The Wild Hunt:Winternights,Hags and Black shucks....

[Nahemah]

"When the winter winds blow and the Yule fires are lit, it is best to stay indoors, safely shut away from the dark paths and the wild heaths. Those who wander out by themselves during the Yule-nights may hear a sudden rustling through the tops of the trees - a rustling that might be the wind, though the rest of the wood is still.

"But then the barking of dogs fills the air, and the host of wild souls sweeps down, fire flashing from the eyes of the black hounds and the hooves of the black horses"

Kveldulf Hagen Gundarsson (Mountain Thunder)



(drawing by Ari Berk, after R. W. Feachem).


http://www.orkneyjar.com/tradition/hunt.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt

The people of the mounds are important in this lore,especially in regard to Utiseta,in lands where there has been cultural crossover/syncretism between Celt and Norse customs. [Utiseta:the practice of sitting out overnight on a longbarrow mound.]

"In the testimonies of many rural folk a distinction is often made between the sidhe who are seen walking on the ground after sunset, and the 'Sluagh Sidhe', the fairy host who travel through the air at night, and are known to 'take' mortals with them on their journeys. There are also guardian sidhe of most of the lakes of Ireland and Scotland. These distinct categories of sidhe beings ties in with the testimonies of seers who divide the sidhe into wood spirits, water spirits, air spirits and so on, the elemental spirits of each place."


http://deoxy.org/h_mounds.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluagh



More later...Hag riding and Black shucks next...

[TheSeeker]

Sorry if this is kind of like a cross-post....
I know sidhe is pronounced 'shee', but how does one pronounce sluagh?
And what do those words actually mean in Roman (uh, I mean English...)?

[Nahemah]

Sluagh : Sloo-ah.

Sorry forgot to say,the meaning is like the English Slew:crowd or host.

I pronounce Sidhe as Shay,not as Shee,but that is a localised dialect,so nae worries.Technically in Scots vernacular Sidhe would be spelled Sith,or Si.

And sorry, I have a bit of trouble with a lot of Gaelic words myself.I 'm not a Gael,I 'm a Lallander [Lowlander]
from Alt Clut [Strathclutha/StrathClyde]

Our auld Mither tongues were Cumbric and Ullans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ullans

Add in Old Norse and wallop,you've got a melting pot which is culturally very rich, but very linguistically confusing. [crazy]

I will do my best to translate and give pronunciations in brackets from here on in,Soz.

[Nahemah]

Err,also forgot this link:

" The calkins clinkered to a spark
The hunter called the pack;
The sheep-dogs' fells all bristled stark
And all their lips went back.


"Lord God," the shepherds said, "They come,
And see what hounds he has;
All dripping bluish fire and dumb,
And nosing to the grass.


"And trotting scatheless through the gorse,
And bristling in the fell:
Lord, it is death upon the horse,
And they're the hounds of hell!"


—John Masefield
from "The Hounds of Hell"

Even in Winter, you are not safe. Stay indoors, attend your hearths. Try to keep the night at bay by the telling of your tongue. Remember your kin, honor your ancestors. For at this time the dead begin to stir, riding upon hallowed and familiar roads, galloping through villages and wastes, flying through the forests of the mind. Such raids are reminders that the past is not a dead thing, but may return, like a hunter, to follow us for a time."

* * *
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forhunt.html

I love this time of Year,Winternights are fast approaching and the skies are sometimes clear at night,as frosts fall...I can see Stars again!

[akimbomoss]

Sluagh : Sloo-ah.

Sorry forgot to say,the meaning is like the English Slew:crowd or host.

I pronounce Sidhe as Shay

Funny I started hearing this in my head:

I heard "the Shay, the shy" but no the lyrics are "no shade, no shine". Must have been that poem about november and dark cold. [wink]

[ShubNiggurath]

In Germany we have more than one name for those nights.

My grandmother calls them "zwelfnächte" - zwölf nächte - twelve nights. They are (dates differ) between Christmas Eve and Epiphanias. She is strict about not doing laundry, not knitting. "When you knit during the twelve nights, you knit the deathshroud"

(Meanwhile I know the original story of her parroted sentences. When you try do dry your (white) sheets after laundry; the wild hunt will caught in your sheets - and then someone will die.)

More common is the term: Rauhnächte (smoke nights) Traditionally you burn incense in your house and stables to ward off teüfel, gespenst vnd zauberey.

We have "Räuchermännchen" to do the incense burning job.

[Ramscha]

A small poem I wrote for the upcoming smoke nights:

Wenn Odin auszieht mit seinen Gesellen
zur Wilden Jagd mit Pferd und Speer.
Da tretet nicht vor die Tür,
haltet die Köpfe und Stimmen unten.

Wen er ergreift, der wird sein bei Recht,
sein Hund nun, sein Waffenknecht.
Wird ihn begleiten zur Wilden Jagd,
bis auf die rauhe Nacht
der Tag erwacht.

English version:

When Odin rides with his fellows
to hunt with horse and spear.
Don´t go outside in the night,
and keep your heads and voices down.

Who he gets is his by right,
his dog, his man.
Will follow him to the Wild Hunt,
until the night
yields the awakening day.

Here in Austria this saying ""When you knit during the twelve nights, you knit the deathshroud" is still very well known on the countryside. Since knitting has a very long tradition here and also in the folklore I suppose this saying is very old, same as the Wild Hunt.

I didn´t know the Räuchermännchen, but they look kind of cute [yay] , I want one.

Ramscha

[Asurendra]

The Wild Hunt has always been of great interest and importance to me. When I was a boy and pre-teen I used to dream frequently about the Black Dogs. This is a good book on the subject which I read in 2 days:

http://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Armies-Ni ... =wild+hunt

[Nahemah]

Thanks for the new posts here guys. [grin]

I had forgotten to come back and write/link here some more.Oops.

Timely too. [thumbup]

[ShubNiggurath]

"The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as on Christmas Eve in an old house a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to note it as the only case he had met in which such visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it[...]

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw [1898] (~p.1)

Friends meet during the twelve nights to tell each other dreadful stories.

[RoseRed]

Those black hounds hold a near and dear place in my heart. I call their kind friend.

[Asurendra]

I forgot to mention, Bhairava is a fierce aspect of Lord Shiva who is associated with dogs, thunder and the hunt. I think this may be one of those deep Indo-European connections and as aspect of the Wild Hunt.

[ShubNiggurath]

The Wild Hunt has always been of great interest and importance to me. When I was a boy and pre-teen I used to dream frequently about the Black Dogs. This is a good book on the subject which I read in 2 days:

http://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Armies-Ni ... =wild+hunt

Hello, Wise Soul,
did you have time to read the book?
can you recommend it?

[Asurendra]

Yes, the book is very interesting. He has deep research into the subject.