(image: Henri Lievens, "Wild Hunt")
«Un old cowboy went out on horseback on a dreary windy day / rested on a ridge as he went for his road». Thus begins one of the most beautiful and famous country songs of all time: (Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend.
Written in 1948 by Stan Jones, on the notes of a traditional Irish motif of the nineteenth century, the song has had many covers and interpretations: from Burl Ives, the first to make it famous, up to REM, from the Blues Brothers to the Doors, who transformed it in the lysergic and disturbing Riders on the storm, from Elvis Presley to the western-metal version of Dezperadoz. There is also a cover in Italian, recorded by Gino Latilla in 1952. However, the most iconic version of all time remains that of Johnny Cash from 1979: the story it tells, in fact, seems to have been written on purpose to be sung by the warm and pasty of the Man in Black.
The text continues by recounting the old cowboy's upset when he saw appearing, through a crack in the cloudy sky "a herd of red-eyed cows [...], with the markings still on fire and the steel hooves, black and gleaming horns and the breath boiling". The infernal herd is chased by even scarier knights, with "the gaunt faces, the hazy eyes and the sweat-soaked shirts", on "horses snorting fire». Are the ghost riders, condemned to the endless pursuit of an infernal herd, which they will never be able to capture.
When the phantom riders are now towering over the terrified cowboy, he hears one of them calling his name, who admonishes him like this: "If you want to save your soul from the doom of riding forever / then, cowboy, you better change your behavior as of today, or you will ride with us / attempting to capture the devil's herd through these endless skies».
According to a statement by its own author, the song is inspired by an ancient Texan legend, which takes us back to the times of cattle drives, transfers of cattle from pastures to markets for sale. This transhumance took place along codified paths: the most famous of them, such as Chisolm Trail , Great Western Trail, ascended north from Texas to reach the railroad in Kansas, where i longhorn they were then sold in large centers dedicated to trade, such as Abilene, for being boarded on wagons and slaughtered in the big cities of the East.
The legend of the Ghost Rider
The legend of the ghost rider it derives from this context and speaks of a certain Sawyer, expedition leader of one cattle drives of about 1500 cattle following the trail along the Neches River, Texas. One day, in the evening, the herd came near the property of a poor farmer, who had about forty cows. The day had been long and the riders were exhausted, so did the trail boss he decided to camp there, but was soon attacked by the owner, who claimed that some of his cows had mixed with those of the herd and, being afraid of losing them, demanded that they be separated immediately. Dividing the cattle is no easy feat, especially when it comes to large numbers, and so Sawyer told him that he would do it the next day when the herd got moving again. But the settler continued to insist, until Sawyer reached for his gun and ordered him to leave.
That night a violent storm broke out: the farmer took the opportunity to overtake the guards and scare the longhorn, waving his poncho and firing into the air. The beasts, already unnerved by the thunder and lightning, began to run, giving rise to one stampede, an unstoppable panic race. Some of Sawyer's men tried to stop the cows — the only solution, in cases of this kind, is to knock down the garments that run overhead, or to frighten them so as to wrap the stampede on itself — but they ended up being swept away by the sea of horns and hooves. The animals continued their mad rush by throwing themselves off a cliff: more than seven hundred animals died in the impact. At this point, Sawyer decided to take revenge on the settler, who was tied up on a blindfolded mule and pushed off the table.
In other versions of the same legend, however, it is Sawyer who reacts badly to the insistence of the farmer and decides to incite the herd to destroy the fence and overwhelm the settler's hut, where his wife and children had also taken refuge.
In any case, following this sad story, the place acquired a sinister fame: although it was covered with thick grass, the herds of cattle tended to run wild when they passed, unleashing in sudden and inexplicable races. These disturbing occurrences earned the place the name of Stampede Mesa and the herdsmen began to avoid him. Some seemed to catch the semblance of that herd launched at insane speed towards death in the cloudy sky, and thus the legend of the ghost riders and their flock of infernal cattle originated.
La Chasse Gallery
In Canada there is talk of an equally strange spectacle, which usually takes place on the freezing Christmas night: a haunted canoe that flies in the sky, in some cases chased by a procession of horses launched in a wild gallop and howling wolves. And the Chasse Gallery and also for this legend there are various versions.
It is said that, on a Christmas Eve in the early 1800s, a group of Québec lumberjacks were isolated in a camp in the heart of the forest, away from their wives and families, due to the frozen river. The lumberjacks, eager to be reunited with their loved ones, made a pact with the devil, who put at their disposal a flying canoe, provided that they were back by dawn the next day, avoiding, during the flight, to name the Creator and to touch the crosses at the tips of the steeples. The woodcutters accepted and thus managed to celebrate Christmas with their families, but when they returned, something went wrong: depending on the version, one of them swore, or the canoe touched the top of a bell tower or the woodcutters arrived late. at the appointment. At that point, the devil took possession of their souls, forcing them to wander forever in the sky aboard the bewitched canoe. There are also sweetened variants of the text, in which the devil is particularly merciful and spares the life of the lumberjacks, or is mocked.
The myth of the Wild Hunt
To try to understand more deeply both the legend of the ghost knights and that of the bewitched canoe it is necessary to take a further step, as both have their roots in an even more remote myth, which is part of European folklore and in particular of that Nordic: the Wild Hunt.
