The Day of the Golden Jackal

Canis aureus

 

 

Golden jackals are small wolf-like canids, about three times the size of a red fox, native to Southeast Europe and parts of Asia, with a lovely coloured coat (the golden base shade varying seasonally from a pale creamy yellow to a dark tawny), though, fortunately, not one prized by the fur trade, as it is quite coarse in texture and relatively short in length. 

 

And, I'm pleased to report, their numbers and range have been rapidly expanding during the last few decades. Indeed, you can now find jackals living, hunting and howling in many parts of Central and Northeastern Europe, occupying areas where there are few or no wolves, but abundant food and shelter. 

 

It has been estimated by the IUCN that whilst there may be fewer than 17,000 wolves left in Europe, there are around 117,000 jackals - and the more the merrier, I say, although, of course, all the usual suspects - such as farmers - raise their familiar objections and even poets warn: "We should never have let the jackals loose, and patted them on the head. They were feeding on our death all the while."

 

Sadly, therefore, these intelligent and sociable animals continue to be hunted in many countries and in the charming region of Transcaucasia, where they still associate jackals (as carrion-eaters) with the underworld, they are caught with large fishing hooks baited with meat and suspended three feet from the ground with wire (as the jackals can only reach the meat by jumping, they are then hooked by the lip or jaw). 

 

May the great jackal-headed god Anubis bite off the hands and tear out the throats of those who practice such cruelty ...

 

St. Christopher: the Dog-Headed Saint

Ágios Christóforos

Kynokephalos

Until I read the 'Sinister Writings of Abel Tiffauges' [1], I had no idea that St. Christopher - the Christ-bearer - was widely believed in Byzantium to belong to the savage race of dog-headed people known as the cynocephali ... 

 

Obviously, the Orthodox Church didn't like to acknowledge this and disapproved of depictions of the saint that showed him as semi-human; it was only from the 17th-century on that artists began to paint Christopher in his full therianthropic glory (though these images were prescribed in 18th-century Russia during the reign of Peter the Great).        

 

The ancient Greeks, of course, were long familiar with canine-headed Egyptian dieties, such as Duamutef (son of Horus) and Anubis (ruler of all things associated with death) and believed that there was a race of dog-headed people living in the mountains of India who wore the skins of animals and communicated by barking.     

The cynocephali afford such a marvellous combination of magic and animality, that they have become archetypal figures within the human imagination, as we can see, for example, in medieval art and literature. Early Christian scholars wrestled with the question of their origin; how could they be descendants of Adam? And, if they weren't descendants of Adam, then how could they be considered human?     

It really is a fascinating topic; one which certainly makes me more interested in the life of St. Christopher, who was not only canine of feature, but described by some as a giant. I do wish he'd dropped the accursed Christ-child in the river, however, and left him there to drown. For if he had, then perhaps the latter's moral legacy would not continue to weigh so heavily upon us all ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Part I of Michel Tournier's brilliant novel The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014). See pp. 35-37. The account given here of the life of St. Christopher is adapted from Jacapo da Varazze's Golden Legend - a collection of hagiographies originally compiled c. 1259-66 and widely read in late-Medieval Europe.