270 THE WILD HUNT. that is to brew beer in eggshells. The hound watches the operation and exclaims Though I am now as old as the old Bohemian wold, Yet the like of this, I ween, in my life I ne'er have seen; and away it goes and is seen no more. On Christmas evenings especially, that is to say, at the season of the winter solstice, it is very unsafe to leave linen hanging out of doors, for the wild huntsman's hounds will tear it to pieces. When Woden rides at the head of a full field the object of the chase is generally a boar or a horse. When he rides with his hounds alone, it is in pursuit of a woman with long snow-white breasts. Seven years he follows her; at last he runs her down, throws her across his horse, and carries her home. In Central Germany the wild hunt chases a whole flock of elfish beings, the Moss-wifekins and Wood-maidens, whose lives are bound up with those of the forest trees. If any one adds his voice by invitation to the cries of the wild hunters, the god throws him down, as his share of the booty, a horse's haunch that turns to gold. But if any one dares to bawl out "halloa!" and "hurrah!" in mockery when the hunt passes by, Woden shouts to him in a voice of thunder, THE FURIOUS HOST. You that helped to chase the game 271 and down comes a horse's leg, or a moss-wifekin's foot with the green shoe upon it. The stench of it is suffocating, and it sticks fast to the mocker's back or to his dwelling, and do what he will he cannot remove it. The wild hunt comes out from the hills and mountains, and disappears in them again, or in ponds or lakes, when the hunt is over. The Furious Host is also a cavalcade of the dead, but not for purposes of the chase. Sometimes it gallops through the stormy air as a herd of wild boars; but the spirits of which it consists generally appear in human form. They are of both sexes and of all ages, souls of unchristened babes being included among them; for Holda or Bertha often joins the hunt. At the end of the last century a woman was delivered of a still-born child. Soon afterwards she heard that the furious host had passed over the village, and in her anguish at the thought of her child, now doomed to sweep through the stormy air with the unblest spirits until the day of judgment, she was seized with a violent malady and died. In Tyrol, according to the testimony of Baron von Alpenburg, it is no uncommon thing for mothers, who have lost a child, to seek the aid of 272 IRISH GHOSTS IN THE STORM. the wizard, with the hope that he may be able to reanimate the little corpse for a moment, so that it may receive baptism and its soul be rescued from the furious host, or from Bertha. Was it the tradition of the furious host-not unknown in Englandthat suggested to Shakespeare the image of Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Riding the blast! 66 I cannot find any mention of the wild hunt or the furious host among the superstitions of Ireland; but there is one element of that tradition which certainly exists there. The ideas of the Irish peasantry respecting the state of departed souls are very singular." So says a writer in the Athenæum (Jan. 1847). "According to the tenets of the church to which the majority of them belong, the souls of the departed are either in paradise, hell, or purgatory. But popular belief assigns the air as a third place of suffering, where unquiet souls wander about until their period of penance is past. On a cold or wet or stormy night the peasant will exclaim with real sympathy, 'Musha! God help the poor souls that are in the shelter of the ditches, or under the eves this way!' And the good 'chanathee,' or mother of a family, will sweep the MUSIC OF THE FURIOUS HOST. 273 hearth, that the poor souls may warm themselves when the family retires. The conviction that the spirits of the departed sweep along with the storm or shiver in the driving rain, is singularly wild and near akin to the Skandinavian myth." The first token which the furious host gives of its approach is a low song that makes the hearer's flesh creep. The grass and the leaves of the forest wave and bow in the moonshine as often as the strain begins anew. Presently the sounds come nearer and nearer, and swell into the music of a thousand instruments. Then bursts the hurricane, and the oaks of the forest come crashing down. The spectral appearance often presents itself in the shape of a great black coach, on which sit hundreds of spirits singing a wondrously sweet song. Before it goes a man, who loudly warns everybody to get out of the way. All who hear him must instantly drop down with their faces to the ground, as at the coming of the wild hunt, and hold fast by something, were it only a blade of grass; for the furious host has been known to force many a man into its coach and carry him hundreds and hundreds of miles away through the air. The legend of the furious host has taken a peculiar shape in the Bernese Oberland, the Grisons and T 274 THE NIGHTFOLK. Wallis, where it is known as the Nightfolk or Dead Folk, and is described as a ghostly procession, the appearance of which betokens an approaching mortality. The skeleton Death himself marches at its head playing the fiddle, and it bears along, with low mutterings and music, the corpses of those who are next to die. If the Nightfolk knock at the door of a house, whoever answers the summons must go along with them and die. Two children were lying down on a crossway, the one asleep, the other awake. The latter heard a rattling of bones, and several voices praying. It was the Nightfolk. Presently one said, "Shall we wake the children ?" "No," replied another, "one of them will soon come with us." The child had seen nothing. It died soon after. Most of the legendary details in the foregoing sketch may be traced back to their origin, and found to resolve themselves into figurative, and sometimes highly poetical descriptions of natural phenomena. As the man of southern climes prostrates himself before the simoom and the sirocco, so did the man of Northern Europe before the storm-god. The wild huntsman loves to ride through houses that have two outer doors directly opposite each other: that is to say, in plain prose, there is always a thorough |