Happy halloween, everybody! Now, as you know, I generally do special spooky
episodes in honor of the world's best holiday, and more specifically I usually cover a classic
work of great horror fiction. Unfortunately, I… kinda ran out. I mean, there's more out there, but once you've
covered Dracula, Frankenstein, Lovecraft, Poe and Jekyll and Hyde, the great seminal
works of horror fiction start getting a little thinner on the ground and a lot less interesting. Now I was planning on breaking the formula
anyway by covering a much more subtly creepy classic - The Count Of Monte Cristo, a harrowing
exploration of trust, betrayal and the transformative poison of revenge. But it's really long. Like, really really long. Like, basically as long as my copy of Journey
To The West. So unfortunately I couldn't finish it in time. But it's probably fine to leave it on the
shelf for a year or… fourteen. I'm sure it won't get mad and swear tortuous
vengeance about it! Instead, let's dip into folklore and talk
about something really in the spirit of the season - spirits of the season! Specifically, the folkloric wild hunt, a delightfully
spooky staple concept in European folklore with suspiciously ancient roots. Now, the wild hunt is officially classified
as a folklore motif in the Stith Thompson Index of Folkloric Classification, a thing
that I am desperately happy exists. It sounds like a joke in an urban fantasy
story. ("Code E-221! E-221! We got a dead wife haunting husband on his
second marriage!") Anyway, the Wild Hunt is officially motif
code E501 - a ghostly hunter and phantom entourage pursuing an eternal phantasmal chase through
the night. Frequently connected with the sound of howling
wind and other such creepy nighttime noises, the Wild Hunt invisibly storms through the
sky, hunting an ever-elusive prey and often doing very unpleasant things to anyone who
doesn't get out of their way fast enough. Nothing like a good ghost party to really
get into the spirit of the season. The Wild Hunt concept was first officially
codified by Jacob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm, during his studies of German Folklore, when
he noticed a super recurrent motif of a ghostly hunt through the night. Variously called the Wild Hunt, the Raging
Host and the Wild Army, the names can change but the concept stays the same - where some
ghosts haunt individually, the Wild Hunt is a veritable ghost tornado, a screaming storm
of the unhallowed dead, forever barred from their rest and cursed in death to ride eternal. And though Grimm was specifically studying
german folklore, the Wild Hunt is found all over western europe and beyond, even contributing
to the american folkloric concept of… the ghost rider. Yes, that one. Now, Jacob Grimm, a comparative mythologist
after my own heart, believed that a lot of these fairy tale staples had ancient pagan
origins. And while that theory is often a bit… hokey,
the fact that a lot of the fairy tales about the wild hunt specifically credit Odin as
its leader lends some pretty solid credence to that theory. See, back in the old norse days, Odin had
a ghost posse of his own - the Einherjar, ghostly warriors brought to Valhalla by the
valkyries to eternally train for the final battle of Ragnarok. With Odin and his valkyrie cohort leading
them, the Einherjar ride out to the field of Vigridr for the battle that ends the world. And even post-Christianization, Odin and his
Einherjar were still a very popular concept. Tenth-century Norwegian King Haakon the Good
was super into christianity, and spent his life trying to christianize Norway before
being killed in battle by the forces of the amazingly named Eric Bloodaxe. When he died, his court poet composed a poem
about his death wherein King Hakon is spirited away by valkyries and welcomed into Valhalla
by Odin; and while Hakon is worried Odin will hate him for his Christian faith, he instead
welcomes him, and the Einherjar honor his warrior's courage. Amusingly, when Eric Bloodaxe was later killed,
his equally-awesomely-named wife Gunnhildr, Mother Of Kings, supposedly had a similar
poem composed where Odin prepares Valhalla and the Einherjar for the arrival of her husband. One can only imagine the awkward dinner conversations. And, bonus fun fact, Odin's ghostly host might
have been originally based on a real group of warriors attested by Tacitus in his Germania
way back in the aughts CE. This group, the harii, painted their shields
and bodies black and attacked on dark nights as a shadowy phantom army to very effectively
