The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy

by Penelope Lively

Lucy is spending the summer in the country again, and learns that the ancient Horn Dance is to be revived at the village fete. As preparations proceed, Lucy feels that sinister forces from the past are being unleashed. By the author of "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe", winner of the Carnegie Medal.

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Fiction, Young Adult, Horror, Mythology, Paranormal

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Lively’s children’s book taps into the rich vein of folkloric, low fantasy so brilliantly-realised by writers like Alan Garner, John Gordon and Susan Cooper. Although Lively doesn’t reach Garner’s imaginative heights here, at times this reminded me of his earlier novels, particularly The Owl Service: not just because both writers draw on ancient myth and legend to explore the interplay between past and present, but also the way they highlight the shifts in 70s’ England’s class system, charting oppositions between the rural middle-classes and a newly socially-mobile, working class in a manner that seems very revealing of that era’s social anxieties. So that, what’s on the surface, a straightforward, semi-magical adventure has added layers of meaning and cultural commentary; and her shared preoccupations with Garner and Cooper, meant I wasn’t surprised to discover that Lively’s story’s also been included in recent studies of the flowering of 70s' folk horror.

The initial scenario here’s a familiar one, an urban child’s sent to the countryside to stay with a distracted, unobservant academic, giving them freedom to roam and uncover hints of something strange unfolding around them. Here it’s 11-year-old bookish introvert Lucy who’s spending the school holidays with her botanist aunt in an isolated, Somerset village. Lucy’s arrival coincides with preparations for a scheme, thought up by a new vicar as a potential tourist attraction, to revive an ancient pagan ceremony. It was performed in Hagworthy for hundreds of years but mysteriously abandoned in the early nineteenth century. A ritual that’s somehow connected to ideas of sacrifice, local legends of a fearsome, supernatural wild hunt and the resurgence of repressed primordial forces,

“The Dance began. Suddenly the clowning stopped. The two rows of figures skipped and swayed, faceless behind the masks, the antlers dipping and soaring above their heads, without grace but with a strange archaic dignity. For the moment, their individual personalities had vanished, merged in a collective activity that set them apart from the watchers at the edge of the field. They seemed to be alone in the dark stillness of the valley, beneath the lowering sky, alone and a thousand years old.”

I liked Lucy’s character, she’s fairly convincingly drawn and sympathetic but I can’t say the same for the depiction of Hagworthy’s villagers which seemed rudimentary and in imminent danger of tipping over into parody worthy of Cold Comfort Farm. The plot’s a little slow-moving but Lively compensates with her focus on atmosphere, increasingly tense and eerily foreboding as she carefully builds towards the time for the Dance’s final performance. I doubt this will be as memorable for me as much of Garner and Cooper’s output but I enjoyed the narrative's use of folklore; and I relished Lively’s imagery, her meticulous recreation of the wildlife, landscapes, sights and sounds of Somerset, sensitive and unsentimental, I found it tremendously evocative.

Rating: 3.5

[Capn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. I read this book immediately after Mabel Esther Allan's The Horns of Danger, which is also inspired by the Horn Dance of Abbot's Bromley. This story, however, was much deeper and richer, centering on the dance and mythology.

In sharp contrast to Allan's story, here the Vicar of Hagworthy decides that a reinstallation of a centuries(millenia-?)-old tradition could bring in tourists and therefore much needed funds to help reroof the old church. Keen on the idea, he and another woman in the village work tirelessly with the local teenagers to come up with something worthy for the village's summer Fete.

I found all of the characters to be engaging and either relatable or readily identifiable as a personality type. Here, the insular farmers and local blacksmith are dead set against the reinstatement of the ritualistic dance, and apart from gruff reproofs, never give much information as to the source of their objections, heightening the mystery.

I liked Lucy and Kester very much - their characters were well-developed, and I found the interplay between them very natural. The teenage angst and sensitivities were palpable, and I'm glad there wasn't an awkward romantic element foisted upon what I felt was a very realistic interplay between these two. I also loved that strain between clever Kester and the rather dim Norton-Smith sisters, Caroline and Louise, and the differences that had grown up between the sisters and Lucy since the last summer she spent at her Aunt Mabel's in Hagworthy. I was also very fond of Aunt Mabel, the distracted and asocial botanist.

