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Samhain E2: The Irish Werewolf · Wild Kin: A Celtic Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hi friend, welcome to Wild Kin.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Pull up a chair by my fire as we reconnect to Celtic myths, one story at a time.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host Jess,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: and today we're going to explore the mythical world of Irish shapeshifters
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: and wolf warriors.
• 0:28
  There was a time when wolves roamed the wilds of Europe,
• 0:30
  not only in myth, but their vast, dense forests too.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Humans strive to embody these beasts fierce instincts of protection and strength
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: through their rituals and stories.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't we step back in time to this world when men could turn into wolves.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The last embers of the bonfire fade into a swirl of smoke spiraling up to dance the full moon.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: A group of young men circle the fire, covered in ash and mud.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: A wolf pelt is wrapped at their hips, hunted in the last winter's snow.
• 1:18
  Only the whites of their eyes reveal their humanity,
• 1:19
  and perhaps a flicker of fear beneath their hunger.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: They've been fasting for three days,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: emptying their bellies as their minds open to the vast forest surrounding them.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: With each passing day,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: colors brighten,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: sounds sharpen, and they start to catch the subtle musk of deer on the breeze.
• 1:44
  But tonight is their last night of hunger,
• 1:45
  for as the fire dies, they know it's almost time to feed.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Elders emerge from the pillars of trees,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: sentinels casting their long shadows in the moonlight and
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest warrior steps forward with a bowl of blood,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: an honored sacrifice taken that morning.
• 2:12
  Swirling the crimson between his fingers,
• 2:13
  he stares down each boy as he circles them,
• 2:14
  the hound king asserting his rule as drums begin to beat.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: They bow their heads in reverence as the warrior lifts his red-tipped hands
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: to paint lines across each brow.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whispering blessings only they can hear.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: The metallic scent fills their nostrils all the more present with their hunger.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Blood drips down their chins as their pupils open wide into the night.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: As the last boy's face is streaked in red,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: the warrior lifts his face to the sky and lets out a piercing howl.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: The rest join in, energy finally releasing into the stars.
• 3:00
  With a final nod from the elders,
• 3:01
  the boys take off into the woods,
• 3:02
  yipping and howling as they vanish between the trees,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: their bare feet flying as they're carried deep into the underbrush.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they will live as wolves until the next full moon,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: basking in feral freedom as they dissolve from man into something else.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: For only then can they truly see through the eyes of the wolf.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if they can pull themselves away from the wild,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: they will be ready to protect their homes and families with the beast
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: that now lives inside them.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: For they are no longer boys but warriors.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are the true sons of the wolf.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time when the embodiment of the wolf was seen not as a curse but a sacred act.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: As far back as 1500 BCE,
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: there is evidence of tribes across Europe partaking in wolf rituals
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: as young men left the tribe to transform themselves into the protectors
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: of their people.
• 4:13
  These same ritualistic acts were found across cultures,
• 4:14
  highlighting a surprisingly common yet unique attribute of wolf brotherhoods.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Norse wolf coats and Iranian warriors all have ties back to this embodiment
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: of wolves,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Often with the purpose of creating a bond of guardians for both the protection
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: of their land and villages.
• 4:35
  The Celts were no exception as to them,
• 4:36
  wolves symbolized protection, mastery of instincts, and power.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were well known for their connection to animal spirits
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: as their stories are filled with shapeshifters.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Each animal's attributes revealed hidden truths about identity and connection to the divine.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The wolf was just one of many.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Often depicting the initiatory power for men and the liminality of sovereignty for women.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: For centuries, the wolf spirit lived on in tales of heroes, the most famous being Cú Chulainn.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: His name marked him as one of the wolfkin as cu translates to hound or wolf.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Warriors throughout the ages bore similar names,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: signifying a deep bond with the wolf or dog spirit.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: In one tale, Cú Chulainn
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: is described as morphing into a battle frenzy as he transforms into
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: an unrecognizable beast.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And on the feminine side comes figures like the Morrígan,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: the ever-feared battle goddess who appears in many forms, including a wolf.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: In one story, she appears to Cú Chulainn as a wolf before ultimately foretelling his death.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But how did we get from these revered sacred beings to
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: the monstrous werewolf stories we know today?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: By the time medieval monks began recording these ancient myths,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: the old rites of the wolf brotherhoods had long faded,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: yet their mystique and symbolism remained.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pagan practices were being overtaken by religious doctrine,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: and a story from the 10th century captured this shift.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here the king of Ulster,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: after a long and violent reign,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: begins to see dark omens, horrible storms, comets, and rivers running with blood.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Among these portents is a she-wolf,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Seen prowling the royal enclosure, howling under a blood-red moon.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: She circles the fortress three times,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: a ritual act in Celtic symbolism, then vanishes into the darkness.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: The king's druids interpret this as the land spirit withdrawing her protection.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: The goddess of sovereignty has removed her blessing from the king.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: The story is often interpreted as the embodiment of dying pagan sovereignty.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The closing of a chapter as the world turned toward Christianity.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And for the next few centuries,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: the old ways continued to slowly disappear as the wolf was no longer seen as
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: a guide, but a warning.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these early medieval legends come from Ireland as it was an isolated island
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: and remained the last bastion of Celtic myth.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: This was a blessing and a curse for the same sentiment of paganism led to
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: a deep bias against the people But there was a priest who sympathized with the poor,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: cursed Irish.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 12th century, Gerald of Wales recorded the tale of the Werewolves of Ossory.
