The French story of Le Grand Veneur is laid in Fontainbleau Forest, and is supposed to refer to St. Hubert.--Father Matthieu.
The English name is “Herne, the Hunter,” once a keeper in Windsor Forest.--Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv. sc. 4.
The Scotch poem called Albania contains a full description of the wild huntsman.
⁂ The subject has been made into a ballad by Burger, entitled Der Wilde Jäger.
Wild Man of the Forest, Orson, brother of Valentine, and nephew of King Pepin.--Valentine and Orson (fifteenth century).
Wild Oats, a drama by John O’Keefe (1798).
Wild Wenlock, kinsman of Sir Hugo de Lacy, besieged by insurgents, who cut off his head.--Sir W. Scott, The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).
Wildair (Sir Harry), the hero of a comedy so called by Farquhar (1701). The same character had been introduced in the Constant Couple (1700), by the same author. Sir Harry is a gay profligate, not altogether selfish and abandoned, but very free and of easy morals. This was Wilks’s and Peg Woffington’s great part.
Their Wildairs, Sir John Brutes, Lady Touchwoods and Mrs. Frails are conventional reproductions of those wild gallants and demireps which figure in the licentious dramas of Dryden and Shadwell.--Sir W. Scott.
⁂ “Sir John Brute,” in The Provoked Wife (Vanbrugh); “Lady Touchwood,” in The Belle’s Stratagem (Mrs. Cowley); “Mrs. Frail,” in Congreve’s Love for Love.