After the suspicious post about wolves chasing down and eating an entire wedding party from the other day I have been doing some searching and have come to the conclusion that wolves like wedding cake. Or maybe brides. Either way, if I ever get married I will be sure to stay away from wolf infested forests on the trip home.
Wodonga and Towong Sentinel 18 Jan 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69540507
In 1895 this wedding party in Hidos, Hungary, made the mistake of taking the dense forest route home from the ceremony. They were set upon by hungry wolves and thirteen lives were lost. In this tale at least some of the people managed to make it to safety, unlike the other lot from 1911 who threw their women and children to the ravening hordes* in order to make their escape.
Let this be a lesson to you. No wedding dresses in wolfy forests, ok?!
If any of you out there have a pet wolf I would love to know. Do wolves like wedding cake? If you are clad in bridal attire are you more likely to be chomped? Could you check? No, don’t! Just kidding!
I think the combination of a cold winter and a possibly drunken and inattentive crowd making their way through the dark forest would be something no wolf could resist no matter what the prey was wearing….
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*I did a bit more looking around in the old articles after all of you showed such interest in that Worst Wedding Ever post to see if I coud find any more details.
Northern Times 11 Mar 1911 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74887226
Apparently the wedding party numbered about 120 and the two survivors did throw the women and children to the pursuing wolves to save themselves, with the bride and groom being the last to go. Some articles commented on the state of the two survivors being semi-demented when they reached safety.
Funnily enough, not one of the many accounts I read pointed out in a negative way that they had just allowed 118 people to die in order to save themselves! I bet those two never got an invite to a family get-together ever again.
Here is a link to a long and dramatic news account of the event if you would like to experience the full horror. No demands for punishment at the end though, mores the pity.
Argh! The last paragraph on the bridal party is missing 😦 Possible just as well as I can imagine the rest. Maybe in Russia attacks by such large packs of wolves were commonplace back then or women and children were expendable but there seems to be no censure for the two survivors. So much for chivalry.
Thanks for ferreting out the whole story Metan. If even a tenth of it is the gospel truth it makes me very glad to be living in a time and a place where such horrors no longer exist.
I just re-read that last sentence and realised that the tsunami victims of Japan might have preferred wolves…
The last paragraph is at the bottom of the left hand column 🙂 When they digitize these articles they don’t always lend themselves too well to being read!
At any time in history there are terrible things that people accept as the norm aren’t there? They aren’t necessarily happy about it but they probably think there is little they can do. I am sure in years to come there will be reliable tsunami warning systems and that society will look back at the Japanese and Indonesian events and think ‘how did they let that happen?’
I was glad I found the whole story, sometimes I find the most interesting tidbit and no matter my efforts I find no follow-up! Frustrating!!!
Your efforts in archaic research are better than good 😉 I guess sometimes there’s just no more to find because no-one bothered to follow up way back when.
Re things we get used to. After I wrote that bit about the tsunami it hit me that we live with horrors every day and just never see them for what they are. I had a look at a Freshly Pressed post on the food that Americans eat and what shocked me was that we/they accept the terrible health consequences as ‘normal’. Worse, as a ‘right’. In oz we accept the awful road toll each year as normal too. When you see things in those terms, accepting the predation of wolves no longer seems strange. And that is scary.
Does anyone out there have a wolf they can loan me? It just so happens I have a wedding later this year and after giving the brides father’s speech I might well need the protection. I can always scatter a few photocopies of this terrible event on the bridal table just to give them an idea of what could happen and test the hypothesis about wedding cake at the same time.
Of course I can’t ensure the sleigh and the snow though you never know with the vagaries of the British weather, what I definitely can’t manage though is a forest in the middle of Chester. However, I do promise to return your wolf in good, well fed condition as soon after the wedding as possible and the experiment ( purely in the interest of science of course) has been conducted.
*searches pockets* Damn, I just gave away my last one…
I would love to see the looks on the faces of the guests when your speech ends with this story, you beat a hasty retreat and the clang of a cage door echoes through the reception hall.
I can’t imagine that a pack of wolves that large and willing to attack so many people would not be a danger to nearby towns. Surely 120 people would have been something of a discouragement? Makes me think people had even more reason to stay close to home back then!
You know, wolves or wolf hybrids were popular here in the US for the last couple of years. I wouldn’t want one, as I’ve always thought of them as unpredictable when it comes to them being pets.
People sometimes have dingo hybrids as pets here and I think the same as you. I’m always suspicious of any large dog around kids. I used to work at a pound, you see all sorts there, owners and dogs!