confound and terrorize in their enemies. Eight centuries and a lot of mythologization
later, the story of this ghostly shadow-army could easily transform into a phantom host
in service to Odin. The fact that einherjar is etymologically
connected to harii supports this theory - though harii just means warrior, and einherjar just
means those who fight alone, so… it maybe doesn't support it THAT much. Anyway, while Scandinavian kings at the turn
of the milennium loved them some Valhalla, Grimm thinks the general opinion might have
soured a bit after a few centuries of Christianization. In those early days, the Norse gods were still
very familiar - they weren't quite being worshipped, but they still had a very strong presence
in the social landscape. Many gods were explicitly connected with natural
phenomena, like Thor's anger to the thunder, or Odin's night rides with the howling night
winds, serving as constant physical reminders of these familiar old figures. But as centuries passed in the new paradigm,
the old gods became unfamiliar, even demonic. Grimm thinks the christianization of Scandinavia
never erased the old gods, but instead made them unfamiliar and terrifying, personifications
of the wild and the unknown. Odin's nightly rides stopped being a glorious
battle charge and a promise of a shining afterlife, and instead became a terrifying army of ghosts. And since christianity promises a peaceful
afterlife for the hallowed dead, by extension, that army of ghosts has to be really bad news. Grimm puts this really beautifully, in a…
distinctly creepy way: "as the christian god has not made them his, they fall due to the
old heathen one". Basically, since good people get to join the
christian god when they die, the unhallowed, unbaptized or otherwise bad dead fall into
the waiting arms of the old pagan gods and join their host instead. But despite this extremely creepy framing,
the Wild Hunt is not always strictly an antagonistic force. One folktale describes a drunk peasant walking
home through the woods - he hears the cry of the wild hunt behind him and a voice telling
him to get out of the way, and when he doesn't, the hunt leader crashes down out of the sky
in front of him. The huntsman tosses a chain at the peasant
and challenges him to a game of tug-of war, but when he takes off into the sky, the peasant
quickly ties the chain around a nearby oak. Impressed by the peasant’s apparently prodigious
strength, the huntsman tries and fails two more times, and as a reward for the peasant's
cunning, he butchers a stag and gives the him meat, and the peasant, without any other
way to transport it, is forced to carry it in one of his boots. As he walks home with it, the boot becomes
heavier and heavier, but he eventually reaches his house - whereupon he finds the boot is
full of gold. General consensus is this huntsman is Odin,
or Wotan if you wanna be old high german about it, and the bootful of gold is probably a
remnant of a much older story, cuz it's a little too weirdly specific otherwise. This general format is pretty common in folktales
- a mysterious and potentially malevolent supernatural entity challenges the hero to
an impossible task, and when they succeed, the entity rewards them. But the wild hunt specifically seems to have
a habit of rewarding people with gifts of gold, specifically gold that doesn’t initially
look like gold. There's a few other consistent themes about
the Hunt. It’s very commonly framed as a karmic punishment
for the people caught up in it, usually as a cautionary tale - the stock explanation
for why the huntmaster is leading the hunt in the first place is that they used to be
some hunt-happy dumb-dumb who loudly declared that the christian god can stuff it cuz hunting
is where it's at and immediately found themself bound eternally to the phantom wild hunt,
cursed never to rest until judgment day or something. It's also generally agreed on that, if you
hear the cry of the wild hunt, it's unwise to mimic it. It might go pretty well for you! Sometimes the hunt appreciates your enthusiasm
and leaves you some of what they hunted that night, like a bit of moss or an entire human
leg. But sometimes you're just getting their attention,
which is a good way to get swept up by the storm and disappeared forever. Or both things could happen, like the tale
of the peasant who mimicked the call of the Hunt and was instantly killed when they tossed
an entire horse flank down his chimney. It's also very common for the hunt leader
