Connection is sometimes made between the Wild Hunt and the legend of Herne the Hunter, a forest keeper of either Richard II or Henry VIII's time who was charged with poaching and witchcraft, and hung upon an oak in Windsor Forest.

Shakespeare's Mistress Page refers to this in *The Merry Wives Of Windsor*, Act 4, Scene 4 and has Falstaff dress up as Herne.  He too is accompanied by the sound of his horn and the noise of baying hounds, and is a malignant phantom causing ailments of cattle and local misfortune. It has been suggested that Shakespeare (in The Merry Wives of Windsor) moved Herne to Windsor from his original haunt in Feckenham Forest, close to Shakespeare's Forest of Arden. A guy called Callow (who gave his name to many Midlands places) was also said to lead the Hunt in Feckenham.

"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."

Herne has often been linked to the Celtic god Cernunnos

An appearance of Herne the Hunter in Windsor Forest is followed by tragedy or disaster, often of national importance.

Herne and his pack were considered as erotic and sometimes brutal men, embodying the frightening aspects and wildness of the forests at a time when they were much larger than today and considered to host the pagan spirits that were chased away by the Church.