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The Wild Hunt was a folk myth prevalent in former times across Germany and Britain. The introduction of Christianity also brought this folk myth to Scandinavia. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies.

Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Mortals getting in the path of or following the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead.

In many Scandinavian and German versions, the hunt is often for a woman, who is captured or killed. The hunter may be an unidentified lost soul, or he may a historical or legendary figure like Dietrich of Berne or the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag, Satan, or identified with Odin (or other reflexes of the same god, such as Alemannic Wuodan in Wuotis Heer of Central Switzerland etc.)

It has been variably referred to as the Wild Hunt, Woden's Hunt, the Raging Host (Germany), Herlathing (England), Mesnee d'Hellequin (Northern France), Cŵn Annwn (Wales) Cain's Hunt, Herod's Hunt, Gabriel's Hounds, and Asgardreia.

Origins

As Kris Kershaw has exhaustively documented (Kershaw 2001), the ritual reenactment of the Wild Hunt was a cultural phenomenon documented among many Gaulish and Germanic peoples. In its Germanic manifestations the Harii painted themselves black to attack their enemies in the darkness. The Heruli, nomadic, ecstatic wolf-warriors, dedicated themselves to Wodan.

The Norse god Odin in his many forms, astride his eight-legged steed Sleipnir, came to be deeply associated with the Wild Hunt in Scandinavia because of his aspect of berserking. Odin acquired another aspect (to add to his many other names and attributes) in this context, that of the Wild Huntsman, along with Frigg. The passage of this hunt was also referred to as Odin's Hunt. People who saw the passing hunt and mocked it were cursed and would mysteriously vanish along with the host; those that joined in sincerity were rewarded with gold (Guerber, 1922). In the wake of the passing storm (which the Hunt was oftentimes identified with), a black dog would be found upon a neighboring hearth. To remove it, it would need to be exorcised similar to the custom for removing changelings. However, if it could not be removed by trickery, it must be kept for a whole year and carefully tended.

According to H.A. Guerber: "The object of this phantom hunt varied greatly, and was either of a visionary boar or wild horse, white-breasted maidens who were caught and borne away bound only once in seven years, or the wood nymphs, called Moss Maidens, who were thought to represent the autumn leaves torn from the trees and whirled away by the wintry gale." Whatever the case, the Hunt was most often seen in the autumn and winter, when the winds blew the fiercest.

Otto Höfler (1934) and other authors of his generation emphasized the identification of the hunter with Odin, looking for the traces of an ecstatic Odin cult in more recent customs from German-speaking areas.

In view of this, John Lindow of the University of California, Berkeley (Lindahl et al. 2002:433) notes that more recent scholarship

"would argue a basis in an Indo-European warrior cult in which young warriors imbued with the life force fight with the characteristics of animals, especially, those of wolves, and are initiated into a warrior band *."

Middle ages

Medieval legends are mostly from Germany. Historical figures reported to have participated in the Wild Hunt were St. Guthlac (683-714), and Hereward the Wake (died ca 1070). From the 12th century, there are testimonies from England: In the Peterborough Chronicle, the chronicler attests the Wild Hunt's appearance at the appointment of a disastrous abbot for the monastery. Around the year 1132, the anonymous monk wrote:
Tha huntes waeron swarte and micele and lardlice, and here hondes ealle swarte and bradegede and lardlice, and hi ridone on swarte hors and on swarte bucces....
("Then the hunters were black and large and terrifying, and their hounds were all black and broad-eyed and terrifying, and they rode on black horses and black goats....")
This particular Wild Hunt was banished by the intervention of the monks of the monastery and the local nobility.

While these Wild Hunts are recorded by clergymen, and portrayed as diabolic, late medieval English romance like Sir Orfeo, the hunters are rather from a faery otherworld, as in Celtic countries, where the Wild Hunt was the hosting of the Sidhe, the fairies; its leaders also varied, but they included Gwydion, Nuada, and Herne the Hunter.

