LIVERPOOL, England – Both the Pagan and the wider United Kingdom community were horrified to learn of the demise of a rare white stag on the streets of Bootle, near Liverpool, this month.
Rare white stag killed by police after running through Merseyside streets https://t.co/1Q7lV7gyUA
— The Guardian (@guardian) September 27, 2021
Bootle is an urban environment, and one of the last places in the country where you might expect to find deer running freely, but somehow the animal managed to get lost in the maze of streets. The stag’s presence was reported, and it was cornered by police in an industrial estate who were concerned that the animal would be hit by a car. They involved a vet in this endeavour, but the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Animals) had already advised the police to leave the stag alone as he would find his own way back home eventually. The police say, however, that they were unable to find an organisation who could assist with securing the fallow buck, and ended up shooting it.
A police spokesman said that the animal became distressed, and that, “There was no option to let the deer wander as it could be a danger to motorists and members of the public in the area, particularly as the hours of darkness approached. As a result a decision was made in the early evening to euthanise the deer.”
The RSPCA says that there are issues with sedation as “this needs to be done with caution in a public area such as this one, as the deer could startle and run when hit by the dart. This could create a bigger public safety and animal welfare issue.”
The RSPCA added that, “Although deer traditionally live in forests, moors and parkland, they are becoming more common in urban environments across the UK.”
White deer are rare in the UK. They are usually fallow deer, a breed of deer that tends to have wider pigmentation than roe or other deer, for example, because this type were bred in hunting parks, resulting in a more extensive variety of coat colour. They are not albinos, but have lower levels of melanin in their coats. Some may have a condition called leucism, which causes a lack of pigmentation.
White fallow deer – Image credit: Jenny Gilleland – CC BY-SA 2.0
White deer feature heavily in the legends of Britain, and more widely, too: the Siberian tribes hold that certain white reindeer (though not all) are sacred. There’s an account of a shaman being suckled by a white reindeer during his initiatory vision in a bird’s nest in the tree that links the earth and the heavens.
These kinds of belief spread across Russia and the Caucasus: as an example, we have the Georgian goddess Dali, who can also take animal form and who is a goddess of hunting and the protectress of hoofed game animals like mountain goats and indeed deer.
One of her preferred animal forms is a white deer. She is rather like a fairy in that she can make herself larger than normal human size or much smaller – a quality she shares with fairies in British legend, too. Like the Greek Artemis, she sometimes extracts some nasty revenges on men who harm her flock, such as those who kill does with young, for example.
In Hungarian mythology, the founders of the Magyar, Hunor and Magor, chased a white stag in a hunt. The stag led them into an unknown land that they named Scythia. Further east, a white deer is the symbol of the Japanese city of Nara and seen as a divine messenger.
Whether these legends are in any way connected must remain moot: parallel development of myth can obviously occur and does not necessitate a causal connection.
However, a common theme of many of these myths – and one that is carried in Celtic belief also – is that to kill a white deer is a transgression of some natural law and will result in bad luck. Some authorities claim that the very appearance of a white deer heralds ill fortune, since the animal is itself a violation of nature.
Early myths persist: the image of the white hart as a questing beast is found throughout Medieval legends in Britain. It is the symbol of Richard II, and features in an image called the Wilton Diptych. On the back of this, there is a white hart depicted on a bed of rosemary, symbolising sorrow and remembrance.
King David I of Scotland built Holyrood House in Edinburgh after an encounter with a white hart. And Herne the Hunter is sometimes said to take the form of a white hart.
The white hart has also found its way into more contemporary culture. Baden-Powell, addressing the Scout movement, stated in 1933 that:
“The White Stag has a message for you. Hunters of old pursued the miraculous stag, not because they expected to kill it, but because it led them in the joy of the chase to new and fresh adventures, and so to capture happiness. You may look on the White Stag as the true spirit of Scouting, springing forward and upward, ever leading you onward to leap over difficulties, to face new adventures in your active pursuit of the higher aims of Scouting.”
— Baden-Powell’s farewell speech to the Scouts
Harry Potter fans will know it as Harry’s patronus; the white hart features regularly throughout the series, and it is a white deer which leads the Pevensie children back from their sojourn in Narnia to their own wartime world.
Image credit: Shaurya Singh from Pixabay
The Pagan community of the UK are united in condemning the shooting of the stag. It is widely felt that the animal could have been better contained, particularly on an industrial estate (these are often fenced in for security reasons, although it’s not clear that this applied to the one in Bootle).
Aside from the tragedy of the individual animal, it is also felt that this is a very bad sign. We asked what people thought and had a number of responses
Druid Warren Brown told TWH, “Possibly the most stupid thing the UK has done in recent years.”
“Quite simply you have no idea what you have done. The storm that is coming from your act of willful destruction,” said Rose of London.
“Very bad news indeed,” Mel, a U.K. Pagan agreed.
There is a general consensus that this was a needless tragedy, and that for the UK’s Pagan community, it has a symbolic resonance which may persist for months to come.
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