What does wild hunt mean? wild Hunt

...So - Wild Hunt

Terrible is the night when silently treading through the air, over cities and forests, fields and rivers, a pack of ghostly fiery-eyed dogs chasing prey will sweep by. Terrible is the night when the sound of the horn and the furious cries of the beaters are intertwined with the howling of the wind. Terrible is the night when the wild hunter pursues his game... The legend of the Wild Hunt can be found wherever the Celts and Germans ever lived - that is, throughout central, part of northern and northwestern Europe, from insular Britain to Germany, and it is not entirely clear which of these two peoples is "author of the idea" The common name - Wild Hunt - is found everywhere - Wild Hunt, Die Wilde Jagd, Wilde Heer, but there are also many local and / or later names, for example, Welsh Cŵn Annwn (Annuin's dogs), Herod's hunt, Cain's hunt, Gabriel's hounds, Asgardreya, etc. In addition, in every locality where this legend took root, it was somehow transformed, adapting to local beliefs, and there are a lot of nuances in the description of the Wild Hunt.


Sometimes the role of the Hunter is played by a god - Wotan, Gwyn-ap-Nuud, Manannan mac Llir or Araun. Sometimes a lady also appears: the Celtic Niav, the daughter of Manannan, or the German Holle-Hel.
In other cases, some semi-mythical, semi-historical person becomes the Hunter, always, however, related to both the world of the living and the other world: for example, sometimes King Arthur leads a wild race - not alive and not dead, belonging, according to the most famous legend about his death, two worlds at once, and the world of the living and Annuin, or the British king Herla, who lost his time after attending the wedding feast of the king of the other world, or Edric the Wild - who at one time married a maiden from the shea clan, named Godda, who lost her after own negligence, and again found after death.
Among these heroes are Roland, and Sir Francis Drake, and Charlemagne, and Finn mac Kumal, and Dietrich of Bern, and Waldemar Atterdag, and even a certain Jan Trigigle, a Cornish judge (17th century), who escaped from Hell and led the Wild Hunt.
Sometimes horns appear in the description of the Hunter, but there is not enough data to say whether he is related to Cernunnus or other horned gods of the Celts, or is it just Christian ideas that the Hunter is the devil himself, and he is known to have this piquant detail of appearance. On the other hand, the later myth of Herne the hunter of Windsor Forest is definitely associated with the horned master of the forests of Britain.


Wild Hunt appears in the dark season, among the Celts - somewhere in the Samhain region, among the Germans - in the winter, either before Yule, or during Yoltayd.

According to Afanasiev, who analyzed the German version of the myth, the Wild Hunt is poeticized and mythologized representations of clouds and winds, thunderstorms and snowfalls that come at the end of autumn.
The game of Wodan the Hunter is animal-like clouds, and dogs, ravens and lost souls accompany him - nachtvolk (night people), his scourge is the brilliance of lightning, the wind serves as a support for the hooves of horses and inflates his cloak.
According to Chris Kershaw and Otto Hoefler, the Wild Hunt is an echo of the archaic customs of male alliances among the Gaelic and Germanic tribes, when squads of warrior-beasts drove the game prey. Surviving fragments of similar customs survive in Britain, in the form men's games and processions around the autumn equinox.

But if we abstract a little from the purely historical roots of the image, and analyze only the image itself, we can single out the following common features of the Hunt.

1. Hunting appears in the dark season, when life recedes before the breath of winter.
2. She is led by deities related to the other world and / or the world of the dead, or by people who have been beyond the borders and have not been able to fully return to the world of the living.
3. The hunt comes from the side of death - from the west or north (cf. Slua in Scottish beliefs).
4. You can’t look at the Wild Hunt - the one who meets the gaze of the Wild Hunter dies or disappears; in some versions of the myth it dies on the spot, in some it is torn apart by dogs, in others it turns into a driven animal until the dogs catch up with it or until another animal is found, in others it simply joins the cavalcade forever.
5. Wild hunting - a harbinger of troubles and deaths. If it passes over the house, misfortune enters it; if many see the hunt, it means that the coming trouble will affect many.

