As I understand it, general folklore holds that a werewolf can only be permenently killed by a silver weapon. Does this then mean that they are otherwise unkillable, but still age normally, or does the curse retard the aging process?
Folk tradition doesn’t really work that way. Traditional folklore about werewolves is solely concerned with the human-werewolf interface. There’s no tradition of lore about their life in the wild. You might want to check out the chapter in Montague Sumers’s The Werewolf in Lore and Legend entitled “His Science and Practice” and see if there’s anything there. There’s a limited preview on GoogleBooks and it’s pretty widely available in the hard copy.
Untrue. Werewolf folklore typically has werewolves able to be hurt by normal weapons. The idea that they are basically invulnerable except to weapons made of silver (or even take damage from merely contacting silver) is a feature of relatively recent (last century) fiction. In most such cases those fictional werewolves are not thought to be immortal, just difficult to wound.
Some fiction has them ageing at 7 times the normal rate when in werewolf form.
The Underworld movie series has them as not aging.
Last century Hollywood, to be precise. Much of the lore cited in 1941’s “The Wolfman” was created out of the whole cloth on the spot by the writer, the well-known science fiction author Curtis Siodmak.
Well, sort of. The silver bullet dates back to at least 1700 (see Opie and Tatem’s A Dictionary of Superstitions, s.v. Silver Bullet) as an effective remedy against those who cannot be killed by lead bullets. Early sources are exclusively witches and other unholy humans, and all from Scottish or Northern English contexts. Since wolves were rare by 1700, soon to be extinct in Britain, we don’t have a lot of post-medieval British werewolf material. Still, the notion that a silver bullet would do for a werewolf where a lead bullet wouldn’t is perfectly consistent with traditional folklore, even if it’s not explicitly expressed. I found a French source stating that a silver bullet would do for a werwolf or a witch, but it didn’t cite a specific source so I can’t verify that it predates 1941.
I always figured Oz was aging on Buffy, and it never was stated that Angel’s brief girlfriend in Season 5 wasn’t aging.
Has Supernatural dealt with this? I see episode 17 of season 2 is about a werewolf, but I don’t remember if they live forever or if it is even stated.
Moved from General Questions to Cafe Society.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
Nope, they arent immortal. Werewolfism, ignoring modern secular retellings, is mostly associated with being cursed by god or by someone with godly powers, like a saint or other holy man. Immortality is its own curse (or reward), so it doesnt seem fair to add the two. Also, according to wikipedia attempts to help cure a werewolf sometimes ended in the death of the werewolf, so immortality doesnt seem too strongly associated with the legend.
While I’m posting, there are some other misconceptions in the OP.
**general folklore:**Not sure what you mean by this. Folklore is a product of culture, and varies greatly from group to group as well as within each group. Contemporary American lore about werewolves isn’t really folklore because it doesn’t occur in a folkloric context. There’s certainly no “general folklore” about werewolves in the English-speaking world. If you mean “folklore” in the colloquial sense of “stuff that isn’t true,” use “fiction.” (That sounds really snotty to me. I don’t mean to be, but I have a hard time with my tone in writing.)
only be permenently killed by a silver weapon: There are many other ways: a weapon of iron, getting them to bleed, killing them at a crossroads. The list is endless and varies by culture, and there’s a lot of overlap with offing other supernatural bad guys.
the curse: A curse is just one way to become a werewolf. It could also be done voluntarily and at will.
As others have pointed out, the idea that werewolves can only be killed with silver bullets is pretty recent. In most folk stories and historic superstitions then curing a werewolf could be tricky, but they could usually be killed in all the same ways one would kill a human or wolf.
Werewolfism was historically often associated with witchcraft and Satan worship, and there appears to have been concern in some cultures that dead werewolves were more likely than ordinary people to rise again as vampires or vampire-like beings. It was thus necessary to take special precautions with the corpse of a werewolf (like burning it) to be sure the werewolf didn’t come back. But that’s not exactly the same as being immortal.
In more recent werewolf fiction werewolves are sometimes depicted as being immune to aging or aging more slowly than ordinary humans, but more often they age normally. The relative lack of old werewolves seems to be due to their violent lifestyles. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series werewolves are informally considered undead like vampires and zombies, but this seems to be largely prejudice on the part of other species. Discworld werewolves are vulnerable to silver, difficult but not impossible to kill by other means, and apparently do age because the mother of the main werewolf character is described as looking like a somewhat older version of her daughter.
I am neither witch nor were, and I think a silver bullet would do for me:eek:
I suppose by “folklore” I really meant “general knowledge.” Sorry.
If you’re talking about fiction, it’s going to vary from story to story. The original Dark Shadows seemed to consider werewolves immortal. Quentin becomes a werewolf in the 19th century, then shows up in 1970.
In Kelley Armstong’s Otherworld series they’re not immortal, but they do age quite a bit slower than us. Jeremy’s in his early 50s, but people think he’s in his mid 30s, that sort of thing.
In “True Blood” they get hurt just like humans but can heal faster.
How exactly can I voluntarily become a vampire? Need answer fast!
Sorry, it’s a lot easier to become a werewolf. To become a vampire it’s mostly down to things your mother did when she was pregnant. If you can arrange to have a cat jump over your corpse when you’re dead, that should do the trick. According to Paul Barber (Vampires, Burial, and Death – a must-read if there ever was one), pretty much any animal will do, up to and including humans. Or you could just jump over the corpse of a recently-deceased friend and have them bite you when they arise. Warning: they’re more likely to bite you near the heart than on the neck. You can also be the first person to die of an epidemic, though it’s too late for Swine Flu.
I’ll second this, Barber’s book is a very interesting, scholarly look at vampire folklore, burial customs, and their relationship to pre-scientific human understanding of infection, death, and decomposition. I think most Dopers with any interest in vampires would enjoy this, it’s well-researched and there’s no woo-woo nonsense. The author is serious but does have a sense of humor about his subject.
Warning: there are some rather graphic descriptions of decomposing bodies, but this handled in a straightforward manner and bothered me less than I’d have thought.
For that to be true, traditional folklore would have to hold that a lead bullet wouldn’t work, otherwise a bullet is just a bullet as far as the werewolf is concerned. Werewolves were just wolves that could change back into men later. They weren’t immune to damage. In fact the point of most such folklore was that the wolf was hurt and they’d learn it wasn’t a normal wolf because some neighbor would be found later with a wound in the same place.
Silver bullets do pop up here and there, but not in connection with werewolves. (The alleged silver bullet in the Beast of Gévaudan tale was added in very recent accounts of the story and does not appear in the original.)