This was part of the original intent of the Public Archaeology project (for PA2015) and for me, because data is poetry and maps are fine prose. Due to the nature of my working life; the fact that I’m a bit of a butterfly/battering ram when it comes to how I approach things and get on with them it has been vaguely sidelined. A holiday got in the way for starters which inevitably because it was in Northern France set my Atlantikwall/D-Day/Cider/Cheese obsession flickering again so I spent a bit of time staring at concrete emplacements and imagining airdrops and all that malarky. So sorry for the delay for anyone who gives a stuff.
Here it is, it is not finished in the slightest. Because as I’ve spiralled downwards into the Maw of Shuck and into the mouths of all the other Myth-Dogs the whole thing has widened out and flattened out so much so that last night as I tried to fill in some of Suffolk I ended up as far as India with the V??ka the word that spawned the the shape-shifting wolf-vampires that are the Vlkolak of Slovakia, the dogs of Bulgaria and the Vilkatis of Latvia.
Spirited off with the Perchta or Befana as far as the Yule celebrations of central Europe with her pack of witches or his pack of dogs or in male form as Berchtold. You will find Woden in many guises as he shifts from Arthur to Herne, Sigurdhr or Guro Rysserova, switching genders, morphing from King to Witch to pauper flying with dogs, witches, birds and even fish. They can be a portent or war or stuffing socks with gifts. Cerberus is there guarding the gate of Hel or Hell just as and Arawn still rules inside the fairy kingdom. Discovered Tolkeinesque-Psychopomps dragging the dead into their wild hunts and sky-battles.
And still there is the single dog, (here keyed in red), our rather unusual mostly English hound, the Barghest, the Shuck, he is still part of the same scheme. Around Peterborough you can find two folklore strands entwined. The Wild Hunt is tied to both with St Guthlac of Crowland as leader and more importantly with Hereward the Wake a story where curiously the dogs are familiar, they smell of the country lanes of North Norfolk; hound, jet black with eyes like saucers.
“Let no-one be surprised at the truth of what we are about to relate, for it was common knowledge throughout the whole country that immediately after [Abbot Henry of Poitou’s arrival at Peterborough Abbey] – it was the Sunday when they sing Exurge Quare – many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats and their hounds were jet black with eyes like saucers and horrible. This was seen in the very deer park of the town of Peterborough and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to Stamford, and in the night the monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses who kept watch in the night declared that there might well have been as many as twenty or thirty of them winding their horns as near they could tell. This was seen and heard from the time of his arrival all through Lent and right up to Easter.” – The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Above is the map. It is crude a patchwork of things all bleeding into one-and-other, It isn’t anywhere near finished.
There is a rough key. Acid Green is the general name in use in an area. