The Ancient Wood
(CHABRIER’S "The Accursed Hunter," played from a Christchurch station recently, is one of the not very frequent musical allusions to a European folklegend that one would have expected to (continued on next page)
VIEWSREEL (Cont'd) (continued from previous page) be better known than it it. The English variant-for it is Continent-wide-is the tale of Herne the Hunter (still talked of -by villagers near Windsor Castle), @ man with the antlers of a deer. Sir John Falstaff, on a visit to Windsor, once had occasion to disguise himself as Herne; the results were’ entirely disastrous, except to provide yet another example of the English gift for reducing macabre lepend to farce. For in its original form the legend of which Herne is part was no laughing matter; Herne and his cognates are forest spirits, dating from the animistic religions of the prehistoric European peasantries and converted into outlaw demons and ogres and elves by the disapproval of the Christien Church, The ancient forest’s effects. on the psychic sensibilities. of primitive men are clearly reflected in the violence, darkness, and malevolence attributed to the Hunter; while the survival in later legends of sinister and mysterious ~ huntsmen-Hilarion in Giselle is said to be a late, weak version-represents the common fate of deities and demons in periods of waning mythology: reduction to the stature of mortal men,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 23
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225The Ancient Wood New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 23
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