to ride a white horse - which is interesting, because Odin's steed, Sleipnir, was very specifically
gray. Hm! Now, while the base concept of the Wild Hunt
seems to have originally evolved from Odin and his Einherjar, Odin is not always the
huntsman leading it. Although Grimm does believe a lot of the supposed
hunt leaders are actually just corruptions or bynames of Odin - for instance, several
stories describe the hunt being led by a dead nobleman named Hackelburg or Hackelbaran,
which seems to be derived from the old norse word hekla, meaning armored or cloaked one,
which he thinks is just an epithet for Odin corrupted and confused into being another
figure entirely. But not every hunt leader is Odin. For instance, a lot of them are women. One common theme says the hunt is led by one
Frau Gauden, a noblewoman with 24 daughters who loved hunting more than life itself, and
once said that hunting was better than heaven. In a bout of shockingly well-timed karmic
retribution, Frau Gauden's daughters all immediately transform into hunting dogs and they're whisked
up into the sky, doomed to hunt eternally through the night. Oh no! Exactly what we asked for! This is the worst! But Frau Gauden's wild hunt is a little aesthetically
different from the Odin version. For one thing, she doesn't ride a horse - she
rides in a carriage. And a common story when she's in charge is
that her carriage gets damaged, usually when she rides over a crossroad, and she politely
asks a local craftsman to fix it. When he does, she rewards him with a payment
that initially appears worthless, like wood shavings or literal dog poop - but when the
sun rises, it transmutes into pure gold. Frau Gauden is also said to be most powerful
around the new year, and sometimes leaves phantom dogs in the houses of people who don't
lock up properly - and while yes, a free magic pupper would be amazing, these lil guys are
actually bad omens that bring misfortune on the household until Frau Gauden collects them
the next year. Some pretty standard winter-is-spooky-lock-your-doors
morals on that one. There's another huntmistress found in Alpine
folklore known as Berchta, who's quite different from Gauden - her name either means hidden
or the bright one, and either translation makes sense, since she's described as being
completely swathed in bright white robes. Berchta, like Gauden, also appears around
the twelve days of christmas, but that's where the similarities end. Gauden is a stately noblewoman, while Berchta
is at best horrifically old and wizened, while some stories paint her as physically monstrous,
with mismatched limbs and animalistic features. But Berchta isn't just another pretty face
- she also cares for the souls of unbaptized children, which ties in well with Grimm's
theory that the old gods take the dead that the new god won't touch. Berchta also serves the important role of
enforcing taboos, like a ban on spinning during the winter holidays or eating anything but
fish and gruel on her feast day, and in bavarian and austrian folklore she supposedly rewarded
well-behaved children and servants with silver coins. This kind of ties into the same theme as Odin
with the bootful of gold - an intimidating figure punishing transgressions but richly
rewarding good behavior. Now Grimm theorizes that Gauden and Berchta
are both offshoots of a very ancient pre-christian goddess, along with a third folkloric figure,
Frau Holle, who Grimm believes most closely resembles the theoretical original figure. Frau Holle or Holda, sometimes also called
Old Mother Frost, is a generally benevolent folkloric figure who sometimes leads a cohort
of phantom women and occasionally rewards people with gold. In one popular story, a young girl who lives
with her cruel stepmother and stepsister accidentally drops her spindle down a well and jumps in
after it - only to find herself transported to an unfamiliar meadow. She finds an oven with bread baking, and the
bread asks to be taken out before it burns. She obliges, then finds an apple tree that
asks her to harvest the apples, which she does. Finally, she comes to a small house with a
friendly old woman who calls herself Frau Holle and says she can stay if she does her
housework. Ever-obliging, the girl agrees. Frau Holle warns her to be extra-diligent
shaking out the featherbed, because that's what causes snow back in the real world, and
the girl dutifully does her job. Eventually she gets a bit homesick and Frau
Holle sends her home with the spindle she'd dropped - along with another gift. Every time she talks, a bit of gold drops
