE: Songs about Lycanthropy
From: GUEST,Sandra
Date: 26 Feb 05 - 04:04 PM

Is Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London
too obvious?