On the other hand, there are a number of several significant differences in the Germanic and Celtic worlds.
Among the Germans, meeting Wodan Jagd is not necessarily a bad sign. To the one who meets the Hunt in the fields and forests, and not under the roof of the house, and finds the courage to support the hunting cry of Wodan, he will throw part of his prey, which will turn into gold and silver in the light of the sun. The fields over which Asgardreya was spotted will bring twice the harvest. There are also a number of German moralizing tales, where the Hunter severely punishes an unbeliever or a sinner, after which he is corrected.

Among the Celts, the descriptions of the Wild Hunt are more similar to the description of the Sid cavalcades - then it is clear why it appears on the days of Samhain: this holiday divides the year into the time that belongs to people, the time when they cultivate the land and use its fruits, and the time of the Sids - when the surface of the earth belongs to them. Hunting is led by any of the kings of Annuin - but Annuin is not only the world of the dead, it is the other world in general, the place of constant dominion of the shi. Of course, there is always a chance to get caught by a hot hand sitting in the hills, but the risk here is more to be carried away after the riders and never return home.
Well, of course, the Hunt is not the cause of the troubles that may occur, rather, it is just a harbinger. The island Celts, for example, had widespread beliefs about the shi-keepers of the family or locality, and that if something bad should happen, then the guardian maiden would definitely appear and warn: either with her appearance, or crying, or, for absolutely dull, will sound in plain text.

Both the Celts and the Germans have an ancient everyday motif that correlates to some extent with wild hunting: the autumn rut by the best warriors-animals of the tribe of sacrificial game. In Britain, the tradition of playing young men is still preserved - running after the leader. All unmarried men who can run long enough run into the woods for the strongest. You don’t have to overtake him - just follow him, this is a kind of imitation of a wolf pack running. It is undesirable to get in their way - because they can beat you very sensitively, but, judging by some customs-markers, - once upon a time a random oncoming flock could kill. Probably, this is where the root of the idea that a meeting with the Hunt brings death lies.

In addition, one should distinguish between an archaic layer and an alluvial, Christian one: if the Hunt is an absolute evil, and the dogs raise the souls of unbaptized babies from the graves and chase them like game ... or if the one who sees the hunt dies on the spot and his soul is already henceforth heaven is ordered, or the Hunter is a person who is not accepted by either hell or heaven, or if you can look at the hunt, but it retreats before prayer, then you can definitely be sure that these are Christian layers that have taken root in ancient land.

Separately, you can talk about the dogs of the Wild Hunt. Among the Germanic peoples, where there were no special beliefs associated with dogs, they appear only insofar as, often in German descriptions, dogs do not even run ahead of Wodan Jagd, but follow it.
The Celts, on the other hand, had an extensive system of beliefs about hill dogs, shea dogs or heather dogs on the one hand, and ghost dogs- the guards of the borders of the world of the dead and the world of the living on the other. That is why the Celts have much more stories about the hounds of the Wild Hunt than other tribes. It is curious that in different areas the dogs take on the features of different types of magical dogs: they can be Annuin's white-and-red hounds, and swamp-green huge dogs hills, and coal-black fire-eyed or eyeless grims - guardians of the edge and heralds of death.

Well, a few words about game. It is clear that lost - and, of course, unbaptized or sinful - souls as an object of hunting are already Christian accretions.
The game of the Wild Hunt is generally rarely mentioned, but among the peoples of the Germanic root it is most often a wild boar or deer, among the Celts - a deer or a hare. All these animals are sacrificial and symbolize rebirth, rebirth and are often associated with dying and reborn gods.

_______________
Knocknaray - a mountain in County Sligo, topped with a light stone. According to legend, Queen Medb is buried under the stone.

Klot-na-Bar - the name is traced to Cailleah Beare, a hag from Baer. According to legend, she was so tired of her endless life that she walked all over Britain for a long time, in search of a reservoir deep enough to drown her immortality. Stepping from mountain to mountain, she found a suitable lake at the top of Bird Mountain in Sligo; its name is Loh Ya

(c) Shellir, 2008

(Wild Race) - A horde of ghost riders that suddenly appear in various areas of the world and just as suddenly disappear. They are considered an omen of misfortune, war and death. They are said to appear mainly, but not exclusively, during the winter.

The mere presence of the Hunt causes chaos and panic among mere mortals, whom the Hunt captures and forces to join their terrible motorcade. Numerous stories of disappearances of people, and then their sudden and unexpected return, are considered acts of the Wild Hunt. Often, when abductees return to their homelands, they find only the old, overgrown graves of their children.

