00:18There is an old tale which goes, that Hearn the Hunter, sometime a keeper here in Windsor
00:27does, all the wintertime, at still midnight, walk round about an oak, with great ragged
00:36horns, and there, he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, and makes milk yield blood, and
00:46shakes a chain in a most hideous and dreadful manner.
00:51You have heard of such a spirit, and well, you know the superstitious, idle-headed old,
00:59received and did deliver to our age this talk of Hearn the Hunter for a truth.
01:31Hearn the Hunter was a ghoulish creature.
01:34First seen in William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.
01:40The legends say he is a mysterious horned man who roamed the Windsor Forest at night, rattling
01:46chains, withering trees, tormenting the local wildlife, and bewitching cattle, causing their
01:54milk to be replaced with blood.
01:58But who is Hearn the Hunter, a myth or a man?
02:05William Harrison Ainsworth called him a myth, nothing more than a paranormal figure.
02:12In his 1843 Windsor Castle, Hearn was a featured legend, a hunter who had been impaled by a stag.
02:20Before his death, however, the devil appeared and offered to save him, on the condition that
02:27he bore the stag's antlers.
02:30This has been the most popularized version of the legend of Hearn the Hunter ever since.
02:36Now, Samuel Ireland said that Hearn was a man, a keeper of the forest, a hunter named Horn,
02:45who in the time of Elizabeth had committed some great offense for which he feared to lose
02:51his status and fall into disgrace.
02:55He hung himself on a tree in Windsor Forest, a tree known till this day as Hearn's Oak.
03:03This tree was cut down in 1796, however.
03:09In 1838, an author, Edward Jesse, claimed that another oak was the true Hearn's Oak.
03:17The tree was blown down by a strong wind in 1863, and replaced by another tree known as
03:24the Queen Victoria's Tree.
03:27Years later, after the avenue was replanted in 1906, a new oak tree was given the title
03:34of Hearn's Oak, in commemoration of the hunter, and this oak still stands today.
03:42James Halliwell Phillips, an English Experian scholar, supported Samuel Ireland's claim of
03:49the hunter, suggesting that Hearn was indeed a real hunter named Richard Horne.
03:57According to a document found, Richard Horne was caught poaching in Windsor Forest.
04:04After confessing to his crimes, he was punished, and the most common punishment for his crime
04:10at the time was hanging.
04:14An early copy of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor was even written with Horne the
04:20hunter, in place of Hearn the hunter.
04:23The unholy circumstances of his death are likely what caused the legend of his hauntings to
04:30appear.
04:34But, R. Lowe Thompson called Hearn a god, a wild huntsman, a patron of the wild.
04:42In Thompson's The History of the Devil, the Horned God of the West, he suggests that Hearn,
04:48as well as other wild huntsmen, all come from the same ancient source, Cernanus.
05:00Cernanus is an ancient Gaulish deity, known as the god of the forest, and has similar legend
05:07of residing within forests, bearing a similar appearance and sporting staghorns.
05:14However, in contrast to Hearn, Cernanus is known to protect the wildlife and nature.
05:23An oddity that separates this god from Hearn's origins is that there is yet to be any evidence
05:30of people worshipping Cernanus in Britain.
05:36In the early Middle Ages, Windsor was ruled over by the pagan Angles who worshipped a unique
05:43pantheon.
05:45A god called Woden, popularly known as Odin, was known to ride across the night sky with
05:52his own wild hunt.
05:54Odin also hung himself on the world tree Yggdrasil to learn the secret of the runic alphabet, drawing
06:03ties to all the accounts of Hearn.
06:07It is sometimes claimed that Hearn was derived from the word of Herion, a title for Odin as
06:15the leader of the fallen warriors.
06:18This suggests that Hearn the hunter may have as well been the Norse god Odin.
06:27Nonetheless, one detail agreed upon by these accounts is that Hearn was the guardian of
06:34the Windsor Forest, who protected all that was in his presiding, but would also torment
06:40the local and wildlife if provoked.
06:43Alas, due to the diversity of these accounts of origin, the true origin of Hearn the hunter
06:50remains shrouded, and much is left to interpretation.
07:39in his presence of God.
07:40It is about that, and of course, it is about him.
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