cimorene

from http://www.london-walks.co.uk/52/haunted-windsor-ghosts-of.shtml

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.

When, in 1597, William Shakespeare set pen to parchment and wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor he had Mistress Page utter the above lines. And despite this being the earliest written reference we have to the legend of Herne the Hunter, it is probable that Shakespeare was drawing on a much older local tradition, the origins of which lay with the Norse god, Odin and of the horned Celtic deity, Cernunnos. The Wild Hunt itself was, according to ancient myth, the force behind the ferocious winter tempests that had devastated Europe for as long as man could remember. Eager to understand nature’s savage moods, primitive man was quick to incarnate that which he couldn’t control. The howling winds, so it was whispered, were nothing less than the baying of ghostly hounds, and the pounding blizzards the sound of horses’ hooves galloping overhead as the Wild Hunt went about its savage business heaping carnage and misfortune on mankind.

But, by Shakespeare’s day, it is evident this ancient myth had become established in Windsor Forest, and the ghastly entourage had found a local leader in the spectral form of Herne the Hunter. The living Herne, according to legend, was a huntsman during the reign of Richard 11 (1377 –1399) who saved the King from being mauled by a stag by throwing himself into the beast’s path. It almost cost him his life. But, as he lay fatally wounded on the ground an old man, came strolling from the depths of Windsor Forest claiming that, if Richard willed it, he could save Herne’s life by magical means. The King ordered the stranger to do what he could and promised that, should Herne recover, he would make him head huntsman. The hunting party then watched as the old man bound a pair of stags’ antlers onto their injured friends head and carried him off into the depths of the forest.

But the prospect of Herne’s promotion so rankled with his fellow huntsmen that they rode into Windsor Forest and, having found the old man’s abode, threatened to kill him should their comrade survive. He told them there was nothing he could do to halt the magic, but promised that although his patient would get well and become head huntsman, he would not hold the position for long. But as they mounted their horses to ride away, the old man stepped in front of them and warned them that, in wishing ill on Herne they would bring his curse upon themselves.

In time Herne made a full recovery, and just as the King had promised, he was made head huntsman. But he had lost all his skill and proved so bad at locating good sport for his royal master that he was soon dismissed from service and, in despair, hanged himself from the branch of an oak tree in Windsor Forest. His fellow huntsmen fared little better as, one by one, they too met with mysterious and violent deaths.

But on certain storm tossed nights, the spectral band of hunters, led by Herne himself, are said to gallop through Windsor Great Park, preceded by a pack of baying hounds, where their appearance is said to always presage a national misfortune or calamity. And Herne himself, was said to appear hanging from the branches of his oak, until that is, it was cut down during the reign of George 111.

from the "wild hunt bedlam morris" page. google, how i love thee. http://www.wildhunt.org.uk/wild%20hunt%20myth.htm

In the Saxon heartlands of Southern England, THE WILD HUNT is led by Herne the Hunter, Lord of the Wildwood and horned God of the underworld. Shakespeare was familiar with the legend - it features in the Merry Wives of Windsor, where Mistress Page plans to frighten Falstaff and make a fool of him.

"Sometimes, if you sleep with an open window during the summer, when the weather is fine and the nights are light, you might suddenly be woken up by a frightful hurly-burly out in the forest, right behind the house. There is shrieking and shouting, and the barking of a whole pack of dogs, the thud of horse hooves, the cracking of broken branches and so on. It's dreadful, and it's no time to be out in the forest for the hind hunt's on. You shake and quiver and your heart pounds at the sound of it. Sleeping's out of the question. If you're brave enough to take a peep out of the window in spite of it - O good gracious, seeing the hind hunt is even worse than hearing it!"

Other accounts verify the fear experienced by all who hear, let alone see, the Hunt. Its coming is often announced by a terrible din, flashes of lightning, wind in the tree tops, the rattling of chains and the swinging of bells. The rider himself is variously described as carrying a whip, as wearing antlers on his head, as having a skull for a face or no face at all. In Germany an old man named Honest Eckart goes in front of the Hunt, warning people to get out of the way. He is often described, like Odin or Woden, as having a long beard and a broad-brimmed hat, and as riding a white horse.

from http://www.lugodoc.demon.co.uk/HERNE.HTM

It is interesting that several generations of consonantel drift could very easily shorten Cernunnos to Cern, and then soften it to Hern. It is therefore highly probable that these two horned gods are related.

...during the move workmen dug up a strange object.

It was a carved stone head of something not quite human. It had the face of a man, including a moustache, but the ears and antlers of a stag. The eyes were deepset and fierce.

