Dictionary

Wild Huntsman en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (European) A ghostly rider, sometimes a mythic or legendary figure, that leads the Wild Hunt.
   • Their great enemy is the Wild-Huntsman, who driving invisibly through the air pursues and kills them. A peasant one time hearing the usual baying and cheering in a wood, would join in the cry. Next morning he found hanging at his stable-door a quarter of a green Moss-woman as his share of the game. 1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 231:
   • It was also on this horse that Odin conveyed Hading across the sea, wrapping him in his mantle, so that he could see nothing. It is on the same white horse that he rides as the Wild Huntsman. 1851, Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology, volume I, London: Edward Lumley, page 165:
   • It is scarce necessary to add, that the highly imaginative superstition of the Wild Huntsman in Germany seems to have had its origin in strong fancy, operating upon the auricular deceptions, respecting the numerous sounds likely to occur in the dark recesses of pathless forests. 1830, Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, London: John Murray, page 43:

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