Harlequin: Deity of Witches
Disclaimer
This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.
Harlequin
Harlequin, a brightly-clad character in the Italian commedia dell'arte, has a murky history. He seems to have originated in a mythical figure known in Old French as Herlequin or Hellequin, who was the leader of a ghostly troop of horsemen who rode across the sky at night. And Herlequin could well be a later incarnation of King Herla (in Old English Herla cyning), a legendary personage who has been identified with the chief Anglo-Saxon god Woden. It seems likely that another piece of the jigsaw could be the erlking, the supernatural abductor of children described in a Goethe peoem memorably set to music by Schubert; its name is generally traced back to Danish ellerkonge, a variant of elverkonge, literally 'king of the elves,' which bears a resemblance to Herlequin that is surely too strong to be coincidental. In early modern French Herlequin became Harlequin, the form borrowed by English (Ayto 274).
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Harlequin: Deity of Witches is copyrighted 1998 to Shantell Powell.