Herne & The Wild Hunt

As today is Halloween, or Samhain, The Bad Witch's God of the Week has to be Herne, who in British Folklore is often portrayed as leading The Wild Hunt.

Herne is a British god of the forests, much venerated by modern pagans who grew up watching ITV's Robin of Sherwood in the 1980s. In the series, which is set in the late Middle Ages, Robin (played by Michael Praed) meets a figure in the woods who is clad in a stag's pelt. He claims to be the god Herne the Hunter and makes Robin promise to protect the poor and downtrodden against the Normans.

To my young and impressionable eyes Michael Praed was quite godlike, so any deity he worshipped was more than good enough for me. I wonder how many other witches of my generation were led along their path by the same attraction?

Herne is sometimes associated with the Celtic god Cernunnus. The website www.godchecker.com/ states:

"CERNUNNUS: A very Deer God. He has antlers and runs around a lot with wild animals. He is probably also the entity known as Herne The Hunter, worshipped in Great Britain and very popular with Morris Dancers."

Herne is only one of the deities said to lead the Wild Hunt, others include Woden or even Diana. The Wild Hunt consists of ghosts, fairies, spirits of wild animals and even humans who unwittingly hear the call of its huntsman's horn. This furious pack is said to be abroad on the night of Halloween and anyone in its way either joins the hunt or becomes its prey.

It is, of course, meant to be scary. But that little part of my mind that is still stuck on Michael Praed can't help thinking "Herne can come and hunt me any night he likes..."

Links:
http://wicca.timerift.net/horned.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt
http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/godsandgoddesses/p/Herne_Hunter.htm
http://www.geocities.com/pagantheology/myth/wildhunt.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herne_the_Hunter
The Concise Mythological Dictionary
http://www.pantheon.org/mythica.html
http://www.godchecker.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A952184
http://www.robinhoodblog.com/

Dryad in the forest?

Yesterday I got an email from a fellow blogger, who writes about Robin Hood. He sent me several photographs he had taken in Sherwood Forest with an intriguing mystery. In his email, he said:

"In my capacity as an artist, and less that of the Robin Hood blogger, I was out taking photographs to aid me in my paintings. It was a fine winter day in late 2006, and I appeared to have Sherwood Forest completely to myself.
As an ex-country boy I always treat the forest with the utmost respect, but I confess on that day I climbed over the fence surrounding the Major Oak and took 10 acorns from the ground to cultivate later.

When I was drawing from my photographs of various oaks a day or so later I came across a curious bump amongst the branches. At first it just annoyed me, because I couldn’t make sense of what it was and it was
complicating my attempt to draw the structure of the branches correctly. Upon enlargement it revealed itself to be rather intriguing. I make no claims as to what, if anything, this is. A Dryad? Or just a fortuitous cluster of random shapes. One thing for sure, those acorns are being well looked after!

Anyway, I thought it fun to let a few people see it for themselves.

Best wishes

Robin"

What do you think the pictures show?

To see Robin's blog, visit: http://www.robinhoodblog.com/