Fly to the East,
  And fly to the West,
  And fly to the one that I love best!

It was the noise of Wotan’s hunting train which the ancient Germans heard when the storms of winter howled and whistled through the deep woods of the Northland; but in time it came to be the noise of the Wild Hunt.  In Thuringia the rout headed by Frau Holda and the Wild Huntsman issues in the Yuletide from the cave in the Horselberg, which is the scene of Tannhauser’s adventure with Venus in Wagner’s opera, and Holda is the mother of many of the uncanny creatures which strike terror to the souls of the unlucky huntsmen who chance to espy them.

From the story drawn from the records of the Bohemian law court, it is plain that to make a compact with the Wild Huntsman was a much more gruesome and ceremonious proceeding than that which took place between Faust and the Evil One in the operas of Gounod and Boito.  In both these instances a scratch of the pen sufficed, and the deliberations which preceded the agreement were conducted in a decorous and businesslike manner.  But to invoke Samiel and obtain his gifts was a body, mind, and nerve-racking business.  In some particulars the details differed a little from those testified to by the Bohemian clerk.  In the first place, the Devil’s customer had to repair to a crossroads of a Friday between midnight and one o’clock when the moon was in an eclipse and the sun in Sagittarius.  If in such a place and at such a time he drew a circle around himself with his hunting-spear and called “Samiel!” three times, that worthy would appear, and a bargain might be driven with him for his wares, which consisted of seven magical bullets ("free bullets,” they were called), which were then cast under the eye of the Evil One and received his “blessing.”  The course of six of them rested with the “free shooter,” but the seventh belonged to Samiel, who might direct it wheresoever he wished.  The price of these bullets was the soul of the man who moulded them, at the end of three years; but it was the privilege of the bondsman to purchase a respite before the expiration of the period by delivering another soul into the clutches of the demon.

Weber used all these details in his opera, and added to them the fantastic terrors of the Wild Hunt and the Wolf’s Glen.  Of this favored abode of the Evil One, Wagner gave a vivid description in an essay on “Der Freischutz” which he wrote for the Gazette musicale in May, 1841, when the opera was preparing, under the hand of Berlioz, for representation at the Grand Opera in Paris.  Wagner’s purpose in writing the essay was to acquaint the Parisians with the contents and spirit of the piece, make them understand its naive Teutonism, and also to save it from the maltreatment and mutilation which he knew it would have to suffer if it were to be made to conform to the conventions of the Academie.  He wanted to preserve the spoken dialogue and keep out the regulation ballet, for the sake of which he