The descriptions of the fictional village of Hagworthy, below the coombs of the Exmoor, were beautiful and haunting. You could feel the heat in the air, and smell the overpowering Meadowsweet, the petrol exhaust from the cars, the slimy film on the surface of the drying river. I desperately want to go to Somerset and search for ammonite fossils from the Liassic period now, too.

A nice, quick read, complete with sweet sketches depicting the characters in their 1970s clothing, and one that made me nostalgic for a time where you had to shore up a supply of library books for summer reading on rainy days (and on sunny days, too, to annoy people like Mrs. Norton-Smith!). Not that I had ever experienced such a time, but it made me wish my childhood had been just like Lucy's, family drama aside. Or at least, that I could also have spent lazy summer days in Hagworthy, exploring the seaside, the woods, the moorland; racing my bike heedlessly down steep and blind country lanes, and taking naps on pillowy heather and bracken in the sunshine, and never knowing the time of day or being constantly connected to anything other than the natural world around you.

If you choose to GIVE THIS BOOK AS A GIFT, I would strongly recommend pairing it with a small, real horseshoe (spoiler if I elaborate). Or an ammonite fossil. Or a full set of stag's antlers to mount on the wall, though that might prove a bit scary in the small hours of hot summer evenings.

This book was almost a 5 star for me, and I liked it so well that I have added the rest of Lively's YA books to my to-read shelf.

Reread, 7Sept2025 - Still love it. :) Love Lucy and Kester's friendship and its complications, love her Aunt (Lively writes some great aunts - see also The House in Norham Gardens), and I love how Lively writes. She absolutely nails the half-seen but definitely real object of terror stuff. Never quite "plausible deniability", but that haziness that happens after the fact, that makes it all more terrifyingly real.
"It weren't never a dance!"
:S

[lucky little cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Verrry slow-moving ghost-hunt story, and very tame when it does move. Quietly interesting as a flawless time capsule of village life plus folklore. Just be prepared to skim through more paragraphs of shy-bookish-12-year-old-girl ambivalence than most of us like to see. (I know, I certainly feel like a traitor typing that last sentence. But still.)

[Alex Sarll]

Rum goings-on on the edge of Exmoor, where the clueless new vicar is reviving an old folk dance without the least idea of the forces he's unleashing. The characters are largely straight from Central Casting, but when the story is all about the persistence of buried archetypes, that seems fair enough - and Lively writes the atmosphere of a stifling West Country summer surpassingly well. This was a delightful present from a friend who was shocked I hadn't read it, though he warned me that the ending was a bit of a disappointment. I can see his argument, but while a bit sudden by modern standards, it did have something of the fairytale conclusion about it, which seems fair enough under the circumstances.
One particularly powerful touch, though more is made of it earlier on in the book: although a children's book, and thus always liable to be suffused with an adult's nostalgia for childhood, this one has a further layer through remembering the nostalgia that exists within childhood. So, our protagonist, aged 12 (probably), is already a little jarred when she returns to Hagworthy by finding that the friends she made there in summers past have changed, seemingly growing either surly or tedious in her absence. It's easy to forget quite how soon the bittersweet awareness of time and mutability can hit us. And, of course, that's the perfect backdrop against which to unfold something as timeless and immutable as the Hunt.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atmospheric, chilling and full of life, The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy is a successful imagining of the wild hunt of folklore, as well as a well-constructed children's story about 12-year-old Lucy. Beginning like many children's books of this era with Lucy arriving in a remote village for a summer holiday, the story comes alive because of Lively's gifted prose and evocation of the countryside, as well as the way she captures children's voices and class tensions. The wild hunt is a theme in a number of children's books, very memorably in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, in which a stag-headed god hunts with hounds across the countryside. Lively's take on this has smaller proportions than Cooper's, but in some ways keeping the supernatural elements small and contained to foot-prints, sounds, and strong feelings, makes them feel more possible, and thus more chilling.

[Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I came out of university without any proper sense of the reality of the past’ was something Lively spoke of in an interview with Pat Triggs. This reflection is an interesting one that relates to the characters of this story too.

Hagworthy, an imagined village in the heart of Somerset, has a deep connection to the Wild Hunt and when the local priest decides that the villagers should reenact a dance from it in order to raise money for the church roof, strange things begin to happen. Lucy, visiting her aunt after five years, finds herself attempting to unravel the deep mystery behind the custom in the hope of saving those drawn to its ancient powers.

