.....and you are a leaf driven by the wind.

I remember the first time I came across the Horned One. I was just a (relatively) normal kid in the 1980s. A little bit "different" but not too much......I loved Star Wars and had all the toys, played with Lego, watched all the UK kids TV shows that were out at the time, etc. If there was one thing that was different about me it was my love for the countryside and nature. I always felt a different energy when surrounded by trees and animals. During school breaktimes and lunches, when the other kids would be out playing soccer, I would be going to a quiet corner of the school playing field that had a small copse of trees and a tiny raised hillock. Some special energy would flow through me there.....like an unstoppable force.....but it did not have a name or a face......until THE TV show started in 1983 on Saturday evenings..........that show was Robin of Sherwood.

I shall share my thoughts on and review individual episodes later in this blog. For now, however, I would like to share with you the impact this show had on me.........and particularly the relationship between Robin and the wild, stag headed Shaman who embodied everything I felt when I was in woodland.......Herne!!!

In one early scene, Robin has just escaped from the dungeons of Nottingham castle and is fleeing into Sherwood. Suddenly, mystical music started to play and mists swirled between the trees......and then it happened.......this tall silhouette of a stag-headed man came through the mist.....regal antlers moving forward. Robin is perplexed....this figure speaks as if a god....yet looks like a man and he is told "They are all waiting. The blinded, the maimed, the men locked in the stinking dark all wait for you. Children with swollen bellies hiding in ditches wait. The poor, the dispossessed, they all wait. You are their hope. You cannot escape. So must it be. Robin in the Hood!". At first Robin feels from this godman.....this forest apparition......but eventually he visits Herne and discovers his destiny.....to be Herne's "son".

Throughout the series, Robin and the merries venerate Herne, the Lord of the Trees......and this was something I could understand......this being represented everything I believed in, everything I felt to be true, everything vital and natural in the seasons, in the trees and plants and in all living things. I was to learn more of this being and his many names over the years and develop my own relationship with him just as Robin does......and with the Goddess, so inextricably linked to him.

For now, I hope you enjoy this trailer I found on Youtube with an accompaniment of the music from "The Last of the Mohicans".....although the Clannad soundtrack for "Robin of Sherwood" is in its own right absolutely stunning music, and something I shall return to in later posts. For me, this was where it all began:

Blessed Be. )O(