BtZ42: Woutan rides high.

[Mark Kohut]

Laura writes:
"They hunt the sky like Wuotan and his mad army." Wuotan and his wild hunt
signifying death to those who see it (a folkloric concept most recently
ripped off by Game of Thrones, in the form of the White Walkers). After the
obscurities of the Kenosha Kid, this is a little heavy-handed, no?"

I've always, again without fully examining, thought this might have come
from Wagner maybe thru Nietzsche. We seem to know P has read and used some
Nietzsche,* The Birth of Tragedy *at least.
But we also know from elsewhere that he does like the old Black Forest Deep
Germany of folk tales, etc. so he surely went there in his reading.

I have no idea whether Woutan usages were more common when GR was written,
hence maybe a heavy-handed cliche and just accept it as a fanboy. I have
always felt it more fun to simply ingest and right on compared to the
obscurities of the Kenosha Kid section, a frustrating section without real
help and thought.


After writing the above, It occurred to check out book citations of Woutan,
Wotan in Google Books:
Another fascinating look at such things. Woutan was HUGE (because Wagner,
I'm sayin"?) in books over a hundred to 150 years ago THEN went down thru
and to the sixties---and had a rise again!
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Woutan%2C+Wotan&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CWotan%3B%2Cc0
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