Although not as accomplished as The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, perhaps, there is a strong sense here of Lively exploring ancient rites and customs for her own benefit. The interplay between those who believed the ritual of the Hunt to be nothing more than fancy against those that respect it, was something that I really liked and chimed closely with Garner's characters too.

[Murray Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucy Clough goes to stay with her Aunt Mabel in the village of Hagworthy for the summer holidays. She has fond memories of previous stays, and of the friends she made back then — sisters Caroline and Louise, and a boy called Kester — but that was five years ago, and now she finds Caroline and Louise mad about horses and little else, while Kester is caught up in friction with his uncle, the village smith, who wants his nephew to take up the family trade, while grammar-school boy Kester wants more from life. The village has a new vicar, ‘Frightfully nice man — full of ideas’, one of which is to revive the old Horn Dance of Hagworthy for a fête to raise money for the church roof. Oldsters in the village don’t like the idea — the Horn Dance ties in with legends of the Wild Hunt — but who listens to oldsters? Lucy senses something brewing, too, though, and when Kester’s playful banter with the village boys starts to turn more serious — and when those boys start to get a glazed look in their eyes when they’re practising the dance — she wonders if anything can be done to save Kester from a fate he seems only too keen on provoking…

The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy shares its main themes with Penelope Lively’s previous two YA books, Astercote and The Whispering Knights: a quiet English village becomes the setting for conflict between the old ways & modernity when something sacred is treated without the proper respect. But I think Hagworthy works best of all three. Partly this is down to the characterisation being a little deeper and more realistic (there’s a teenage moodiness about Kester and Lucy, of a sort not present in characters in the previous two books), and partly because the clash between the old & new, and its manifestation in the supernatural, is handled quite subtly (for most of the book, you can’t be sure there is a supernatural element at all). As with those previous two books, once the basic idea is established — that the Horn Dance is deeply linked with the supernatural Wild Hunt, but it’s going ahead anyway — the plot pretty much comes to a standstill. But where this was frustrating in previous books, here it feels as though the story is being given time to deepen its characters and build up the tension about what’s going to happen. That holding back of the plot didn’t feel like a flaw, here.

I enjoyed Astercote and The Whispering Knights, partly because I gave them a bit leeway for being YA books from forty years ago; The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy, I enjoyed without having to give it that leeway — the characters, the setting, the slow build up to a tense and exciting conclusion, the connection with a genuinely wild and dangerous-seeming folkloric supernatural, all worked really well, for me.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale from the early 1970s with a supernatural element. Lucy who is about 12 years old goes to stay with her aunt for the summer in a country village. She hasn't been back for seven years so her expectations that childhood friends would have remained the same are overturned when the two girls she played with have become horse-mad and are uninterested in anything else, and the boy Kester is initially standoffish. However, she and Kester do eventually reinvent their friendship but by then a subtle thread of disquiet has crept into village life with the discovery by the vicar of an old ritual involving a 'dance' by men and boys dressed in stag antlers and masks. Despite the grumbles by older residents who oppose its return, and hint at dire consequences - the Wild Hunt of folklore is alluded to early on - rehearsals begin for the forthcoming village fete, and the boys begin to turn on Kester who is an outsider now that he goes to a grammar school and doesn't want to continue the family tradition of working as a blacksmith, his uncle being the last of a dying breed in the whole district.

Despite the statement on the back cover that this is suitable for children of ages 11 - 14, it reads as being for a younger age group, possibly because the character relationships belong to a more 'innocent' age when girls and boys of that age could be friends without any sexual overtones. Also, although the countryside is well evoked and there is the odd moment of supernatural tension, the potential of what could be a dangerous and murderous intent by the boys in the vein of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, is never allowed to become really threatening and even the supernatural element is defused in the finale so it isn't really disturbing and compared to modern day YA fiction such as 'The Hunger Games' series or the 'Noughts and Crosses' books or even 'His Dark Materials' comes across as more suitable for the 8 -10 year age range.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atmospheric tale of an old pagan practice revived for a summer fete, summoning dangerous old forces that focus on a young outsider in a rural village. Marvelous writing evokes the rich summer countryside as well as loneliness, alienation, friendship and strange dark undercurrents. Visitor Lucy watches her one friend, square peg Kester, almost willfully become the prey and tries to save him from himself and from the hunt. The writing is of a particularly high standard and the whole thing is a chilling little read.

