Tales of the ancients: Colonial werewolves and the mapping of postcolonial Ireland

Abstract

In the preface to his Topographia Hibernica, written in 1188 for Henry II ("our western Alexander"), Gerald of Wales claimed that: Sicut enim orientales plage propriis quibusdam et sibi innatis preeminent et precellunt ostentis, sic et occidentales circumferentie suis nature miraculis illustrantur. Quociens quippe tanquam seriis et veris fatigata negociis paululum secedit et excedit, remotis his partibus quasi verecundis et occultis natura ludit excessibus. Just as the countries of the East are remarkable and distinguished for certain prodigies peculiar and native to themselves, so the boundaries of the West are also made remarkable by their own wonders of nature. For sometimes tired, as it were, of the true and the serious [Nature] draws aside and goes away, and in these remote parts indulges herself in these secret and distant freaks.1.