A Halloween Reading of "The Werewolf" by Eugene Field

Описание: Many people believe that the werewolf is a creation of Hollywood, specifically the 1941 Universal film “The Wolf Man” starring Lon Chaney, Jr. As the hapless Lawrence Talbot. Doomed to come under the curse of the werewolf, an old gypsy woman recites to him the classic lines:

Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the Autumn moon and bright.

But the werewolf did not begin there, in fact, the 1941 film was not even the first depiction of a werewolf. Werewolves did not come from Hollywood, but folk tales, myths and legends.

Dracula didn’t seem to mind being a vampire. The mummy was sworn to protect the tomb of his lover. A ghost is dead and can’t help it, it wants something so they haunt people, trying to get the point across. But unlike other famous monsters, the curse of the werewolf was particularly cruel. It wasn’t just that you could never enjoy a moonlight stroll ever again, or even that you lost control of yourself and went around killing people. No, the real curse of the lycanthope was that they were doomed to kill not just random people, but all those they loved.

While there are many stories about werewolves written well before that most famous 1941 film adaptation, we’ll hear one from Eugene Field. Field was a newspaper columnist, humorist and poet. In fact, he may best be known for his poem about three sleepy children named “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod”.

But he also dabbled in other sorts of tales including the one we’re about to hear. For our last installment of spooky tales this October, we present for you a tale of lycanthropy, called “The Werewolf”

“The Werewolf” (1911) by Eugene Field

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