Pieter Plas

Falling Sickness, Descending Wolf: Some Notes on Popular Etymology, Symptomatology, and ‘Predicate Synonymy’ in Western Balkan Slavic Folk Tradition

On the basis of the available ethnographic, oral literary and lexicographic sources from the 19th and 20th centuries, this article analyses the linguistic and extralinguistic (cultural, conceptual) motivations underlying associations between epilepsy and wolves in traditional folk culture of the Western Balkan Slavic (i.e. Serbo-Croatian) area. It focuses on folk medicinal-magic applications of the wolf in treatments of epilepsy, the interpretation of which necessarily involves reference to folk etymology, symptomatology and attitudes towards disease, the role of the wolf in folk medicine in general, and aspects of wolf symbolism and world view outreaching the mere domain of folk medicine.