Little Red Riding Hood and the Werewolf

     Little Red Riding Hood, as every schoolboy should know, but doesn't, was originally published by Charles Perrault - who, in point of fact, had much better style and flair than the anonymous writers who churn out the story in our modern children's books. But he didn't originate it. As a folk tale, many variations exist in Europe dating back hundreds of years. And it was bowdlerised even by the time he received it. Originally, it would have been a tale about an encounter with a werewolf.
     This should be obvious once you think about it. When Little Red Riding Hood first met the wolf in the forest, how was he able to talk to her? Why wasn't she scared stiff? Why didn't he eat her up then and there? I always used to wonder about this when I was a boy.
     Clearly, she met him in his natural, human form. Once she had told him her story, it set his evil mind at work. He repaired to somewhere private and performed whatever conjurations are necessary to transform into a wolf. (Montague Summers recorded such artifices as girding on an enchanted belt of wolf's fur, and then urinating around his clothes to turn them into a pile of stones until he returned.) As a wolf, he then ran all the way to Grandma's place, much faster than a human child could go, and polished off Grandma. Presumably, he then reverted to his human shape and, naked, crept into Grandma's bed, pulling the bedclothes up to his chin, and wrapping her bonnet tightly around his head as a disguise. When the unsuspecting grandchild said, "What a deep voice you have!" it was his masculine voice which nearly gave him away. When she said, "What big eyes ... big teeth etc you have!" he was busy turning into a wolf again.
    It's pretty simple when you look at it.

Wini, the Wild White Man of Badu

     It must have been about 1958 or 1959 that Ion Idriess' book, Isles of Despair was republished, and it created a stir. One of my teachers at primary school told us about it. There was an article about it in The Woman's Day. A few years later I was able to read the book myself: the well-written, gripping true story of Barbara Thompson, who had been adopted by a tribe of Torres Strait headhunters. Equally intriguing, the book described how she met, and narrowly evaded Wongai, a ruthless escaped convict, who had been accepted on another island as a chief, and the incarnation of a god.
     A few years later, another of the same author's books was republished: The Wild White Man of Badu. Here we were presented with the gripping account of this same character. It told how, on escaping from Norfolk Island in an open boat, the convict killed and ate his companions and then, fortuitously negotiating the reefs of the Coral Sea, landed on Badu Island at the most opportune time. The natives were celebrating the wongai, or wild plum, totem when he arrived at the same time as the lightning flashed behind him. Shouting "Wongai!" which he had heard the natives shout, and which he assumed was a war cry, he slew the first warrior who attacked him. Thus, the natives concluded he was their god in human form, and so commenced his climb to power.
     Of course, when I was a boy I assumed that anything on the printed page was the truth. Fifty years later, I have developed some critical faculties, but all that time I have been wanting to learn the full story of this enigmatic character who once dominated the western islands of Torres Strait for a quarter of a century. I don't suppose I ever will.