It seems that in the nights following the winter solstice of 21 December, the curtain that separates the world of the living from that of the dead becomes more impalpable and that it is possible to run into a terrible and noisy horde, which crosses the sky with great roar: in it there are barking dogs, galloping horses, emaciated hunters with haunted eyes, intent on chasing deer and game in an eternal and desperate escape at the same time. Seeing this terrifying sight is an omen of catastrophes and doom.
The legend of the Wild Hunt is widespread throughout Europe and there are different types, depending on whether the crowd of screaming beings is composed only of animals, humans or whether it is a procession led by a significant figure. The archetype derives from the Norse myth of Odin (wotan) who in the nights of the twelve days following the solstice mounts his majestic eight-legged black horse Sleipnir, to lead the race of the dead in battle, called, in German, Wutendes Heer, the "Furious Army", plowing the skies in a frenzied tumult.
Even in Ancient Greece, Hecate, a chthonic divinity and psychopump, linked to the afterlife and fertility, disturbed the stillness of the night with the unbridled processions of her handmaids, the Empuse, as well as Dionysus, also an ambiguous divinity linked to intoxication. and to the fury, he was followed by the Maenads, possessed priestesses who walked shaking the tirsi (sticks girded with ivy and vine).
The recurrence of such elements suggests even more ancient roots, dating back to the ancestral migration of the Indo-European peoples. It is no coincidence, in fact, that Shiva, the destroying deity of the Hindu pantheon, also participates in a similar procession, which is thus described in the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam from the XNUMXth century:
« This moment is more ominous because the hideous-looking ghosts, and constant companions of the lord, are visible. Lord Shiva, the lord of ghosts, sitting on his bull, travels at this moment accompanied by ghosts who follow him for their well-being. »
Depending on where it takes place, the ghostly procession has a different leader: in England there Wild Hunt it is led by King Arthur or Herne the Hunter, while in northern Italy the king who guides it is Beatrik, a figure associated with the historical figure of Theodoric the Great. Unlikely as it may seem, the grandmother of a friend of mine, now in her nineties, still tells of when she met a procession led by a bearded king in the woods of the Lower Susa Valley.
In France, the Wild Hunt takes the name of Hellequin's Masnada: to guide it is a mysterious infernal giant, ancestor of the multicolored Harlequin that cheers up our carnivals. Originally, however, Hellequin was a far from funny figure: the etymology of his name, Erla Cynig, he designates him "King of Hell" and in German Erl König means "King of the Elves". The assonance also leads him to Erlik Khan, the lord of the afterlife of the shamanic cultures of Siberia and north-eastern Europe. Erlik Khan, then, is a deity with deer horns, and this brings us back to Celtic culture and to the god Cernunnos, also equipped with stages, in a fascinating game of mirrors that traces affinities and parallels between cultures that are only apparently distant.
Masks, Christianity and the modern age
The transition from chthonic divinity to carnival mask is not short: in the Middle Ages, a demon named Alichino appears in Dante's Inferno, involved in comic quarrels with the damned immersed in pitch. In the mid-sixteenth century this demon, already endowed with some comic nuance, will meet the Zanni of the Commedia dell'Arte, a shrewd servant dominated by strong appetites, both food and sexual, and thus will give rise to the current Harlequin. Underneath the multicolored dress, however, there remain some details that recall Harlequin's infernal origins: the pitch black mask, surmounted by a bump, what remains of an ancient horn.
With the advent of Christianity, pagan traditions came banished and, consequently, even the wild hunt was demonized: the participants in the nocturnal jumble took on increasingly dark connotations, transforming themselves into damned souls forced to wander the earth. However, even within Christianity pagan residues remain and even today we find an echo of the Wild Hunt, sweetened and tamed, in the procession of Santa Claus and his reindeer, who run in the sky to deliver gifts to children. In some Alpine cultures, then, such as that of Austria or that of Trentino, the figure of Santa Claus is associated with the much more disturbing figure of Krampus, a horned monster that scares evil children.
A folkloric phenomenon such as that of the infernal hunt is undoubtedly the expression and embodiment of the fear of being in a forest at night, a context in which noises and darkness can be strongly suggestive. But, on a deeper symbolic level, the desperate rush of these monstrous creatures also represents the death of the sun, which is a prelude to its rebirth, in an eternally repeating and eternally new cosmic cycle, and rules both nature and lives. some men. The manifestation of the ghostly procession, in fact, coincides with the final period of the year, the one in which the hours of darkness exceed those of light: it is the "solstitial crisis", in which the shadows seem to prevail, to dissolve the order and restore chaos.
Folkloric figures such as those we have discussed speak to us of deep and archaic realities: the so-called "wheel of the year", with its solstices and equinoxes and the alternation of the seasons, turns eternally renewing itself and carries within itself the mystery of death and of rebirth.
References:
- William H. Forbis, TheCowboys, in The Old West, Time-Life Books, Virginia, 1973
- Marco Maculotti, The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany, axismundi.blog
- Marco Maculotti, Divinity of the Underworld, the Afterlife and the Mysteries, axismundi.blog
- Gianfranco Marini, Odin, the wild hunt and Hellequin's mob, gianfrancomarini.blogspot.it
- Eleonora Matarrese, Wild Hunt or the Wild Hunt, wunderkammern.wordpress.com
- Enrica Perucchietti and Paolo Battistel, The horned god, Uno Editori, Turin, 2016
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