The wild man or woodwose is a mythical figure that appears in the artwork and literature of medieval Europe. Images of wild men appear in the carved and painted roof bosses where intersecting ogee vaults meet in the Canterbury Cathedral, in positions where one is also likely to encounter the vegetal Green Man. The wild man, pilosus or “hairy all over,” and often armed with a club, was a link between civilized humans and the dangerous elf-like spirits of natural woodland, such as Puck. The image of the wild man survived to appear as supporter for heraldic coats-of-arms, especially in Germany, well into the 16th century. Early engravers in Germany and Italy were particularly fond of wild men, wild women, and wild families, with examples from Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer among others.
Figures similar to the European wild man are ancient and occur worldwide. The earliest known one is the character Enkidu in the Ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh the hairy, feral Enkidu is raised by the creatures of the wilderness, ignorant of civilization and other humans. Once he sleeps with the temple prostitute Shamat he is abandoned by his animal companions and becomes civilized by further contact with humanity. One ancient representation of a wild human that greatly influenced the medieval European concepts was the portrayal of Nebuchadnezzar II in the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. Daniel 4 depicts God humbling the Babylonian king for his boastfulness; he is stricken mad and is ejected from human society, and he grows hair on his body and lives like a beast. This image was popular in medieval depictions of Nebuchadnezzar. Similarly, late medieval legends of John Chrysostom portray the saint’s asceticism as making him so isolated and feral that hunters who capture him cannot tell if he is man or beast.
The medieval wild man concept also drew on lore about similar beings from the Classical world such as the Roman faun and Silvanus. On top of the etymological evidence discussed above, there are several folk traditions about the wild man that correspond with ancient practices and beliefs. Notably, peasants in the Grisons tried to capture the wild man by getting him drunk and tying him up in hopes that he would give them his wisdom in exchange for freedom. This suggests a connection to an ancient tradition recorded as early as Xenophon and appearing in the works of Ovid, Pausanias, and Claudius Aelianus in which shepherds caught a forest being, here called Silenus or Faunus, in the same fashion and for the same purpose.
