Picture it: you’re eight years old and you try to walk out of the house in a pair of purple surfer shorts with green palm trees on them and a Ninja Turtles t-shirt, your hair uncombed and sticking out at least four different directions.  Your mother quickly grabs the back of your t-shirt and hauled me back into the house, shouting “You can’t go out like that! People will think you were raised by wolves!”

But, would that have been such a bad thing?  You’d be in good company.  Some of the greatest heroes of antiquity were, in fact, raised by wolves.  Romulus and Remus went on to founding the great city, then empire, of Rome after being fostered by a she-wolf.  Cormac mac Art became high king of Ireland. Siegfried, mythical hero of German legend, was raised by a wolf when his mother died in childbirth.

Romulus and Remus were the twin sons of the god Mars and a Vestal Virgin.  Set adrift on the Tiber river, legend says they washed up near the cave of Lupercal.  They were found by a she-wolf who suckled and raised them.  After founding Rome, these mama’s boys didn’t forget their roots.  Several statues and fountains of the boys suckling their foster “mom” can still be seen in Rome today.

Art mac Cuinn, High King of Ireland and father of Cormac mac Art, died in battle against his nephew.  His son, Cormac, was taken by a she-wolf and reared alongside her own cubs when his mother, Achta, in hiding after the death of her husband, fell asleep in the woods.  When she woke and found her son gone, Achta did what any loving mother would do: she screamed.  She and her servants looked for the baby and, being unable to find him, offered a substantial reward for his return.  A hunter named Grec found Cormac frolicking with his new fuzzy siblings.  Achta scooped them up, wolves and all, and raised them as her own.

When his mother died in childbirth, Siegfried was nursed by a she-wolf.  This German hero would grow up to slay dragons.  He would win the heart of the Queen of Valkyeris.  And it all began with a wolf.

What is the fascination people have with the wolf?  Walking into any store in the mall will yield any number of  knick knacks emblazoned with wolfish images.  They grin at us from t-shirts, towels, CD covers, books, etc.  Yet, classically, the wolf is often portrayed as the villain of the fairy tale world.  In reality, the wolf was hunted near to extinction.  But many mythical characters are said to have been raised by wolves.  How do we reconcile our love/hate relationship with the wolf?  I certainly don’t know.  But it’s a relationship that we share with our ancestors, the authors of our myths and legends.