Hunt Stories Don't Found in Culture elves and dwarves with dwarves . This is very strange, because the Elder peoples also had to deal with this phenomenon, long before the appearance of man. However, the shorties ignore this phenomenon, and the elves only mysteriously remain silent.

Enough extensive information about the Hunt is owned by representatives Witcher's School of the Snake.

Leading the HuntKing of the Wild Hunt , also known asEredin Break Glass, leader Red Riders .

On the sea in the world of people, the riders of the Hunt sail on a legendary ship Naglfare , on land they move on horseback and with the help of portals.

Appearance

A procession of ghosts and skeletons on horseback flying high in the sky. They look like typical ghosts - chains, terrible wounds and exposed bones.

In fact, the Wild Hunt is a projection of an elven squad of riders in skillfully forged and stylized skull and bone armor.

encyclopedic reference

Class: projections.

Habitat: The Wild Hunt appears in the sky as a harbinger of war and other disasters; some consider it just a magical phenomenon, and not a horde of ghosts.

Tactics: warriors of the Wild Hunt do not need to fight, they cause such horror that people shrink from fear, barely seeing them; there are cases when the Hunt kidnapped people.

Vulnerability: in the game "The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings" there is a separate animated video dedicated to this memory forgotten by Geralt. It is mentioned that the riders, like living beings, bled and had elven faces.

Ingredients: pairs of hunting.

Entry in the Bestiary

The Wild Hunt is a horde of ghosts that ride across the sky during a storm, predicting misfortune. The appearance of the Wild Hunt precedes the outbreak of wars and other disasters, just like the flight of a comet. The Ghostly Wild Hunt sometimes appears in the nightmares of cursed people, or those touched by Destiny.

Data from Sapkowski's books

Several more terrible and sinister stories were told. For example, that in some areas cows suddenly began to give blood, not milk, and at dawn people saw in the fog Virgin Mora , a harbinger of terrible doom. IN Brugge , in the areas of the Brokilon forest, the protected kingdom of the forest dryad , showed up Wild Gon, a bunch of witches galloping across the sky, and Wild Gon, everyone knows, always portends war. from the peninsula Bremmervoord noticed a ghostly ship, and on board - ghost , a black knight in a helmet with wings of a bird of prey ... - Hour of Contempt

Fuzzy silhouettes of riders appear in the ribbon moving across the sky. They are getting closer, you can see them more clearly. Buffalo horns sway and disheveled sultans on helmets, grinning skulls turn white under the helmets. Riders sit on horse skeletons covered with tattered blankets. A furious wind howls in the willows, lightning tips one after another cut the black sky. The wind is howling louder. No, it's not the wind, it's an eerie singing.
The nightmarish cavalcade turns around, hurtling straight for her. The ghostly horses' hooves rip open the flickering swamp lights. At the head of the cavalcade the King rushes Gona. A rusted cone sways over a skull gaping with gaping eye sockets burning with a bluish fire. A tattered cloak flutters. A collar rumbles on a rusty breastplate, empty as an old pea pod. It once contained gems. But they fell out during a wild race through the sky. And become stars...
"Not true! This is not! This is a nightmare, delirium, ghosts, mirages! It just seems to me!”
King Gona restrains the skeletal horse, bursts into wild, eerie laughter.
- Child of the Elder Blood ! You are ours! You are ours! Join the cortege, join ours Gon! We will race, race to the end, to the end of eternity, to the limits of existence! You are our star-eyed daughter of Chaos! Join, know the joy Gona! You are ours, you are one of us! Your place is with us, among us!
- No! Ciri screams . - Get out! You are corpses!
King Gona laughs, rotten teeth chatter over the rusted collar of armor. The eye sockets of the skull glow blue.
- Yes, we are corpses! But death is you! - Hour of Contempt

"That's right," he muttered. lower classes looking up to the sky and listening. - A restless night, something unkind hangs in the air ... Animals toil in the barn ... And screams are heard in the wind ...
- Wild Gon- said the witcher quietly. Close the shutters properly, Herr Hofmeier.
- Wild Gon? Bernier wondered. - Ghosts?
- Do not be afraid. They will go high. In summer Gon always goes high. Gon dangerous during a winter storm, especially to travelers at a crossroads. But the kids can wake up. Gon brings with it nightmares. Better close the shutters.

