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32 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
1850 most of the werewolf folklore cited regularly was still derived
from literature. After mid-century, however, research expanded into
diverse cultural and geographical areas. By 1865, Baring-Gould could
write in his introduction to The Book of Were-wolves that, in addition
to presenting material deriving from the literature and history of the
ancient, medieval and early-modern traditions, ‘I shall give a sketch
of modern folklore relating to Lycanthropy.’ 65 His chapters on ‘The
Werewolf of the North’, ‘The Origin of the Scandinavian Werewolf’
and ‘Folklore Relating to Werewolves’ drew together the references to
werewolves that had already appeared in a number of recent folklore
collections categorized on a regional basis. 66 Subsequent articles on
lycanthropy were also able to cull material from monographs which
appeared relating to Turkey, Russia, Eastern Europe and further afield;
an 1883 article in All the Year Round, for example, was in large part
a methodical summary of the references to lycanthropy in a variety
of these texts. 67 A number of fictional representations of the werewolf
reflected this pattern of outward expansion; for most of the century,
werewolf tales tended to be set in France, Germany or Italy, but gradually
writers began to set their narratives as far afield as Russia (Gilbert
Campbell, Fred Whishaw) Scandinavia (Clemence Housman), India
(Rudyard Kipling), the West Indies (Eden Phillpotts) and America
(Mary Catherwood, H. Beaugrand). 68
Such accounts generally pitched ‘strange’ local or indigenous values
and beliefs against the ‘familiar’ tenets of Western rationalism, usually
in a way that constituted the former as a threat to the latter. Emily
Gerard’s description of a botanist’s encounter with a group of Transylvanian
peasants who believed him to be a werewolf illustrates this
dynamic:
This superstition once proved nearly fatal to a harmless botanist, who,
while collecting plants on a hillside many years ago, was observed by
some peasants, and, in consequence of his crouching attitude, mistaken
for a wolf. Before they had time to reach him, however, he had risen to
his feet and disclosed himself in the form of a man; but this in the mind
of the Roumanians, who now regarded him as an aggravated case of
wolf, was but additional motive for attacking him. They were quite sure
that he must be a prikolitsch [werewolf], for only such could change his