Deer in mythology
Sometimes, it represents a disguise a prince dons to escape or to achieve a goal, e.g., What the Rose did to the Cypress (Persian fairy tale).
Medieval works of fiction sometimes contain the existence of a white deer or stag as a supernatural or mystical being in the chivalry quest ("The Hunt for the White Stag" motif, such as in the lai of Guigemar[15])[16][17] and in parts of Arthurian lore,[18][19] such as in the medieval poem of Erec and Enide.
Deer figure in the founding legend of Le Puy-en-Velay, where a Christian church replaced a megalithic dolmen said to have healing powers.
A local tradition had rededicated the curative virtue of the sacred site to Mary, who cured ailments by contact with the standing stone.
The legend of St Hubertus concerned an apparition of a stag with the crucifix between its horns, effecting the worldly and aristocratic Hubert's conversion to a saintly life.
As he was pursuing a magnificent stag the animal turned and, as the pious legend narrates, he was astounded at perceiving a crucifix standing between its antlers, which occasioned the change of heart that led him to a saintly life.
Historia Francorum contains the legend of King Clovis I, who prayed to Christ in one of his campaigns so he could find a place to cross the river Vienne.
Saint Ladislaus told his brother that it wasn't a deer but an angel of God, and his antlers were wings; the candles were shining feathers.
[21] An Anglo-Saxon royal scepter found at the Sutton Hoo burial site in England features a depiction of an upright, antlered stag.
[22] Sam Newton identifies both the Sutton Hoo whetstone and the hall Heorot as early English symbols of kingship.
Others include Arge, a mortal huntress who claimed that even though the stag she was chasing was as fast as the Sun, she would catch it eventually.
In Hindu mythology, the Aitareya Upanishad tells us that the goddess Saraswati takes the form of a red deer called Rohit.
[citation needed] In the Hindu epic mahabharata, the rishi Kindama dons the disguise of a male deer.
In the iconography of Shiva's mendicant form Bhikshatana, a deer playfully leaps near a hand of the god, who holds some grass.
[25] The stag was revered alongside the bull at Alaca Höyük and continued in the Hittite mythology as the protective deity whose name is recorded as dKAL.
Other Hittite gods were often depicted standing on the backs of stags, such as Kurunta or fellow Anatolian (Luwian) deity Runtiya.
In Hungarian mythology, Hunor and Magor, the founders of the Magyar peoples, chased a white stag in a hunt.
[28] In the Ottoman Empire, and more specifically in western Asia Minor and Thrace the deer cult seems to have been widespread and much alive, no doubt as a result of the meeting and mixing of Turkic with local traditions.
[29] The Tribe of Naphtali bore a stag on its tribal banner and was poetically described as a hind in the Blessing of Jacob.
In Jewish mythology as discussed in the Babylonian Talmud in Hullin 59b:2, a one-horned stag called the qeresh (קרש).
In Native American mythology, there is the tale of the Deer Woman, a legendary creature associated with love and fertility.
The stag then replies that they can never come home: their antlers cannot pass through doorways and they can no longer drink from cups, only cool mountain springs.
Possibly the swift animal was believed to speed the spirits of the dead on their way, which perhaps explains the curious antlered headdresses found on horses buried at Pazyryk (illustration at the top of this article).
In various parts of Northeast Japan, a deer dance called "Shishi-odori" has been traditionally performed as an annual Shinto ritual.
(See Plutarch's life of Sertorius and Pliny the Elder's chapter on stags [N.H., VIII.50]) The naming of Sir Francis Drake's ship the "Golden Hind" is sometimes given a mythological origin.
However, Drake actually renamed his flagship in mid-voyage in 1577 to flatter his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, whose armorial bearings included the crest "a hind Or."