- Wild Gon, - spoke Buttercup , restlessly looking up, - to the war. - Hour of Contempt

The nightjars yelled their requiem in wild voices, the sky was covered with clouds that extinguished the remnants of the moonlight. Then the terrible beann'shee , the messenger of someone's quick and bad death, and swept through the black sky Wild Gon- a herd of fiery-eyed, tattered cloaks and standards of ghosts on horse skeletons. As always, Wild Gon harvested, but for many decades it has not been as terrible as this year - in one Novigrad counted twenty s superfluous man who disappeared without a trace. - Tower of the Swallow

Remember your legends. Legends about people who mysteriously disappeared and returned years later only to look at the graves of their loved ones overgrown with weeds. Do you think these are fantasies, tales sucked from your finger? Wrong! People have been kidnapped for centuries, carried away by riders you call Wild Gon, Stolen, used, then discarded like the shell of a drunken egg. - Lady of the Lake

The Witcher game

In the game there is only the King himself, who has considerable power over ghosts. So, for example, the King summons the soul Leo and makes him attack Geralt.

A game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Glossary entry

According to legend and eyewitness accounts, the Wild Hunt kidnaps people, taking them on a wild ride through the sky. She gathers a particularly rich harvest before or during great wars. Such a case was a few years ago in Novigrad: after the appearance of the Wild Hunt, more than twenty people went missing. Some of the abductees managed to escape the ghost riders into the human world, but their stories were so implausible that they were all considered insane.

One of the insane asylum patients claimed to have been kidnapped by the Wild Hunt and taken to a world where unicorns roam elven gardens. When he managed to escape, he returned to his native world only to find the graves of his children, who had already died of old age, so many years had passed since his disappearance...

Legends of the Wild Hunt are not found among elves or dwarves. This is quite remarkable, as the Elder Races must have met the Wild Hunt long before humans. Apparently, the dwarves simply do not notice the ghostly host, and this is mutual. The elves, on the other hand, bypass the topic of the Hunt with a mysterious silence.

According to Nord legends, the Wild Hunt is a procession, or rather a cavalcade of ghost riders. They rush through the sky, riding the skeletons of horses. They are dressed in rusted scraps of armor, girded with worn-out swords. The Wild Hunt, like comets, is a harbinger of war, for which there is irrefutable evidence. The ghostly cavalcade appears in search of unfortunate victims every few years, but its harvest has never been as rich as immediately before the war with Nilfgaard. Then, after the Wild Hunt swept over Novigrad, more than twenty souls were missing in the city. It is noteworthy that neither elven nor dwarven legends mention the Wild Hunt.

According to the notes of the sorcerer, who devoted his whole life to studying the phenomenon of the Hunt, there is some mysterious force that sends an army of ghosts into our world.

The sorcerers and sorceresses diligently avoided the topic of the Hunt in silence. And the silence of such learned men and women is no less eloquent than words. However, you will not hear another word from me on this matter.

The poem "Song of the Hunt" is a real bibliographic rarity and at the same time a collection of fables on the theme of the Wild Hunt. Connoisseurs of poetry will break themselves for the sake of such a little book, but fortunately there are few such connoisseurs. The multi-layered narrative takes the reader into the world of the author's rich imagination, where each stanza is a new interpretation of the myth. In this work, truth was mixed with poetic license, and for a serious researcher of the Hunt, the book was of no interest.

Sheala de Tanserville showed no interest in the ghost riders of the Wild Hunt. And that was odd, to say the least, given her reputation as an exceptionally learned sorceress.

So what exactly is the Wild Hunt? They are horsemen capable of moving from one dimension to another. This is a cavalcade from a world conquered by elves. The spiritual emanations of the warriors of this people are mistaken for ghosts. The hunt serves a powerful race and even more powerful rulers, whose command of magic and skill in this field infinitely surpasses any of the talents of the human sorcerers of our world.

The Ghost Riders pursued Aramil, an elf from a parallel world, to Loc Muinne. There the fugitive managed to take a breath. Judging by the records, the King of the Hunt dreams of forever opening the gates between the worlds, so that chaos and horror will again rule in our lands.

