The Wild Hunt

In English legend THE HUNT's quarry is a stag of purest white. In Teutonic legend THE HUNT's leader is Odin, and the quarry is a beautiful maiden. The Hunt and its leader crop up in Arthurian legend as the Green Knight. 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.

In the Mabinogion Pwyll Prince of Dyfed encounters the Underworld King Arawn with his ghostly pack.
"And of all the hounds he had seen in the world, he had seen no dogs the colour of these. The colour that was on them was a brilliant shining white, and their ears red; and as the whiteness of their bodies shone, so the redness of their ears glisten...And...he saw a horseman coming towards him upon a large light-grey steed, with a hunting horn round his neck, and clad in garments of grey..."

In the Anglo Saxon Chronicles (in 1127 AD) we find the following:
"...it was seen and heard by many men: many hunters riding. The hunters were black, and great and loathy, and their hounds all black, and wide-eyed and loathy, and they rode on black horses and black he-goats. This was seen in the very deer park in the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods from the same town to Stamford; and the monks heard the horn blowing that they blew that night. Truthful men who kept watch at night said that it seemed to them that there might be about twenty or thirty horn blowers. This was seen and heard...all through Lentern tide until Easter."

Christian belief has altered THE HUNT. Its leader the divine becomes the demonic and its quarry becomes lost souls - they can save themselves only by falling face down on the ground and holding fast to any available plant or tuft of grass!

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The Green Man

The GREEN MAN who accompanies the dancers comes from a similar set of legends. Designs in churches and on monuments date back to the 2nd Century. He is, of course, widely celebrated in many pub names. He is very much a symbol of THE MAY, the traditional beginning of Spring and the regeneration of the life-cycle.

Many Medieval Christian churches in Britain contain a significant number of carvings representing the figure known as the Green Man. These generally take the form of foliate heads and faces - from the eyes, lips and ears of which sprout leaves, so that the face seems to be peering from amid the foliage...or to be actually made of leaves.

Writing in Folk-Lore Vol. 50 in 1939 the distinguished anthropologist Lady Raglan described how she first became interested in these carvings. Eight years previously she had been shown a carving in the roof of the church at Llangwn in Monmouthshire by its then vicar, the Reverend J. Griffith. It was of "a man's face, with oak leaves growing from the mouth and ears, and completely encircling the head. Mr Griffith suggested that it was intended to symbolise the spirit of inspiration, but it seemed to me certain that it was a man and not a spirit, and moreover that it was a 'Green Man'."

Lady Raglan was convinced that the faces she observed were portraits, and she sought a figure from the which the grinning, leafy faces could derive. She goes on: "The answer, I think, is that there is only one of sufficient importance, a figure variously known as the Green Man, Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, the King of May, and the Garland, who is the central figure in the May-Day celebrations throughout Northern and Central Europe. In England and Scotland the most popular name for this figure...was Robin Hood."

Her resulting research showed that she was wrong in believing that the Green Man was "not a spirit". It also showed that he appeared in churches all over Britain and elsewhere in Europe. She next noticed that the predominant foliage sprouting from the ears and lips of these foliate heads was oak, a tree long known to be sacred. Where this varied, the tendency was towards ivy, which was also sacred.

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The Origins of Morris

Morris Dancing was clearly regarded as an ancient custom in the time of Shakespeare - he mentions it in several plays - and although the first written reference dates to only the 15th Century it seems likely to have roots in Anglo-Saxon or Celtic times.

The origin of the name Morris is uncertain but may have come from the dancers blacking their faces as a form of theatrical disguise - and to prevent the local priest learning who was taking part in pagan rituals and generally leading the revels. The only black people known to the population of those times were Moors, hence Moorish dancing or Morris dancing.

In the Basque region of Spain there is a dance for six men in whites with bells. Also seen in Catalonia are mixed sets doing a processional in whites with bells and sticks. This all seems to support an argument in favour of a Moorish origin.

Anyone from the Americas may like to know that the first Morris dancing there was probably in 1583, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert took on his voyage there "entertainment's for the solace of our people and the allurement of savages". Apparently the "cavortings of Morris dancers, hobby horse and jack o'greens" went down well with the audiences!

Cotswold Morris
The "Cotswold" tradition, most commonly seen, is far removed from any origins in pagan fertility rites, having been sanitised by the Church, the Puritans and the Victorians, leaving the handkerchiefs and bells to "chase away the devil". Around the turn of the 19th century Cecil Sharp collected from the few remaining teams and individual old dancers what was then a dying tradition in the Cotswold villages. He was then able to teach the dances to others, many of whom went on to form the revivalist teams we see today.

Bedlam Morris
Researchers in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire discovered a variant of Morris dancing, often referred to in the archives as Border or Bedlam Morris. Here the dancers still wore disguise (mostly blacking their faces), made a great deal of noise (as the name implies) and invariably used sticks - a phallic symbol. The Bedlam Morris style looks and feels closer to a distant pagan origin.

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