This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman has assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was killed by Agathocles, king of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been consecrated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said by Pliny to have caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards set it free. Succeeding heroes have, in after days, been announced as the capturers of this famous white hart. Julius Cæsar took the place of Alexander, and Charlemagne caught a white hart at both Magdebourg, and in the Holstein woods. In 1172, William the Lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, according to a Latin inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition says the white hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire, and in Windsor Forest.
Dean Stanley, in his "Historic Memorials of Westminster Abbey," informs us that the great northern entrance of that truly historic pile was erected in the reign of Richard II., and that once "it contained his well-known badge of the White Hart, which still remains, in colossal proportions, on the fragile partition which shuts off the Muniment Room from the southern triforium of the Nave." It appears that the badge was first adopted in honour of his mother, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, at a tournament in 1396. It had, however, direct reference to the tradition which asserted that the famous white hart of Cæsar had been caught at Besastine, near Bagshot, in Windsor Forest. Its identity was said to have been proved by a collar of gold about its neck, which bore the following inscription:—"Nemo me tangat: Cæsaris sum." The badge was so popular amongst the friends of Richard, that Bolingbroke, when Henry IV., had much difficulty in suppressing it. Its frequent adoption as an inn sign is likewise attributed to this circumstance.
In early Greek art, the deities of the morning, Athena, Apollo and Artemis, are commonly, if not invariably, associated with a fawn with a gleam of light on its breast. The hart in these legends appears to typify the dawn, and, in conjunction with some other elements of the myth, implies the daily sequence of light and darkness.
The spectre huntsman, so very popular in Scandinavian and German tradition, is the Teutonic deity Odin or Woden, from whence our Wednesday. Woden is claimed by the early Angle and Saxon kings of the heptarchy as their common ancestor. This god had many names, each descriptive of some special quality or attribute. Amongst others he was styled Wunsch, from which we have the Anglo-Saxon wisk, and the modern English wish, in the sense in which it is used in the divining or wish-rod (German wünschelruthe). In Devonshire the term "wishtness" is still retained, and is employed to designate "all unearthly creatures and their doings." Indra and Rudra are regarded as the Aryan prototypes of Odin. Some of their chief characteristics are retained in the doings of the "wild huntsman" and his followers that form the dramatis personæ of the "furious host." Kelly describes the first phase of this legend as follows:
"Mounted on his white or dappled grey steed, the wild huntsman may always be recognised by his broad-brimmed hat, and his wide mantle, from which he is surnamed Hakelbärend or Hakelberg, an old word signifying mantle-wearer. The hooting owl, Tutursel, flies before him, and ravens, birds peculiarly sacred to Woden, accompany the chase. Whoever sees it approach must fall flat on the ground, or shelter himself under any odd number of boards, nine or eleven, otherwise he will be borne away through the air and set down hundreds of miles away from home, among people who speak a strange tongue. It is still more dangerous to look out of the window when Odin is sweeping by. The rash man is struck dead, or at least gets a box on the ear that makes his head swell as big as a bucket, and leaves a fiery mark on his cheek. In some instances the offender has been struck blind or mad. There are certain places where Woden is accustomed to feed his horse or let it graze, and in those places the wind is always blowing. He has also a preference for certain tracks, over which he hunts again and again at fixed seasons, from which circumstance districts and villages in the old Saxon land received the name of Woden's way. Houses and barns in which there are two or three doors opposite each other are very liable to be made thoroughfares by the wild hunt."
Mr. Baring-Gould, in his "Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas," describes this superstition, as he heard it from his guide Jón, who related it to him under the title of the "yule host." He says,—"Odin, or Wodin, is the wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white horse over the German and Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his legion of hell-hounds. Some luckless woodcutter, on a still night, is returning through the pine woods; the air is sweet-scented with matchless pine fragrance. Overhead the sky is covered with grey vapour, but a mist is on all the land; not a sound among the fir tops; and the man starts at the click of a falling cone. Suddenly his ear catches a distant wail; a moan rolls through the interlacing branches; nearer and nearer comes the sound. There is the winding of a long horn waxing louder and louder, the baying of hounds, the rattle of hoofs and paws on the pine tree tops. A blast of wind rolls along, the firs bend as withes, and the woodcutter sees the wild huntsman and his rout reeling by in frantic haste.... The wild huntsman chases the wood spirits, and he is to be seen at cock-crow returning with the little Dryads hanging to his saddle-bow by their yellow locks."
The personification of the strife of the elements in stormy weather is here very apparent. As the name of Odin or other of his special appellations became lost or corrupted, mysterious personages, or heroes of another and more mortal stamp, became confounded with the spectre huntsman. Herod, the murderer of the Jewish children, is evidently referred to by the French peasants of Perigord, when they speak of "La chasse Herode." This seems to have resulted from the corruption of Hrôdso (the renowned), one of the titles applied to Odin.
At Blois, the wild hunt is called the "chasse Maccabei," from the following supposed reference to it in the Bible:—"Then it happened that through all the city, for the space almost of forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, and armed with lances like a band of soldiers. And troops of horsemen in array, encountering and running one against another, with shaking of shields and multitudes of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden ornaments and harness of all sorts. Wherefore every man prayed that that apparition might turn to good." (II. Maccabeus, v. 2 to 4.)
In Brittany and Picardy the peasants, in the midst of sudden storms or whirlwinds, which throw down trees and steeples, are still in the habit of crossing themselves, and exclaiming "C'est le juif errant qui passe." This evidently demonstrates that the legendary story of the Wandering Jew, the spectre hunt of Odin, and the superstitions associated with the seven whistlers, have been confounded or "dovetailed," as it were, one into the other. Indeed, in its combined form, remnants may yet be found in Lancashire. Mr. James Pearson, in a contribution to "Notes and Queries," of September 30th, 1871, testifies to this in the following terms:—
"The Seven Whistlers.—One evening a few years ago, when crossing one of our Lancashire moors, in company with an intelligent old man, we were suddenly startled by the whistling overhead of a covey of plovers. My companion remarked that when a boy the old people considered such a circumstance a bad omen, 'as the person who heard the Wandering Jews,' as he called the plovers, 'was sure to be overtaken with some ill luck.' On questioning my friend on the name given to the birds, he said, 'There is a tradition that they contain the souls of those Jews who assisted at the crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float in the air for ever.' When we arrived at the foot of the moor, a coach, by which I had hoped to complete my journey, had already left its station, thereby causing me to finish the distance on foot. The old man reminded me of the omen."