Raised by wolves
Join me for a moment at a royal hunt in France, in 1737. Far ahead of the main pack of riders and dogs, one figure hurtles with incredible speed after fleeing hares and rabbits, bringing back prey to the main party before they can catch up. But look closer: the creature racing on all fours across the grass is not a dog but a girl of perhaps 15.
Her name was Memmie le Blanc, known as “the wild girl of Songi” after the village Songy, in north-eastern France, where she was captured in 1731. At that time, she had apparently slept easily in the branches of a tree, sung like a bird, and flown up and down tree trunks with the ease of a squirrel.
Local villagers (writes the author Michael Newton) fled from this feral child as if she were the devil itself. Meanwhile, Lord Monboddo, an early theorist of human evolution, took a more scientific interest in Memmie. When this girl learned (or
