Читать книгу Windsor Castle (Historical Novel) - William Harrison Ainsworth - Страница 3

“About, about!

Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out.”

SHAKESPEARE, Merry Wives of Windsor

“There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter,

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;

And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner:

You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,

The superstitious idle-headed eld

Receiv’d, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.”

—ibid