Feral Children in Fiction

"Nitka crept up to the peculiar bundle. She sniffed at it hard, then turned it over gently with her paw. As she did so, it stirred a little and whimpered. The smell was the smell of man, but the whimper was that of a cub." From Shasta and the Wolves.

Fiction Classics

Feral children have featured in fiction, legend and mythology since classical times. Of course, the most famous feral children from the world of fiction are Tarzan, raised by apes; and Mowgli, from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, who was raised by wolves.

Books about feral children that never achieved quite the fame of Tarzan and Mowgli include Jungle-Born by John Eyton, featuring a boy raised by apes in India, Shasta of the Wolves by Olaf Baker, about a native American boy, and Primordial, by Morgan Robertson. But still fondly remembered by many is the hero of a series of books from the 1920s and 1930s, Bomba the Jungle Boy.

A number of feral child stories have a sea-based or tropical island theme, such as The Three Laws and the Golden Rule, also by Morgan Robertson, and The Child of Ocean by Sir Ronald Ross.

Pyrénée

Pyrénée is a French comic book about a girl whose mother dies in an earthquake, and who is found and brought up by a bear; in this case, a tame bear that had escaped from a circus. Pyrénée also learns wisdom from an eagle, and a fox shares in her education. Pyrénée is available in French as Pyrénée and in German as Pyrenea. There is also a Dutch version Pyrenee.

The French Pyrénées were of course home to a real feral child, the Girl of Issaux, lost at the age of 8 when isolated by snow while out with friends, and also La Folle des Pyrénées who lived with bears and quite possibly provided the inspiration for this book.

However, the popular myth of Tarzan's origins — that the story was based on true events that happened to William Mildin, 14th Earl of Streatham — is completely untrue. It's a hoax: there never was such a person.

"With that unobtrusive suddenness that belongs only to the movements of the utterly wild, there appeared in the opening a black, tousled head, brown shoulders, long brown arms. Bone-naked, peeping out on the world like a fox from its earth, crouched a son of man." From Jungle-Born.