The gate of the year

Sculpture near the entrance portal of the Church of St. Mary and St. Gabriel, at Stoke Gabriel, Devon, England. The church was built in the XIII century, then restored and remade during the XV century. The mask engraved in the stone, showing a disquieting aspect, has been interpreted by Robert Graves as the representation of Herne the Hunter, “the wild hunter, his teeth bared in a grin and a wisp of hair over his face, and a brace of his hound close by” (Graves 1952, p. 151).
The legend of Herne, in English folklore, narrates of a ghostly horseman, wearing deer antlers on his head, appearing in the Forest of Windsor, around an oak to whose branches he hanged himself, in consequence of a fault for which he was responsible. The character was evoked by Shakespeare and reappears in the libretto for Verdi’s opera Falstaff, where the Black Hunter “walks slowly, slowly, slowly, in the great lethargy of the burial”, describing him as a figure who acts as intermediary with the world of the dead.

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herne_the_Hunter_-_geograph.org.uk _-_457646.jpg]




Wild Men

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Sculpture near the entrance portal of the Church of St. Mary and St. Gabriel, at Stoke Gabriel, Devon, England. The church was built in the XIII century, then restored and remade during the XV century. The mask engraved in the stone, showing a disquieting aspect, has been interpreted by Robert Graves as the representation of Herne the Hunter, “the wild hunter, his teeth bared in a grin and a wisp of hair over his face, and a brace of his hound close by” (Graves 1952, p. 151). The legend of Herne, in English folklore, narrates of a ghostly horseman, wearing deer antlers on his head, appearing in the Forest of Windsor, around an oak to whose branches he hanged himself, in consequence of a fault for which he was responsible. The character was evoked by Shakespeare and reappears in the libretto for Verdi’s opera Falstaff, where the Black Hunter “walks slowly, slowly, slowly, in the great lethargy of the burial”, describing him as a figure who acts as intermediary with the world of the dead. [Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herne_the_Hunter_-_geograph.org.uk _-_457646.jpg]