out of her mouth. Sounds a bit uncomfortable, honestly, but
it's better than what her stepsister gets - when she jumps down the well and tries to
earn the same reward without actually helping any of the inanimate objects or doing any
of Frau Holle's work, she starts spitting out toads. So Frau Holle is a bit of a dual figure - she
fits the general folkloric role of rewarding good stuff and punishing bad stuff. She's also connected with spinning and weaving,
is sometimes said to be the caretaker of dead children and leads a host of phantom spirits. She has a festival in midwinter, and the other
connections to the season are pretty obvious - she literally makes it snow. It's her job. Many folklorists believe she's a relic from
a pre-christian and potentially even pre-norse divinity, theoretically predating even Odin
and company. So according to Grimm's theory, these assorted
huntmistresses - Gauden, Berchta, Holle, etc - are all offshoots of this ancient winter
goddess. Which would be dope as hell. Obviously this is a little hard to confirm,
but the three figures do share a lot of similarities. Gold, midwinter, spinning and weaving, punishing
taboos, and - of course - leading a phantom host of the unhallowed dead. #JustGirlyThings! But, like I said earlier, the Wild Hunt is
not just a german thing. In Scandinavia it's called Odin's Hunt, which
is… pretty self-explanatory and follows from the Einherjar origins we already covered,
but in Old English it was called the Herlathing, meaning Herla's Assembly. Well, who's Herla? Herla? I barely know 'a! okay anyway
Well, aside from being secretly Odin - which at this point is kind of a given - Herla is
a legendary king of the britons, the pre-saxon Celtic inhabitants of England. According to 12th century english/welsh author
Walter Map, King Herla, modernized from his old english title Herla Cyning, strikes a
deal with a dwarf. The dwarf will attend his wedding, and then
one year later, he'll attend the dwarf's wedding. The dwarf brings wedding gifts and provisions
and is an absolute model guest, and then a year later, Herla travels underground to the
Dwarf king's realm and spends three days at the wedding party. When he leaves, the king gives him a small
bloodhound and warns him not to get off his horse until the dog does. Free dogs? Best wedding ever! Herla and his band leave the dwarf king's
realm, but the hound stays on the horse - when Herla asks a nearby shepherd how his queen
is doing, he's shocked to find that the shepherd is a saxon, not a briton, and that the saxons
have ruled the land for over two hundred years. Apparently three days in the dwarf king's
realm equalled three hundred years out here. Some of the men leap off their horses in shock
- and immediately age three hundred years and crumble to dust. Stuck in his saddle and displaced in time,
all Herla can do is ride eternally, trapped in an endless unlife thanks to the world's
worst case of supernatural jetlag. But Herla's story doesn't end there! This concept of an undead or demonic eternal
wanderer was quite popular, and in the 11th century French monk and chronicler Orderic
Vitalis used the phrase "familia herlequin" to describe a demonic host pursuing a hapless
monk, led by a terrifying masked giant. This was the first official attestation of
the french version of the Wild Hunt, which was a bit spicier than the Germanic version
- the Hellequin leading the hunt was an emissary of the devil himself, and his host of demons
hunted down the souls of the damned, rather than being those wayward souls themselves. This demonic figure later evolved into a stock
character in french passion plays, and then evolved further with the advent of the sixteenth
century commedia dell'arte and the introduction of the masked motley figure of the harlequin,
still a bit of a devilish trickster but a lot less overtly malevolent than the wild
hunt he used to lead. All roads lead to Odin, apparently. Well - that's not strictly true. While the germanic wild hunt seems directly
derived from Odin and the einherjar, the concept of a nighttime host of ghosts or demons is
actually… pretty widespread. The Welsh variant of the Wild Hunt is sometimes
led by Arawn, the king of the Otherworld we talked about way back when we covered Pwyll. Since we already knew he liked hunting, that
part isn't really a surprise, and it's even explicitly part of his job description - he
and his hounds hunt lost souls and drive them to Annwn, making this a surprisingly benevolent