[Particle_Person · Rating 4 out of 5]

The person who said this is basically "The Wicker Man" for kids is not wrong. This was an excellent book, based on many of the same legends that Susan Cooper used in "The Dark Is Rising" and "Greenwitch." The book is about the wild hunt legend, in which an antlered man leads a Hunt with demon hounds, and anyone who sees them becomes a quarry. Penelope Lively is a wonderful prose stylist; her word-pictures of Exmoor and the village of Hagworthy (supposedly near Minehead, although I have not found any reference to it on modern maps) make this book worth reading. The plot is much like what Susan Cooper did in The Grey King. A girl named Lucy becomes friends with an outcast boy named Kester as they become entangled in a recreation of the Hunt. The local vicar has revived the Hunt as a tourist attraction based on a few old entries in the parish records, but he does not realize the true purpose of the "Dance" (as he calls it) until he has called up more than he wishes to see.

[Bryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, lovely prose, beautifully atmospheric, but disappontingly anti-climactic; I think she had not quite decided where upon the genre spectrum she would fall, so in the end there is nothing to the hunt really at all, it is just a few pages of tension but no grand revelation, no climax, just -- oh well, this happened, now let's go back to our lives. Her later books are willing to slip out of realism more.

[Hemavathy DM Suppiah-Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

We meet our young heroine Lucy, on a long train rider from London to her aunt’s home of Hagworthy. We initially think that Lucy’s mother has died (though not recently), but it is soon established that her parents have divorced, and that her Mother has remarried, moved to South America and had a baby. Lucy is a rather lonely child, though good natured, and is looking forward to playing with the children she met in her last trip there, five years ago. - Caroline, Louise, and Hester. Aunt Mabel, is a famous botanist and is currently preparing a paper for the Botanical Society on the rare grasses of Exmoor. And she believes that Lucy should be able to Take Care of Herself.

The writing is beautiful and descriptive as always, and the stage set very cleverly. The planning of the fête, the missing antlers, the mystical hounds and the real ones, the smith and his cryptic statements, the Hunt. And the Dance, that starts it all. And it really is gripping until the end. The ending is a downer, fizzling and dying. The climactic build up falls flat. A real let down.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. We quickly became involved with this story of rural village life and folk customs. A small village decides to resurrect an ancient dance for their village fete. The dance starts as an interesting old custom, reintroduced in the hope to raise funds for a church roof, but soon begins to take on a sinister edge. Discontent grows between a clever boy called Kester, who wins a place at a grammar school and his old school friends. Our main character finds herself in-between her new friend Kester and two friends from a well-to-do background called Caroline and Louise. This family provided some great humour and were wonderful for read aloud voices. They are frightfully dim and mad about ponies, their mother is unbearably bossy, nosey, and opinionated, if you live in a small village you probably know these characters and you can have great fun playing the parts.

The ending is subtle, we expected more of a climax but we did enjoy this interesting story of village life and folklore.

[Serena Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow. Nothing really much happens at all but the characters and the old time village become very charming. It's a VERY slow book though, I almost gave up on page 30 but pushed through. You keep thinking she's going to see something scary like a pack of wolves like on the cover or people doing weird things in the woods at night when she goes out to explore but nothing, nothing happens, not even the dance mentioned happened properly. You may think I'm over exaggerating but it felt like this whole build up and hints towards something bigger that never seemed to happen. That said, the characters were charming and the way they spoke old times small village in the Summer vibe, it was very nice and brought you back to child hood memories, very endearing Summer holidays as a kid sort of thing. That said, I wouldn't recommend just very slow and doesn't really go anywhere.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What we might now call ‘folk horror’ was, perhaps surprisingly, a popular theme for children’s books and television series in the 1970s. Penelope Lively’s The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy is one of many examples; Lucy, staying with her aunt in a village on the edge of Exmoor during the school holidays discovers the dangers of reviving ancient traditions when the new vicar decides to present a performance of the almost-forgotten Horn Dance at the village fete. Dark forces are awoken and the ghostly Wild Hunt is seen and heard in the village again. Effectively atmospheric, but not in the top league of Lively’s best children’s books.

