The Bear in Myth, Mythology and Folklore

In medieval times, the sport of bear baiting was very popular at country fairs. The dancing bear, clumsily mimicking a human being, was also a favorite entertainment. For all their cruelty, these symbolic affirmations of human dominance perhaps paid the bear a sort of compliment as a representative of natural powers that might inspire fear. Many aristocratic houses adopted the bear as a heraldic symbol, but perhaps resentment against a predatory nobility was taken out on the poor animals. In the medieval tales throughout Europe since the end of the eleventh century, “Bruin” the bear is an aristocrat whose natural strength is no match for the peasant cunning of Renard the Fox. Legends, however, still show a respect for the abilities and knowledge of bears. Edward Topsell, the Elizabethan zoologist, reported in 1656 that a man was walking along carrying a large cauldron one autumn day when he saw a bear nibble a root, then descend into a cave. The man was curious and started to chew on the root of the same plant. Immediately he began to feel very sleepy, and he was barely able to throw the cauldron over his body. He remembered no more until he lifted up the cauldron to find the last snow melting on a beautiful spring day.

Like all large meat-eaters, bears had become rare by the twentieth century. The terror that bears once inspired came to be remembered though a haze of nostalgia, and the teddy bear became a favorite toy of children. The name comes from a story that had President “Teddy” Roosevelt, an avid big-game hunter, declining to shoot a bear cub, thinking it unsporting to take advantage of the helpless creature. In William Faulkner’s short story “The Bear,” a giant brown bear known as Old Ben becomes the symbol of a vanishing wilderness in the American South. As long as he is there, the land remains wild and strangers do not dare to intrude. The hero of the tale is a boy who is learning to be an accomplished woodsman, an occupation that becomes obsolete when a hunting party finally kills Old Ben. No longer greatly feared, the bear has become a symbol of vulnerability. Everybody in the United States who was born before the seventies or so has seen posters with Smokey the Bear, who was created during World War II to warn people that Japanese shelling might begin a conflagration in the woods of America. When the war ended, the United States Forest Service retained Smokey as a symbol in a campaign to prevent the careless ignition of forest fires. Far from bestial, he has a rather parental image. He wears human clothes and a forester’s hat. He is mature, friendly, and a little melancholy. Yet if Smokey seems absurdly civilized, his role remains that of bears since archaic times-protector of the wild.