Jordan Smith- Rougarou

Jordan Smith

Summary: The Rougarou (or sometimes called loup-garou) is a Cajun monster folklore. The Rougarou is considered a legend within the Cajun community, and is said to have the body of a man with the head of a wolf or a dog, which prowls Louisiana swamps looking for misbehaving children. It is said that the Rougarou prowls the swamps all the way from the Greater New Orleans to the Acadiana area; which is now where this legend is said to live. A fun fact about the Rougarou is that it forgets how to count past 12. Many people say in order to protect yourself from the Rougarou, you should place 13 items by your door, which will distract the Rougarou because it’ll spend all night trying to count all 13 items. By that time, the sun will have come up, and the Rougarou must flee back to its swamps.

History: All of the Rougarou’s history seems to trace back to France. Some say the folklore legend originated in Medieval France because the belief in werewolves were very prominent then. In the 16th century, people of that time saw the Rougarou as someone with some sort of genetic disorder being that the Rougarou would have lived a normal life as a normal person up until whatever tragic event happened which flared up their condition. This would soon start the transition into the Rougarou that we know today. Many people of that time said that the Rougarou developed a craving for meat and blood, but the transformation would not be complete until it actually gets its first bite of human flesh. While that is what many French people believe, French immigrants say that the legend of the Rougarou started as a “Bogeyman” to just scare bad children and to scare Catholics into obedience.

Legends: The Rougarou has had many stories, both true and maybe false, passed down from generation to generation by both, word of mouth, and actual stories. There is this one instance written in The Nicholls Worth, which is a local college newspaper, with the title “Rougarou Remains Strong Figure in Cajun Folklore”. In the story, it is said that a young boy was being followed by a dog, and the boy decides to cut the dog with his knife. Afterwards, the boy then watches the dog turn into a man, which prompts the kid to run home to his family. The interesting part is that the next day, a physician appeared in town with his right arm cut. A little while afterwards, the physician shot himself and a year later, the boy killed himself and left a letter that the family turned over to the police, which he refuses to let anyone see til this day.

Adaptations: The Rougarou does not really have any adaptations other than the fact that many French people in the 16thcentury believed that the Rougarou started out as a regular human being with a slight disability who then transformed into the Rougarou once he got his first taste of human blood and flesh. There was also the idea that more recently French immigrants thought of the Rougarou to be a scary mythical person whose job was to basically scare people into doing right. In the older times, they sought the Rougarou out to be a real person at one point in time, which would terrorize, hunt, and kill people for the sole reason of consuming human flesh.

Analysis: I believe the creator of the Rougarou legend adaptations decided to make those adaptations for several reasons. The first being that the new adaptation of the Rougarou being a Bogeyman fits the modern times that we are in today. It is easier to scare children into doing something by telling them about a creature that does bad things to those who don’t listen. It is also easy to use religion to coerce people into doing the right things. I believe the 2nd reason for the adaptation was because as times go on, more and more evidence gets uncovered about certain things, whether its scientifically or logically. With that being said, eventually discoverers would have uncovered fallacies tying to the idea of the Rougarou being a real person who developed a taste for human flesh and blood—which all know is very unlikely.

Works Cited

*Exemplore*. cryptids: The Rougarou . (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2023, from https://exemplore.com/