white deer of Wisconsin

[Carol]

Cathy YasminOaks wrote:
> 
> << This really made me think of the silver doe. I thought some of you might enjoy it as well. 
> <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=inwi10s22a3q81f> >>
Catlady responded: 
> Thank you. I did enjoy it. The mention that albino deer (like white bunnies and white cats) have pink ears and pink noses suddenly reminded me that in the Mabinogion, when a this-world hunter in the woods sees a deer or a dog which is white with *red* ears, that animal came from a magical world (Annwn in the Mabinogion, Faerie in some other stories), and interacting with it begins the hunter's magical adventure. Red, pink, could be the same thing.

Carol responds:
Along those lines, here's a snippet from Wordsworth's "White Doe of Rylstone": 

"The only voice which you can hear
Is the river murmuring near.--
When soft!--the dusky trees between,
And down the path through the open green, 
Where is no living thing to be seen;
<snip> Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream,
A solitary Doe!
White she is as lily of June,
And beauteous as the silver moon"

Not Wordsworth's best poetry, by any means, but a white doe among the dusky trees, gliding and gleaming and silent, white as a lily and  beautiful as the silver moon? Sounds exactly like Snape's Patronus to me, lily reference and all.

Here's a link to the whole poem if anyone wants to wade through it:

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww341.html

I just wanted to quote the one passage; the poem itself isn't particularly relevant (unless you count the doe as a symbol of innocence and the past giving comfort to those who see her).

I have no idea whether JKR ever encountered this poem or at least this passage in her reading, but I thought that the parallels were striking.

Carol, who thinks that Wordsworth should have left the ballads to Coleridge and stuck with lyrics and sonnets