[Gerry Grenfell-Walford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but perfect, this is a tremendous book for atmosphere and for sense of place. the story itself is rather simple, but the ambience is very skillfully done. I live on the edge of Exmoor myself and his was a powerful evocation of land and identity. I also really liked the way the characters were lightly but memorably drawn. It seems so unfair that Lively is not better known.
In my case, I rushed out and ordered two more of her books, which I ma keenly looking forward to.
But I'll definitely come back to reread this again!

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Child-me thought this was the best book ever, and I've stuck to that judgement. I don't think adults are great reviewers of kids books. Adult-me appreciated the lyrical but not overly florid prose which kept the landscapes, tension, and atmosphere of this book in my memory for decades. This hits all the English folk tale highlights you would expect of a book published in 1971. It predates The Wicker Man, too. A good book. I might have to try her adult work next!

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unexpectedly, a lot of rich detail about the countryside and flora. A snapshot in time where children were allowed to wander freely on their own - as long as they didn't get under the feet of the grown ups. Children expected to make their own entertainment. The book doesn't descend into horror but hints at the potential for dark events.

[Sula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penelope Lively creates a strong atmosphere of childhood summers, drowsy heatwaves and old-fashioned English villages, with something uncanny in the air... however this is more a vignette than a story, drifting along to a rather half-hearted peak.

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I am increasingly here for happily weirdo little supernatural books that just happily weirdo little supernatural all over the place and wrap it all up in time for tea, ten out of ten, excellent stuff, well done everybody.

[Aidan Higham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book. Evocative prose bringing to life a tale of a time now gone but always remembered.
A parable of how life shapes and bends some of us to not quite fit in with our surroundings but be all the better regardless.
My childhood in whispers.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look, when a cover is this outrageous, I expect the story to follow suit. But this is a pretty tame children’s story with only the barest of glimpses of the Wild Hunt. No one dies. There’s no woodland Fae orgies. Ah well.

[Loulou · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd forgotten most of this. It was enjoyable but I much prefer others of her books.

[Elaine Glynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird world to fall into, but creepy.

[AmbWitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy as a child and loved it. Recently (well a couple of years ago now because I’m THAT behind on reviews) I reread it and still thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a spooky, atmospheric read which is perfect for reading near Halloween. I can’t remember it that well but have a few notes from when I read it so will try my best to review.

Lucy is spending the summer at her aunt’s in Hagworthy, a country village. It has been many years since she was last there and her friends have all changed. A village fete is to be held and the new vicar wants to include an ancient horn dance that has not been performed in a very long time. The older people of the village think this is a bad idea, and so does Lucy. As the book progresses the dance, and its performers start to take on a sinister edge.

A main aspect of this book seems to be the clash between the old ways and the new. Many of the villagers hold onto the old ways and look down on anything that goes against their ways or is different. This means that both Lucy and her friend Kester, are considered outsiders as they have more of a grasp on the modern ways. This may be why Kester seems to be the target of the dance’s darker side and why he is bullied by the other boys of the village, who are the ones set to perform the dance.

Foreshadowing is scattered throughout the book with people’s reflections appearing with antlers on and people using the hunt as a way to scare children into obedience. This foreshadowing helps to create the books spooky atmosphere and hints at what’s to come.

The end of this book was unsatisfying. I felt myself wondering, ‘is that it, is it solved?’ There didn’t seem to be any definite ending but maybe that was the plan.

Reading The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy for the second time, years after the first was definitely worth doing. It is a highly atmospheric story and keeps the reader worrying over what is going to happen when the dance is performed. I have a feeling I will read this book again some time.

[Jeanette Greaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember borrowing this from the library, and reading it compulsively. I would have been 11 or 12, and Kester Lang would have been one of my first literary crushes. The similarity to Kay in The Snow Queen probably went unnoticed at the time, but I was obviously a sucker for self destructive boys.

[Sonia Gensler]

Loved this atmospheric tale of a girl who returns to a childhood haunt to find that her old friends have changed and trouble is afoot. (Oh, that clueless vicar!). As with all her children's books, I appreciated Lively's ability to engage me so deeply with the setting. Very satisfying read, even if the resolution seems a bit rushed.

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminiscent of Josephine Poole's The Visitor--but not quite as good. Poole's book, which deals with many of the same themes and elements, is more fleshed out, enabling the reader to connect with the characters on a deeper level. However, Lively's book is still a good YA read.

[Sarah Vecchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, but not the best of Penelope Lively's I've read.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

1970s copy still at parents' house, it's as good as I remember it. Adult-readable.