Even after the introduction of Christianity the ignorant Northern folk still dreaded the on-coming storm, declaring that it was the Wild Hunt sweeping across the sky.
“And ofttimes will start,
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel’s hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart
To chase forever on aëreal grounds.”
Sonnet (Wordsworth).
Sometimes it left behind a small black dog, which, cowering and whining upon a neighbouring hearth, had to be kept for a whole year and carefully tended unless it could be exorcised or frightened away. The usual recipe, the same as for the riddance of changelings, was to brew beer in egg-shells, and this performance was supposed so to startle the spectral dog that he would fly with his tail between his legs, exclaiming that, although as old as the Behmer, or Bohemian forest, he had never before beheld such an uncanny sight.
“I am as old
As the Behmer wold,
And have in my life