Today’s poem for Paul Brookes’ Folktober challenge is inspired by a painting of The Wild Hunt. There is no Wild Hunt as such in Irish mythology, but there is Fionn mac Cumhaill, bitter and sad in his old age, who waits like King Arthur, to redeem himself, and who still hunts for his lost love, Sadhbh, stolen from him and turned into a deer by an enchanter.

Fionn mac Cumhaill remembers Sadhbh

Some storm skies fill with hunting clouds,
the snarling and baying of men and hounds
through the dark of winter nights,

gods who gallop with faces of war,
cold as corpses, booted, spurred,
spear in hand and death in their throats,

while the poor folk cower beneath the hail
of hoofbeats across the flimsy roof. Death comes
to those who dare look on those wild faces.

Another sky, restless, carries an old king
on the clamour of his…