Wild Boys

http://blogs.bl.uk/european/2017/04/four-legs-good-a-bohemian-wild-man.html

Out of the Harzwald, out of Bohemia,

he came on all fours, raised by wolves,

human, red in tooth and claw,

rustling the leaves on the forest floor.

A wolf-boy arrived on the streets of Hesse

the Landgrave bound his legs to splints,

he spoke only to say, “I’m going back,

you may keep your town, I need my pack.”

In Vilnius the talk is of boys and bears

one learned to speak and forgot the woods,

the other grunted and squealed, until he died

of a broken heart or a spear in his side.

Rembrandt’s anatomist examined a boy

raised on a hillside by Irish sheep,

he sniffed out straw and fallen leaves,

ate them to live, so Dr Tulpus believes.

Peter the Wild Boy was found in Hameln,

town of rats and disappeared Kinder,

abandoned baby, or runaway child?

Or misjudged answer to the call of the wild.

Stories and folk-tales, legends and myth,

it is boys that are found in the darkling wood.

Was there never a girl who disappeared?

Or were there fates, both worse and weird?

Footnote: Kinder is German for children, it rhymes with Tinder.