Case file · Folklore / legend
The wild man of medieval Europe
The woodwose or Wilder Mann, a hairy man of the forest wielding a club, filled medieval art, heraldry and pageants. In 1393 a wild-man masquerade at the French court ended in disaster, the Bal des Ardents.
1393 CE · 48.85, 2.35 · status: legend
The account
Wild men represented untamed nature and were carved on churches, drawn in manuscripts and used as heraldic supporters. At the Bal des Ardents in Paris, King Charles VI and five courtiers danced in costumes of linen and pitch made to look like shaggy wild men; a torch set them alight and four died. Scholars see the wild man as one ancestor of modern Bigfoot imagery.
The sceptical view
A cultural symbol, not a reported animal, though later travellers projected the idea onto apes and onto peoples they encountered.
Connections in the atlas
- Basajaun, lord of the woods
- The Wild Man of Orford
- Victor of Aveyron
- Enkidu, the first literary wild man
- Tulp's 'Indian satyr'
- Grendel's lair
- Bigfoot (Sasquatch)