The Wild Ride of King Herla
Walter Map was so tired of being on the road in the entourage of King Henry II, that he began to wonder if the whole court was under a spell.
before 1189
King Henry II 1154-1189
Walter Map was so tired of being on the road in the entourage of King Henry II, that he began to wonder if the whole court was under a spell.
before 1189
King Henry II 1154-1189
King Henry II (r. 1154-1189) spent much of his reign on the road, in England and his estates in France. This gruelling schedule of marches took its toll on his retinue, among whom was Walter Map, a churchman and lawyer. It was as if Henry, he complained, had been laden with the burden of King Herla. What follows here is a summary of the tale that Walter then told.
MANY years ago, before the Saxons came to this land, a guest came to the court of Herla, king of the ancient Britons.* This guest had a long red beard and a glowing face, yet he had barely the stature of an ape, and his feet were like the feet of the goat he rode upon.* And he said to Herla: “I am a king of kings and many peoples, and we are kin from afar. Know then that the King of France will this day send his messengers to you, offering the hand of his daughter in marriage. Let this abiding compact be between us: that I will attend your wedding, and you mine, a year later to the day.” And swifter than a tiger, he turned and left.
That very day the messengers came, and Herla took the King of France’s daughter in marriage. And as he sat at feast, the goat-king entered his hall, and his servants brought forth bowls and plates and pitchers of gold and crystal, filled with the finest delicacies; and Herla’s servants were idle, for till cock-crow the other’s were everywhere, never in the way and never out of the way.
* There was, of course, no such king of the ancient Britons. Herla was the Old English counterpart of the mysterious figure in European folklore who led the ‘Wild Hunt’, a ghostly company that would ride at breakneck pace through rural skies by night, presaging death and calamity. In Scandinavia they were ‘The Ride of Asgard’ or ‘Odin’s Hunt’. In Old English they were ‘Herlaþing’ (herlathing, ‘Herla’s assembly’), though they might be led by such as Woden, Herod or Cain; in Cornwall they were ‘The Devil’s Dandy Dogs’, whereas in Wales they were led by Gwyn ap Nudd on his Underworld horse. In the north they were ‘Gabriel’s Hounds’, as they were for William Wordsworth (1770-1850) in a Sonnet (1807) on the privileges of the Poor Old Man, which including seeing ‘with a start’ various supernatural phenomena:
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel’s Hounds
Doomed with their impious Lord the flying hart
To chase for ever on aerial grounds.
Gabriel, the archangel who appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, was said to own four hounds, named Truth, Justice, Peace and Mercy: no doubt they had been kidnapped by the ‘impious lord’ leading them on this deranged hunt. A more prosaic interpretation is that they were migrating geese in full cry. Herla-king became Harlequin in France.
* “Just such a man as Pan is pictured,” said Map helpfully, “with glowing face, enormous head, and a red beard so long that it touched his breast (which was brightly adorned with a dappled fawn skin), a hairy belly, and thighs which degenerated into goat-feet.” Like Pan, the goat-king lives in a mountain cave and causes reckless chaos.