There were many theories as to its origin. It may have been part of a gargoyle or some other grotesque church ornament, and indeed it has been described as looking something like the carved stone Green Man faces which decorate many churches. Some suggested that it had last belonged to William Evingdon, and that it was passed on from Keeper to Keeper as some kind of tradition, or symbol of office. It became known as The Mask of Herne.

...

One day in 1856 two young boys, William Fenwick and William Butterworth, were offered a lift by a stranger driving a horse and carriage. He took the two Williams to Albany Road, near Park Street, where they became drowsy and passed out for no apparent reason. They woke up several hours later in The Home Park itself by Victoria Bridge, and could not remember how they got there. The police became involved but nothing ever came of the investigation, and it was put down to an eccentric kidnapping or childish imagination. (Does this remind you at all of UFO abductions ?)

When the The Mask of Herne was dug up in the 1930s William Fenwick, now an old man, was shown a photograph of the stone head, and said that he was in no doubt that the face in the stone was the same face as the man who had kidnapped him and his friend nearly 80 years before. Presumably minus the horns.

this has to do with one of the bunnies that's been gnawing away at my leg. it also involves almost the whole of arthurian legend and some ideas ripped off from greek mythology and a tenuous metaphysical connection to highlander that probably exists only in my own mind.

from http://www.lugodoc.demon.co.uk/CERNUNOS.HTM

Cernunnos is nearly always portrayed with animals, in particular the stag. He is also frequently associated with a unique beast that seems to belong only to him: a serpent with the horns of a ram. Less often he is associated with other beasts, including bulls, dogs and rats.

The ram-horned serpent is particularly interesting. The serpent occurs in myths all across the world, and is nearly always associated with knowledge. Usually these associations are purely pagan, but remember that it was a serpent that tempted Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. It is also commonly associated with death and the otherworld, and is hence described as cthonic. Cernunnos carries it in his left hand, and in his right he carries a torc, the Celtic symbol of nobility, the symbol of having been initiated into that special state.

Was Cernunnos the Celtic god of initiation ?

The Song of Amergin

I am a stag of seven tines,
I am a wide flood on a plain,
I am a wind on the deep waters,
I am a shining tear of the sun,
I am a hawk on a cliff,
I am fair among flowers,
I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke.
I am a battle waging spear,
I am a salmon in the pool,
I am a hill of poetry,
I am a ruthless boar,
I am a threatening noise of the sea,
I am a wave of the sea,
Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen ?

Origin obscure but certainly Celtic

because that's why his eyes are yellow?

from a painful article here http://www.isisbooks.com/cernunnos.asp

All deer are the emissaries of Cernunnos. I have often thought of the deer in this way, especially when looking out into the darkness from the circle of light established by a campfire. When I see those large yellow eyes glinting back at me, I understand Cernunnos to be our guardian and guide as well as the Lord of Wild Animals.

...

Cernunnos can ‘appear’ under a variety of guises – he is not confined to the form of a stag – and in Celtic traditions there are several classic images of him. The most mysterious is perhaps the “three headed visage,” in which the Stag is “three-faced,” as if just having looked to his right and to his left. As if in time-lapse photography, you ‘see’ both of the partial profiles as well as the head-on view in the same instant of the vision. This visage of the Horned One alludes to something very unusual about him; that he is triple in himself. Many Celtic deities appear to us in triads, each ‘person’ in the triple manifestation having its own name, aspects or characteristics. Cernunnos is unusual in that he is a single deity, yet he can suddenly appear in this three-headed aspect.

Some believe that this evinces his connection with the Triple Goddess, whose lover he is. Just as She is Goddess of Earth, Moon and Water, so he is connected with these three realms of Nature in turn; being an inspiration to poets (lunar), magicians (earth) and healers (water). Others mystics have suggested that this merely proves what should be obvious about Celtic consciousness; that whenever it thinks of the divine or that mysterious ‘otherness’ which exists just beyond our human ability to comprehend the world, it always thinks and imagines in threes.

Cernunnos can also appear in human form, usually as a man with horns or antlers growing from his head or on a helmet that he wears. Occasionally he is imaged as having a man’s body and a stag’s head. At other times he seems entirely human, until you see those two small horns growing out of his head just above his brow, mostly hidden under his crop of long, matted and quite straggly black or dark brown hair. When appearing as an adult man, he is in possession of his full powers. In this manifestation he is often accompanied by two younger men, both of whom are naked and ithyphallic. Their condition of arousal speaks to the fecundity of the god; no one comes into the Horned God’s presence without feeling empowered and enervated in some way. The power of Cernunnos is exemplified in sexual potency as well as in the sudden arousal of poetic creativity.