| Herne The Hunter |
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| english folklore | |
| ghosts | |
| people from windsor, berkshire | |
| windsor great park | |
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:Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest, :Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight, :Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns; :And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, :And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain :In a most hideous and dreadful manner. :You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know :The superstitious idle-headed eld :Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age, :This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth. ::— William Shakespeare, ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' Herne is a local legend not found outside Berkshire . This area was settled by pagan Anglo-Saxons who worshiped different gods of the Wild Hunt such as Woden , so a Celtic survival is unlikely especially as it did not occur anywhere else in England or Wales and as Cernunnos only seems to have been worshiped in Gaul . The other problem is that according to local legend the name Herne appears to have come from an actual local Hunt Keeper who was unjustly killed and became a ghost. It seems more likely that the Wild Hunt concept was added to an actual local spectre, as this seems to have happened in elsewhere with Wild Edric , Herla , and others. The supposed location of Herne's Oak remains a matter of local speculation and controversy. Some Ordnance Survey maps show Herne's Oak a little to the north of Frogmore House, in the Home Park (part of Windsor Great Park ). However, it is generally believed that the oak of Shakespeare's time was felled in 1796 and that other "replacement" oaks have been planted at, or near, the site since then. The current Herne's Oak is believed to have been planted by King Edward VII in 1906. William Harrison Ainsworth 's Victorian romance of ''Windsor Castle'' also featured Herne and popularised him. Janet and Stewart Farrar , in ''The Witches' God'', claim that the name Herne is Onomatopoetic for the call of a doe to a stag. Arrigo Boito , making a libretto for Verdi 's opera '' Falstaff '' by improvising upon materials in ''Merry Wives'' and ''Henry IV'' built the moonlit last act set in Windsor Great Park around a prank revenge played upon the amorous Falstaff by masqueraders disguised as spirits and the spectral "Black Huntsman," in whom we recognize Herne the Huntsman. Herne was portrayed as a pagan priest and embodied spirit of the woods in the British television series '' Robin Of Sherwood ''. Herne the Hunter appears in Susan Cooper's '' The Dark Is Rising '' sequence where he plays a key part in the ends of the book by the same name and the series' ending '' Silver On The Tree ''. Herne The Hunted is a parody of Herne the Hunter in Terry Pratchett 's '' Discworld '' series. He is a small god who is the deity of those animals destined to end up as a "brief, damp, squeak." Herne the Hunter is a key figure in Ruth Nichols' children's novel ''The Marrow of the World.'' His character has no supernatural attributes. English Poet Laureate John Masefield included Herne the Hunter as a benevolent character in his children's book '' The Box Of Delights ''. As in ''Robin of Sherwood'', Herne is portrayed as a spirit of the woodlands. SEE ALSO |
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