Odd this day

If it’s 6 February, that must mean… yes, of course: the 896th anniversary of the night a monk saw THE DEVIL’S OWN SATANIC HORDES riding through the forest near, er Peterborough.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

it was Sunday, 6th February [1127] — many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge and hideous, and rode on black horses and he-goats, and their hounds were jet-black, with eyes like saucers and horrible. This was seen in the very deer-park of the town of Peterborough and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to Stamford [this was the great forest of the Bruneswald; Bromswold in modern place-names] and in the night the monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses, who kept watch in the night, declared that there might be as many as twenty or thirty of them winding their horns, as near as they might tell.

This, it was quite clear, was that famed thing of folklore, the Wild Hunt, sometimes called Woden’s Hunt (or the Devil’s Dandy Dogs in Cornwall, where they like to do things differently).

The monks were right to be frightened, because — according to Looking for the Lost Gods of England by Kathleen Herbert — this was an army of the undead:

Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie backs this up:

Wuotan, the god of war and victory, rides at the head of this aerial phenomenon…

(Einherjar are warriors who die in battle, go to Valhalla, and prepare for Ragnarök — apparently by drinking mead and eating the meat of a creature called the Sæhrímnir, which they then bring back to life so they can kill and eat it again the next day. Obviously.)

In Lower Saxony and Westphalia, the hunter isn’t Odin/Woden/Wuotan, but “a certain semi-historic master of a hunt” called Hackelberg (or some variation on the name), who was “banished into the air” for hunting on a Sunday:

Two young fellows from Bergkirchen were walking through the wood one evening to visit their sweethearts, when they heard a wild barking of dogs in the air above them, and a voice calling out between ‘hoto, hoto!’ It was Hackelblock the wild hunter, with his hunt. One of the men had the hardihood to mock his ‘hoto, hoto.’ Hackelblock with his hounds came up, and set the whole pack upon the infatuated man; from that hour not a trace has been found of the poor fellow.

In other versions, Hackelberg dreamt about a “terrific boar”, then “met the beast soon after”, hunted it down, and kicked it when it was dead. One of the tusks to go through his foot, the wound got infected and he met an untimely end.

As the Royal Family likes to observe: recollections may vary.

The historian Ronald Hutton says:

excerpt from The Wild Hunt and the Witches’ Sabbath, Ronald Hutton, Folklore, 2014

…and adds that another version of the story has French people shipping dead souls over to Britain at night:

(Procopius doesn’t specify whether they’re from a small village with a magic potion, or if the boat is piloted by a small man with a moustache and his generously proportioned friend, which is frankly rather disappointing.)

I’ve digressed slightly. To go back to Kathleen Herbert:

Rationalist explanations [for the wild hunt] include the terrifying violence of the spring and autumn gales, also the cries of flocks of migrating geese.

But that wasn’t the case here. I edited that description of the hunt from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle misleadingly. If we look at the whole thing, the monk in question is telling a somewhat different story — and it’s all about their new abbot:

Everything he could take, he sent overseas. He did nothing for the monastery’s welfare and left nothing untouched. Let no one be surprised at the truth of what we are about to relate, for it was general knowledge throughout the whole country that immediately after his arrival — it was Sunday, 6th February — many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge and hideous, and rode on black horses and he-goats, and their hounds were jet-black, with eyes like saucers and horrible. This was seen in the very deer-park of the town of Peterborough and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to Stamford [this was the great forest of the Bruneswald; Bromswold in modern place-names] and in the night the monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses, who kept watch in the night, declared that there might be as many as twenty or thirty of them winding their horns, as near as they might tell. This was seen from the time of his (Abbot Henry’s) arrival, all through Lent and right up to Easter. Such was his entrance; of his exit we cannot yet say.

This was, in fact, a moan about Henry of Poitou, who’d been imposed on the monks by the hated Norman conquerors. This wasn’t really a flock of Valkyries. It was… some people hunting who the chronicler didn’t like.

Or nobody went hunting at all, and he just made something up to paint the interloper in a bad light. History isn’t always written by the victors, it seems.

(Sorry. Bit disappointing. All the other stories about supernatural huntsmen are true, though.)