Okay, I just found that I misremembered one of your posts; you say that werewolves ALWAYS have tails but transformed witches don't. Can you source that? I thought I've read that, at the very least, werewolves who were made by witchcraft were supposed to be tailless.
Before I get into it, though, I will say that part of my personal stake in werewolf studies is to push for a less broad definition of the word “werewolf.” Personally, I don’t hold to many scholars’ ideas of calling every single person turning into a wolf a “werewolf,” and this applies doubly to things involving witchcraft. For example, I don’t approve at all of the now popular idea of calling Peter Stubbe a werewolf.
Personally, I think a “werewolf” needs to fit a certain, meaningful criteria, instead of any old person or thing who has the ability to turn into a wolf.
In particular if their wolf shapeshifting is based in illusionary magic, accompanied by shapeshifting into other animal forms, or their wolf form was not undertaken with any particular meaning (i.e., could’ve just as easily been any other animal with no actual wolf motifs), they aren’t really “werewolves,” in my opinion.
All that being said, as you can probably guess, I butt heads a lot with what scholars sometimes refer to as werewolves.
My sources on the “werewolves always have tails” come from a few different places…
Firstly, there’s Henry Boguet in “Of the Metamorphosis of Men intoBeasts,” from 1590 (my version was republished in A Lycanthropy Reader:Werewolves in Western Culture, edited and compiled by Charlotte F. Otten). On page 79 of this edition, Boguet marks a difference between werewolves and witches that have turned into wolves, repeating a common belief that, when witches turn into animals, they have “no tails.”
Secondly, there’s the Malleus Maleficarum, specifically question X of part I, “Whether Witches can by some Glamour Change Men into Beasts.” I’m pulling this from Monatgue Summers’ translation.
They say that, “the devil can deceive the human fancy so that a man really seems to be an animal.” This specifically refers to deception. Thus, illusion. Not a true, physical change as we get with a werewolf.
Furthermore, however, they say that “when it says that no creature can be made by the power of the devil, this is manifestly true if Made is understood to mean Created. But if the word Made is taken to refer to natural production, it is certain that devils can make some imperfect creatures.”
“Imperfect,” in this instance, generally thought to refer to “tailless,” along with a few other legends, such as a witch in animal form still bearing human eyes.
Bear in mind that the Malleus Maleficarum was written and compiled during a time period in which werewolves were considered a form of witchcraft, although not equal to it. One could become a werewolf via a curse, without directly practicing that witchcraft.
This also came from a time period when werewolves were considered negative (obviously), unlike in earlier time periods, and much more like today.
Moving on, we also have Albert the Great in his book On Animals, as cited by Montague Summers, who says that devils can indeed make animals: “they can, with God’s permission, make imperfect animals.” Again on the imperfection.
There is one scholar who disputes this very, very briefly in his writing, and that is actually one of my prime sources: Montague Summers. In his book The Werewolf, he remarks, “many–but not all– authorities hold that the werewolf has no tail.”
Something to remember about Summers, however, is that firstly, he truly believed in werewolves as a form of witchcraft. To him, werewolves are more closely connected with those aforementioned witches (that I think werewolves need to be separated from). Secondly, when he makes this sweeping statement, he provides absolutely no sources whatsoever and doesn’t really make any kind of argument to back up or to defend that idea. I’m calling his BS on that one.
Thirdly, we have an overwhelming number of other sources on werewolves being depicted with tails as opposed to without. We have imagery from various time periods (as appeared in my post on werewolf appearances that you referred to; there are a few more images here), in which they are virtually always depicted with tails or mid-transformation, thus leaving us unsure if they are going to grow a tail or not. One of the only depictions we have of a tailless werewolf is the wolf-man woodcut of the one eating the baby, which is in itself a rare sight, as werewolves weren’t generally “wolf-men” very often in folklore.
Descriptions of werewolves in folklore frequently refer to tails, or else refer to the werewolf as simply a “wolf” and thus lead us to assume they must have a tail, or such a radical difference would’ve been noticed by the narrator (Niceros’s tale, Bisclavret, Melion, the curse of Lykaon, Chinese legends, and many more).
If I dug through my mountains of books, I’m sure I could find more citations/discussions/arguments on this, but hopefully this helps for now! :) In my opinion, I think it makes sense to say that werewolves have tails, whereas witches don’t if or when they choose to turn into a wolf via illusion or otherwise.
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