page_title: Jean de l'Ours
section_title: Physical appearance
hierarchical_section_title: Jean de l'Ours / Physical appearance
caption_attribution_description: English: Jean-de-l'Ours as a child, a foundling adopted by a widow abducted by a bear.
context_page_description: Jean de l'Ours or John the Bear, John of the Bear, John-of-the-Bear, John Bear, is the leading character in the French folktale Jean de l'Ours classed as Type 301B in the Aarne-Thompson system; it can also denote any tale of this type.
  Some typical elements are that the hero is born half-bear, half-human. He obtains a weapon, usually a heavy iron cane, and on his journey, bands up with two or three companions. At a castle the hero defeats an adversary, pursues him to a hole, discovers an underworld, and rescues three princesses. The companions abandon him in the hole, taking the princesses for themselves. The hero escapes, finds the companions and gets rid of them. He marries the most beautiful princess of the three, but not before going through certain ordeal by the king.
  Numerous variants exist in France, often retaining the name Jean de l'Ours or something similar for the hero. Some of the analogues in Europe that retain the names corresponding to "John" are: Jan de l'Ors; Joan de l'Os; Juan del Oso, Juan el Oso, Juanito el Oso, Juanillo el Oso; Giovanni dell'Orso, Iann he vaz houarn; Ivashko Medvedko.
context_section_description: Several French versions explicitly comment on Jean de l'ours being covered with body hair on his entire body. One Gascon version, Jan l'Oursét adds that he had "a large head just like a bear's, except for its shape".
  The hero is human from the waist up and bear from the waist down in a Mexican version (Juan el Oso) as well as the Russian tale "Ivanko Medv(i)edko" (or "Ivanko the Bear's son"). For comparison, in the Avar tale "Bear's Ear", the protagonist has ears like a bear.
  Jean de l'Ours is a beautiful abandoned child raised by a mother bear in Henri Carnoy's version (1885). Along the same vein, Jean de l'Ours was a beautiful foundling adopted by a widow according to Carnoy in another version (1885, illustrated by Édouard Zier), but this, except for an altered telling of the boy's origin, is by and large identical to the tale given earlier by Hippolyte Babou (1862): In both texts he is depicted as an angel-faced, blue-eyed boy who wears a bearskin around his loins, has a lush mane like Samson's falling from head to chest, and carries a poplar sapling as a staff.
  In an artist's depiction by Jean-Claude Pertuzé Le conte de Jean de l'ours (1988), Jean appears with rounded bear's ears attached high on his head.
caption: Jean-de-l'Ours as a child, here a foundling adopted by a widow abducted by a bear.
  —illustration by Édouard Zier.
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