• 7:35
  He recounts a priest coming upon a wolf who,
• 7:36
  instead of attacking him,
• 7:37
  speaks in perfect Latin,
• 7:37
  pleading for the priest to give last rites to his companion who is close to death.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Torn between fear and faith, the priest agrees and follows the wolf through the dark wood.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: When they reach the dying creature,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Its skin is pulled back to reveal the face of an old woman beneath.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Only now does the priest understand these beings are not beasts but people under a curse.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so he gives the wolf woman a final blessing.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: That night,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: the remaining wolf stays with the priest and speaks to him,
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity may have softened the Irish image,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: but the defiant heart of the wolf couldn't be so easily lost.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: For thousands of years,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: their ancestors had lived alongside real wolves in Ireland's deep forests,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: an ecosystem shaped by both myth and law.
• 8:54
  Under the old Brehon codes,
• 8:54
  even killing wolf pups during their denning season carried a fine,
• 8:56
  proof that these animals were once considered part of the island's natural balance.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But by the 17th century, that balance had shattered.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The English now held a tight grip on the country,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: and rebels who fought from the woods were called wolfmen by Anglo-Normans.
• 9:14
  The oppressors began to hunt wolves and the rebellious brethren as they tried
• 9:16
  to destroy everything the animals represented.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: In the centuries that followed, Ireland's vast forests were felled for timber and farmland.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And with the trees went the wolves.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oliver Cromwell made wolf hunting a state policy.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the colonial imagination,
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't only the animal being hunted,
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: it was the land itself and the spirit of resistance that ran within it.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: By the 19th century, native wolves were gone.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: But even as the last wolf was killed,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: They still lived in a shared cultural inheritance.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: By the Victorian era,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: stories were long past confronting pagan morality,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: but the spirit of the wolf was found lurking just beneath proper society.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Penny Dreadfuls and gothic novels began to surface of these beastly werewolf figures
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: as people grappled with their hidden human desires.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: In 1831,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Man-Wolf is published as one of the first fully formed werewolf stories,
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: A nobleman is trapped within this curse of transformation,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: and the duality ultimately destroys him.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's The Werewolf, published in 1896 with an echo of feminine sovereignty.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here, the female character grapples with sexuality,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: temptation, and the fear of women's autonomy within her own wolfish self.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: there's the werewolf-like form in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Centuries of Irish and Celtic storytelling had already blurred the line between man and beast.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: The warrior bands who lived as wolves,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: the cursed tribes of Ossory, the omens of the she-wolf at a dying king's gate.
• 11:18
  All of these werewolf stories point to a surreal fascination with the beast within,
• 11:20
  the nature of control and morality against forbidden desires.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Which seems to be a long-standing thread.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: As people rejected these very human parts of themselves,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: the need for expression became all the more relevant.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: the werewolf resurfaced to demand recognition as a sacred integral piece
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: of Celtic identity.
• 11:44
  While writers wrestled with the wolf inside the human,
• 11:46
  Ireland began to reclaim the power of the wolf's image.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: The Irish wolfhound, the Hound of Kings, was more than a hunting dog.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was the tamed reflection of its wild ancestor.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: To the Celts, hound and wolf shared a sacred lineage, two sides of the same divine strength.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Revered as a status symbol for chieftains, these hounds were famed across Europe.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: They were even sent to Rome in 391 CE as a gift bred for size, speed, and courage.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: These dogs could run down men in battle and stood as fierce protectors of their homesteads.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, like the wolves they once hunted, the Irish wolfhounds nearly vanished.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: By the 19th century,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: their bloodlines had all but disappeared,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: until Captain George Augustus Graham set out to bring them back.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: He tracked down the last surviving strains of the breed and crossbred them
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: with Great Danes,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mastiffs,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: and Scottish deerhounds, among others, shaping them into the form we know today.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: His work was more than breeding, it was a true resurrection.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The wolfhound became a symbol of loyalty, nobility, and endurance once again.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: To many, it felt as though Ireland had called back one of its ancient guardians.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: The people embraced these dogs as a renewal of Ireland's spirit.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: A revival of their true selves.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which speaks to a deep, enduring longing to connect with our ancient past.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Though we might not have the need to be as fierce as ancient wolves in battle,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can still carry the same loyalty and courage into our own lives.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: These werewolf stories are reminders of what happens when we deny our true nature.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: That repression can often breed destruction.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: To live well is not to silence the beast within, but to walk beside it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: To protect what we love and stand our ground when the world demands obedience.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: We can return to that ancient knowing.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: As if we are flying through the forest, barefoot, howling, and utterly free.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wholly, simply, perfectly.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wild.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Wild Kin.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like more Celtic-inspired stories and resources, subscribe to Wild Kin on Substack.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Link is in the show notes.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me by the fire, and we'll meet again soon.