A note: Halloween Week comes early this year. I’d prepped a little episode for each day, and then noticed it overlapped with the Magonomia Bestiary Kickstarter. For that Kickstarter, which is month long, I’d prepared eight episodes. Adding another week of dailies was just too much, so I’ve moved all of it up into this week in September. Please keep an eye out for the kickstarter late in October. Now, over the the episode.
In Maogonomia we often pick one from a variety of possible interpretations of folklore. An obvious example of this is Herne, who has been kitted out as the full forest god. Clearly there’s a lot of fun to be had there, and it links into modern uses of the character, so you can spin ideas off it. “The Dark is Rising” in the Reign? Certainly possible.
This does, however, let me have a second bite at the apple. Here’s a variant of Herne from Shakespeare. It’s in the Merry Wives of Windsor.
THERE is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:
You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Receiv’d and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the hunter, for a truth.
I’ll also drop in a poem by Madison Cawein which to me seems suited to Herne. It’s called Rain and Wind. Thanks to the Librivox production team.
I hear the hoofs of horses
Galloping over the hill,
Galloping on and galloping on,
When all the night is shrill
With wind and rain that beats the pane—
And my soul with awe is still.
For every dripping window
Their headlong rush makes bound,
Galloping up, and galloping by,
Then back again and around,
Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs,
And the draughty cellars sound.
And then I hear black horsemen
Hallooing in the night;
Hallooing and hallooing,
They ride o’er vale and height,
And the branches snap and the shutters clap
With the fury of their flight.{187}
Then at each door a horseman,—
With burly bearded lip
Hallooing through the keyhole,—
Pauses with cloak a-drip;
And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes
’Neath the anger of his whip.
All night I hear their gallop,
And their wild halloo’s alarm;
The tree-tops sound and the vanes go round
In forest and on farm;
But never a hair of a thing is there—
Only the wind and storm.
Games From Folktales 