Windsor Castle
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"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
WINDSOR CASTLE
Book I Anne Boleyn
I. Of the Earl of Surrey's solitary Ramble in the Home Park--Of the Vision
beheld by him in the Haunted Dell--And of his Meeting with Morgan
Fenwolf, the Keeper, beneath Herne's Oak.
In the twentieth year of the reign of the right high and puissant King
Henry the Eighth, namely, in 1529, on the 21st of April, and on one of
the loveliest evenings that ever fell on the loveliest district in England,
a fair youth, having somewhat the appearance of a page, was leaning
over the terrace wall on the north side of Windsor Castle, and gazing at
the magnificent scene before him. On his right stretched the broad
green expanse forming the Home Park, studded with noble trees,
chiefly consisting of ancient oaks, of which England had already learnt
to be proud, thorns as old or older than the oaks, wide-spreading
beeches, tall elms, and hollies. The disposition of these trees was
picturesque and beautiful in the extreme. Here, at the end of a
sweeping vista, and in the midst of an open space covered with the
greenest sward, stood a mighty broad-armed oak, beneath whose
ample boughs, though as yet almost destitute of foliage, while the sod
beneath them could scarcely boast a head of fern, couched a herd of
deer. There lay a thicket of thorns skirting a sand-bank, burrowed by
rabbits, on this hand grew a dense and Druid-like grove, into whose
intricacies the slanting sunbeams pierced; on that extended a long
glade, formed by a natural avenue of oaks, across which, at intervals,
deer were passing. Nor were human figures wanting to give life and
interest to the scene. Adown the glade came two keepers of the forest,
having each a couple of buckhounds with them in leash, whose baying
sounded cheerily amid the woods. Nearer the castle, and bending their
way towards it, marched a party of falconers with their well-trained
birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses
ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of
the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper,
in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of
arrows at his back, and a comely damsel under his arm, was listening.
On the left, a view altogether different in character, though scarcely
less beautiful, was offered to the gaze. It was formed by the town of
Windsor, then not a third of its present size, but incomparably more
picturesque in appearance, consisting almost entirely of a long
straggling row of houses, chequered black and white, with tall gables,
and projecting storeys skirting the west and south sides of the castle,
by the silver windings of the river, traceable for miles, and reflecting the
glowing hues of the sky, by the venerable college of Eton, embowered
in a grove of trees, and by a vast tract of well-wooded and well-
cultivated country beyond it, interspersed with villages, churches, old
halls, monasteries, and abbeys.
Taking out his tablets, the youth, after some reflection, traced a few
lines upon them, and then, quitting the parapet, proceeded slowly, and
with a musing air, towards the north west angle of the terrace. He
could not be more than fifteen, perhaps not so much, but he was tall
and well-grown, with slight though remarkably well-proportioned limbs;
and it might have been safely predicted that, when arrived at years of
maturity, he would possess great personal vigour. His countenance
was full of thought and intelligence, and he had a broad lofty brow,
shaded by a profusion of light brown ringlets, a long, straight, and
finely-formed nose, a full, sensitive, and well-chiselled mouth, and a
pointed chin. His eyes were large, dark, and somewhat melancholy in
expression, and his complexion possessed that rich clear brown tint
constantly met with in Italy or Spain, though but seldom seen in a
native of our own colder clime. His dress was rich, but sombre,
consisting of a doublet of black satin, worked with threads of Venetian
gold; hose of the same material, and similarly embroidered; a shirt
curiously wrought with blac
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