Berkshire History: Herne the Hunter Summary (original) (raw)

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Herne the Hunter
Windsor Forest, Berkshire

Herne was the favourite huntsman of Richard the Second. Mortally wounded while saving his master from a stag at bay, he was miraculously cured by a stranger, who tied the antlers of a dead stag to the dying man's brow. He claimed in payment all Herne's skill in venery. Crazed by the loss of that skill in the craft he loved, Herne fled to the forest, where a pedlar found his horned corpse hanging from an oak. But every night he returned at the head of a spectral hunt to harry the Windsor game as of old.