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is still retained, and is employed to designate
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Indra and Rudra are regarded as the Aryan prototypes of Odin. Some of their chief characteristics are retained in the doings of the
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and his followers that form the _dramatis personæ_ of the
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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.
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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
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He says,--
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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.
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La chasse Herode.
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from the following supposed reference to it in the Bible:--
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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.
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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
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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
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Notes and Queries,
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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.
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A. S., in
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Notes and Queries, October 21, 1871, says:--
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During a thunderstorm which passed over this district (Kettering, in Yorkshire),