Post-medieval legend

The Wild Hunt is known from post-medieval folklore of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and to a lesser extent Norway.

The myth of the Wild Hunt has through the ages been modified to accommodate other gods and folk heroes, among them King Arthur and, more recently, in a Dartmoor folk legend, Sir Francis Drake. A rare modern example of a Wild Hunt legend dates from the 1950s: a group of boys vandalising trees in Windsor Great Park came across a horn. Two of the boys refused to touch it, but the third picked it up and blew it. The call was answered by the cry of the hunt and the baying of hounds. The boys ran for a nearby church, but the boy who blew the horn fell behind. The hounds grew closer, there was the sound of a loosed arrow and the boy who blew the horn fell dead. No arrow was found, nor was a wound.

In Quebec, the legend of the “chasse-galerie”, or witched canoe, is a favorite.

Compare it to another ghostly troop: the Santa Compaña in Galicia.

Leader of the Wild Hunt

Others: the Squire of Rodenstein and Hans von Hackelberg (both Sabbath-breakers).

Source: Ruben A. Koman, Dalfser Muggen Profiel, Bedum 2006. *

Cultural references

William Butler Yeats evoked the Wild Hunt in "The Hosting of the Sidhe", the opening poem in his collection inspired by Gaelic faery lore, The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1903) *

The Wild Hunt, presided by Arawn and run by the Cwn Annwn, are a key plot point in Diana Wynne Jones's 1975 fantasy novel Dogsbody.

The Wild Hunt is also a central plot component in Raymond E. Feist's popular 1988 fantasy novel, Faerie Tale.

Legends of the Wild Hunt have been used by science fiction author Julian May in her series "Saga of Pliocene Exile (British series title, Saga of the Exiles)."

Peter Beagle's novel Tamsin has the Wild Hunt as one of the main themes, along with some other Celtic beliefs.

Similarly, Nigel Kneale tied the legend to a racial memory introduced by prehistoric Martian attempts at colonizing Earth in the famous television serial Quatermass and the Pit.

In the 1940s, Stan Jones encoded the story of the Wild Hunt in his country song " A Cowboy Legend" (song written some time around 1948), which transposes the story to a group of cowboys who chase the devil's herd of cattle through the night skies, tormented by madness and thirst.

In Susan Cooper's series The Dark is Rising, the Hunt is led by Herne the Hunter and is responsible for driving back the Dark (the enemy in the series), after seeing the six signs collected by Will Stanton, one of the main characters.

In The Bitterbynde Trillogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton the Wild Hunt is led by Huon, a powerful "unseelie wight" who chases with his hell-hounds through the skies of Erith in search of the main protagonist.

The Wild Hunt also appears in the classic computer game "Darklands" as a recurring event.

In Mercedes Lackey's urban fantasy novel The Chrome Circle, protagonist and human mage Tannim and his companion in the book, the half-kitsune, half-dragon Shar encounter the Wild Hunt in their attempts to escape the darker, more evil-controlled pockets of Underhill.

One of Franz Liszt's twelve piano studies, the Études Transcendantales (1838/51), is based on the Wild Hunt, and entitled Wilde Jagd.

See also

External links

References

  • Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (1998), ISBN 0-226-73887-6 and ISBN 0-226-73888-4
  • Kris Kershaw, The One-Eyed God: Odin and the Indo-Germanic Mannerbunde, Journal of Indo-European Studies, (2001).
  • Carl Lindahl, John McNamara, John Lindow (eds.) Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, tales, beliefs, and Customs, Oxford University Press (2002), p. 432f. ISBN 0195147723
  • Otto Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, Frankfurt (1934).
  • Ruben A. Koman, 'Dalfser Muggen'. - Bedum : Profiel. - With a summary in English, (2006).

Celtic mythology | English folklore | Germanic mythology | Germanic paganism | Medieval legends

Wilde Jagd | chasse-galerie | Mežonīgās medības | Åsgardsreia | Dziki Łów | Дикая охота | Odens hundar | Дике Полювання

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Wild Hunt".

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