Original Size — Medium-Size
Perhaps the most curious and most disagreeable of these in the days I speak of was a personage familiarly termed the Wild Boar of Windsor. This creature was of enormous size and strength, and was generally acknowledged as the king of his tribe.
Wild boars were at that time numerous in England, and I believe, if the truth were known, that fairies and Fairyland power had much to do with their existence. That power has passed away now, or at least has so greatly diminished that, although there are plenty of persons left who may be correctly described by a word which sounds exactly like the name of the animal in question, yet the fairies have nothing to do with this. Magic power no longer converts the objects of its wrath into brute beasts or hideous monsters, as was frequently the case in the good old times of which I speak. Whether the Wild Boar in question was the victim of some such vengeance, or whether he had always been what he appeared in those days, it is not necessary to inquire. Anyhow, he was certainly more than mortal. He had apparently the gift of prophecy, for his grunts were often repeated by his subservient followers as having foretold subsequent events with singular accuracy, and he was not unfrequently sought out by persons who desired to be acquainted beforehand with future events, which has in all ages been a foolish weakness to which human nature has been subject.
This Boar had a numerous family, who were daily fed out of silver dishes, sitting all in a row and eating with as much decorum as could be expected. It is not, however, of his family or domestic life that I am about to tell you to-day, but of the extraordinary events which occurred in connection with the efforts made by mankind to rid themselves of this exceedingly troublesome creature. For although, as I have already said, the ignorant peasants of the neighbourhood held the Boar in great reverence, and used to creep timidly into the forest in search of the knowledge which he was said to possess, and which they certainly lacked, there were others who regarded the kingly Boar as an unmitigated nuisance. This was scarcely wonderful, since he and his tribe had the most unpleasant habit of issuing forth from the forest, and devastating the country far and wide, making everybody as uncomfortable as possible.