The later medieval fierce men

The wild men were firmly rooted in the folklore and with the many roles being played were depicted in artwork during the later medieval era across Europe. The imagery all showed the human with the thick pelt of their hair and their figure appeared in embroidery, paintings, statues, carvings, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, and even on the more obscure objects like the bread mold.

Together with the artwork, it is at the fourteenth century the word ‘woodwose’ arrive into use as the means of illustrating a legendary wild man’s figure. The term is an origin of the recent surname ‘Woodhouse’, but the etymology is somewhat not clear – although the ‘wood’ definitely pertains to the forests or woods, the suffix wose having some possible meanings. These two most likely versions of wose are ‘forlorn being’ ‘or the abandoned person’.

The medieval wild man has been illustrated in the sources like Sir Gawain and Green Knight as the hairy beast like of a person, and a woodwose appeared in the artwork of the era as a vicious and bestial creature – although just like Enkidu at the Epic of the Gilgamesh, the wild man may be tamed with the right person (normally the virtuous and pure young woman).

One particular source for myths like the woodwose is the Greek explorer Hanno that had travelled into the western shore in Africa during the fifth century BC. The Hanno illustrated the island filled with the hairy savages – mainly female – called by the natives as gorilla (that is now identified as gorillas) and the other source is Pliny the Elder, the historian, who illustrated one more race of savage of human-like being in India (now identified as gibbons).