From: etherman23
Message: 46935
Date: 2007-01-13
>
> I have found that my interest in trying to find common Indo-European
> traditions and legends related to animals continues to be very
> strong. I have already mentioned in a post a few pages back about
> were-bears and were-wolves as being possible reflexives of wolf and
> bear cults in the army, or a negative attitude the priestly class and
> the agricultural class may have held about the army.
>
> However, that is only two creatures, and while those creatures are
> cross-culturally very, very important, there are surely other beleifs
> surrounding other creatures that have been overlooked.
>
> For example: there is a suspicion that between the beliefs of the
> Greeks and the Old Indians on medicine, the rat (or possibly the mole-
> rat) was considered to hold important medical properties. Whence
> comes this belief? Is it related to the use of the root *muHs as
> mouse, muscle and steal?
> Or the strange case of the hare: *kehsen means "the grey one". How
> descriptive. There was surely some taboo around rabbits and hares.
> Now, what on earth could have caused a taboo on such a seemingly
> harmless creature?! Could it have to do with "the Rabbit in the
> Moon" - if you look the the Moon when it's at a certain tilt, it
> looks like a leaping lagomorph [i.e. rabbit or hare] - ?
>
> What other kinds of beliefs of likely PIE origin does anyone know
> that are tied to animals?
>
>
> In addition: does anyone know of werewolf stories from Lithuania or
> Latvia? Anyone know of Indo-Iranian werewolf stories? Albanian ones?
> Or Armenian ones? Or at the very least, does anybody know the words
> for "werewolf" in those languages? It would be most wonderful if
> similarities could be found across the swath of the Indo-European
> languages and cultures!
>