eed, from which originated the oldest Northern riddle,
which runs as follows: "Who are the two who ride to the Thing? Three
eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel
through the lands." And as the souls of the dead were supposed to be
wafted away on the wings of the storm, Odin was worshipped as the
leader of all disembodied spirits. In this character he was most
generally known as the Wild Huntsman, and when people heard the
rush and roar of the wind they cried aloud in superstitious fear,
fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted
on snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds. And the passing
of the Wild Hunt, known as Woden's Hunt, the Raging Host, Gabriel's
Hounds, or Asgardreia, was also considered a presage of such misfortune
as pestilence or war.

"The Rhine flows bright; but its waves ere long
Must hear a voice of war,
And a clash of spears our hills among,
And a trumpet from afar;
And the brave on a bloody turf must lie,
For the Huntsman hath gone by!"

The Wild Huntsman (Mrs. Hemans).

It was further thought that if any were so sacrilegious as to join
in the wild halloo in mockery, they would be immediately snatched up
and whirled away with the vanishing host, while those who joined in
the halloo with implicit good faith would be rewarded by the sudden
gift of a horse's leg, hurled at them from above, which, if carefully
kept until the morrow, would be changed into a lump of gold.

Even after the introduction of Christianity the ignorant Northern
folk still dreaded the on-coming storm, declaring that it was the
Wild Hunt sweeping across the sky.

"And ofttimes will start,
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart
To chase forever on aereal grounds."

Sonnet (Wordsworth).

Sometimes it left behind a small black dog, which, cowering and
whining upon a neighbouring hearth, had to be kept for a whole year and
carefully tended unless it could be exorcised or frightened away. The
usual recipe, the same as for the riddance of changelings, was to brew
beer in egg-shells, and this performance was supposed so to startle
the spectral dog that he would fly with his tail between his legs,
exclaiming that, although as old as the Behmer, or Bohemian forest,
he had never before beheld such an uncanny sight.