CHAPTER IX.
THE SPECTRE HUNTSMAN AND THE FURIOUS HOST.
He the seven birds hath seen that never part,
Seen the seven whistlers on their mighty rounds,
And counted them! And oftentimes will start,
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart,
To chase for ever on äerial grounds.
Wordsworth.
"Amongst the most prominent of the demon superstitions prevalent in Lancashire," says Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, "we may first instance that of the Spectre Huntsman, which occupies so conspicuous a place in the folk-lore of Germany and the north. This superstition is still extant in the gorge of Cliviger, where he is believed to hunt a milk white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the vale of Todmorden, on All Hallows Eve. His hounds are said to fly yelping through the air on many other occasions, and, under the local name of 'Gabriel Ratchets,' are supposed to predict death or misfortune to all who hear the sounds."
This superstition is known about Leeds, and other places in Yorkshire, as "Gabble Retchet," and refers more especially to the belief that the souls of unbaptised children are doomed to wander in this stormy fashion about the homes of their parents.
These peculiar superstitions appear to have nearly died out, or to have become merged into some other legends based on the action of the Aryan storm-gods, Indra, Rudra, and their attendant Maruts or Winds, both in Great Britain and Ireland. According to a writer in the Quarterly Review, of July, 1836, the wild huntsman still lingers in Devonshire. He says, "the spectre pack which hunts over Dartmoor is called the 'wish hounds,' and the black 'master' who follows the chase is no doubt the same who has left his mark on Wistman's Wood," a neighbouring forest of dwarf oaks.
The late Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, referring to this superstition, in 1861, says, "I can never forget the impression made upon my own mind when once arrested by the cry of these Gabriel hounds as I passed the parish church of Sheffield, one densely dark and very still night. The sound was exactly like the greeting of a dozen beagles on the foot of a race, but not so loud, and highly suggestive of ideas of the supernatural." Mr. Holland has embodied the local feeling on this subject in the following sonnet:—
Oft have I heard my honoured mother say,
How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds—
Those strange unearthly and mysterious sounds,
Which on the ear through murkiest darkness fell;
And how, entranced by superstitions spell,
The trembling villager not seldom heard,
In the quaint noise of the nocturnal bird
Of death premonished, some sick neighbour's knell.
I, too, remember once at midnight dark,
How these sky-yelpers startled me and stirred
My fancy so, I could have then averred
A mimic pack of beagles low did bark.
Nor wondered I that rustic fear should trace
A spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.
In classic mythology this wild hunt myth is parallelled by the career of Orion, the "mighty hunter, the cloud raging in wild freedom over hills and dales." Seeking to make the beautiful Aerô his bride, he is blinded by her father, who caught him asleep. After recovering his sight by a journey towards the rising sun, he vainly endeavours to seize upon and punish his enemy. In his wanderings he meets with and is beloved by Artemis (Diana), one of the dawn-goddesses. The Rev. G. W. Cox says, "It is but the story of the beautiful cloud left in darkness when the sun goes down, but recovering its brilliance when he rises again in the east." After his death, being so nearly akin to the powers of light, Asklêpios "seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus—a myth which points to the blotting out of the sun from the sky by the thundercloud, just as he was rekindling the faded vapours which lie motionless on the horizon." Orion's hound afterwards became the dog-star, Sirius. Hence our name dog days for parching weather.