Friday's Mythological Creature of the Day -- Mardagayl

I have this wonderful Mythological Encyclopedia in Russian from 1991. I like to open it at a random page, select an article and discover/reintroduce a creature/place/etc.

Why?

1) I like to learn things 2) It helps in writing 3) I’ve always suspected that there is a reason why certain creatures/monsters/beliefs are common across the globe. Just haven’t figured it out yet ;-)) So, I thought, I’d share with you what I can find from my Encyclopedia and a 30-minute search on Internet during lunch break. If you come across a related article, fun fact, please share!!!

Drum roll please! I am thrilled to introduce a Mardagayl --an Armenian werewolf with a twist.

a) Typically, it’s a woman.

b) It is believed that if God decides to punish a woman, he makes her to eat the food intended for a Mardagayl (the food usually falls from the sky, like hail). After a woman snacks on these kibbles, a wolf skin falls upon a woman and turns the unfortunate foodie into a Mardagayl. At night she hunts with a wolf’s pack, devours corpses, kidnaps children and tears them apart. (Huh? Fascinating…)

c) During the day, the Mardagayl takes the wolf skin off, hides it in a secret place and goes along with her life until nightfall! (I found this part slightly disturbing. So does she actually enjoy the transformation??? I mean, all that devouring and killing the innocent kiddies! Otherwise, why would she go through the trouble of hiding the skin? If she can take it off, why put it on again, voluntarily… And then like a typical sociopath she happily trots through her daily routine, like she did nothing wrong. )

d) The punishment typically lasts seven years, then the wolf skin returns to the sky, and the Mardagayl becomes a regular woman again. (After seven years of nightly gore and pillage how can she go back to being normal???)

e) The creation of the Milky Way is associated with Mardagayl. When a Mardagayl was trying to snack on a visitor, the visitor cut the monster’s breast with a knife, & the milk from her breast spilled over the sky.

I also found a few cool sites for those of you who enjoy the werewolves’ legends.

http://www.ilovewerewolves.com -- this one has a list of various names the werewolves are known in different cultures

http://www.werewolves.com -- a bunch of interesting articles

Enjoy!