They are not found in the gameplay, but they are present in Geralt's memories. As he found out, the Wild Hunt in this world is just projections, avatars, real elves, only from another world. And they always come into this world as projections, except for one case - then they came for Yennefer and Geralt on

Since ancient times, people have been afraid of many natural phenomena and have given them mystical descriptions. Over time, these phenomena found their explanation and justification, and the myths stepped aside a little. But not all phenomena man was able to give an explanation. And one of these phenomena is considered to be a string of creatures that rush through the sky on the eve of great troubles and cataclysms. This is called the Wild Hunt or the Wild Hunt - a phenomenon when the ghosts of the long dead jump across the sky in search of prey and descend to earth to pick it up.

Origin and species

Wild hunting appears only on the eve of wars and cataclysms. And it is an amalgamation of several types of creatures, which makes it very difficult to classify. It is also impossible to establish how it appears, it is only known what it precedes. In general, the creatures of the Wild Hunt are overwhelmingly ghosts, though there are exceptions.

Legends say that on the eve of cataclysms, the king gathers his retinue from all over the world and goes on a great hunt for human souls. Those of the people who are taken by the wild hunt become part of it, so among its representatives you can see people from various tribes and peoples who, although they hunt together, hunt on their own.

Appearance

All references to the Wild Hunt agree on one thing, and are terribly accurate in these similarities. First, a deafening howl is heard from afar, and then a string of ghostly riders rush through the sky, accompanied by terrifyingly huge hounds that grab the gaping people and carry them away. The hunt is always led by a king, whose description is identical in all stories about this phenomenon - a tall, stately and half-decomposed corpse that rushes forward on a huge white horse.

Creatures participating in the hunt

The Wild Hunt begins with the hounds - huge, the size of a horse, dogs that, with their howls, signify the approach of the king. These hounds are very diverse, some of them look like huskies, others like, and thirdly, the features are guessed. But they all obey the king and strictly follow the direction he has chosen.

Beaters follow the hounds, some on foot, some on horseback. They are the most diverse in the Wild Hunt. Their role seems insignificant - they attract attention, riveting eyes, sometimes chasing victims, but they are never allowed to kill those same victims. Probably, the beaters are recruited from the victims of the previous hunt, and on the next they already appear as hunters.

Hunters. The most ghostly figures that acquire similarities and common features with the king. If the beaters look like ordinary people, then the hunters have traces of decomposition on their bodies. They have the right to kill or detain victims for the king, so that he himself can end the life of the most delicious victim.

King of the Wild Hunt. The most decomposed and most ghostly figure in this phenomenon. The descriptions mention that the king's cloak envelops the entire hunt and leaves behind it a long trail of a strange glow. The legends describe how “a pale horseman on a pale horse”, probably in biblical mythology, this description was given to one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse “and the name of that horseman is death.” Considering the functions and conditions of the appearance of this king in front of people, such a theory seems very true.

The Wild Hunt is a terrifying and terrible phenomenon that, according to the annals, swept through the world twice. The horror in the study of the annals is added by the realization of the fact that references to the Wild Hunt or a similar phenomenon are found everywhere and even date back to the same time. This phenomenon collects human souls and thus it grows. But it may also be that, contrary to popular belief, the Wild Hunt saves these souls by taking them into its bosom and protecting them from a more terrible death.



Wild Hunt, Wild Hunt

A demonic cavalcade of ghosts rushing across the sky. Ghouls from the Wild Hunt can kidnap people by force, but they can also force people to join them with the help of hypnotic suggestion. The prototype is considered to be familiar from Nordic and German mythologies, a host of Valkyries rushing across the sky, servants of Odin, picking up fallen heroes from the battlefields to take them to Valhalla. The Northern Lights are nothing more than reflections of the weapons and armor of the Valkyries.

The cavalcade of the Valkyries in later Germanic mythology acquired a demonic character, becoming the Wild Gon (Wilde Jagd) of the goddess Hölda or Huldra, the wife of Wotan. Wild Gon is also the cavalcade of the god Gwynn ap Nudd from Cymbrian mythology, as is the cavalcade of Hjorn the Hunter.

Wild Hunt rushes mainly during the so-called severe nights (Rauh?chte), that is, in the period from Christmas Eve to the Three Wise Men.

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