form of the wild hunt - it's basically supernatural cleanup duty rather than an inherently malevolent
ghost tornado. In some versions Arawn's hunting activity
even peaks around the twelve days of christmas, like Gauden and Berchta. But he's also not always alone. Sometimes the hunt is also led by Mallt y
Nos, a crone who drives the hounds onward with her constant wailing. Similar to the germanic version, sometimes
she's retconned as a dead noblewoman who got herself karmically permbanned from heaven
for saying it probably sucks up there if there's no hunting allowed. Irish and Scottish folklore has the sluagh,
a word that just means throng or army but describes a host of very nasty spirits of
the restless dead - considered really bad news, much worse than the generally-benevolent-but-still-dangerous
Seelie fae or even the actively malicious Unseelie fae. The Sluagh were chaotic, unpredictable, and
known for spiriting people away in the night - the kind of thing you hide under the covers
about. Another version where the main way to stay
safe is to stay indoors, close your windows and hope they don't notice you. But the concept of nightly ghost armies isn't
just a European thing. For instance, Hawaii has the nightmarchers,
a procession of ghostly warriors beating drums and blowing conch shells like they're marching
to war. While this sounds a lot more regal and orderly
than most similarly spooky ghost armies, the suggested response is the same - get inside,
lock the doors, hope they don't take an interest in you, and do NOT attract their attention. Not showing the appropriate levels of respect
is generally considered a good way to get vaporized by bolts of divine retribution. On a similar note, Japan has the Hyakki Yagyō,
the night parade of a hundred demons, a folklore motif describing a massive horde of demons,
spirits, phantoms, yokai, and every other spooky specter in the area. Sometimes it's a little more orderly, sometimes
it's full-on pandemonium, but it's always bad news, and like most other ghost tornadoes,
best avoided to prevent death or ghost-kidnapping. Now, perhaps the most obvious question at
this point is - why do we have so many dang ghost tornadoes?? This is bizarrely widespread, and while a
concept as simple as "ghost" makes sense worldwide, a cacophanic horde of the restless unhallowed
dead trapped in an eternal hunt across the endless sky is a biiiit more specific than
"dead but hasn't got the memo". Well, the most likely answer is kinda mundane. Most wild hunt myths specifically describe
the hunt as invisible but very, very loud. Odin's hunt is specifically equated with the
howling wind that plays through the forest, which does often sound like howling or screaming,
and over in Wales, Arawn's dogs barking in the night sky is apparently - no joke - based
on the eerie sound of migratory geese which'd fly through the area in the winter months. When the night is dark and full of really
loud, weird noises that shake your roof and blow your windows open, it's not much of a
logical leap to assume you just got blasted by a host of very inconsiderate spirits or
ghosts. In the same way that thunder and lighting
were pretty much universally assigned gods worldwide, creepy howling nighttime winds
were also a universal experience - and a good reason to stay indoors on wild nights.
Gesundheit
On the grey horse/white horse.
With horses, most white horses are grey horses. Grey horses are those which are born a non white colour, but change to just being grey haired which includes fully white.
Though you think it's some synchronism with the concept of the 'pale rider' too
Does anyone know what music is playing around 11:13 in the video? Its some creepy singing/moaning and I heard it in the Lovecraft Special before.
Harley Quinn having any connection to Odin is something I did not expect to learn today
Red, why do you (and other artists) choose to make long female hair to symbolize a cold, ruthless etc person? Like, any time it is "unseeily fae" it is a long-legged ice-blonde femme fatale. And a nice/good person is always free-flowing hair. Why? Where did the stereotype come from? I am genuinely interested.
Wouldn't it be fun to see a ruthless cold winter fae looking genuinely nice and kind for a change? They are supposed to be deceiving, not overtly obvious.
The picture is 14:12 if someone is wondering.
big fat thumbs up
One of the best covers of ghost riders in the sky at the end
Is there no English version of the Frau Holle fairytale? It was one of my favorites as a kid!
"Wait, it's all Odin?"
"Always has been."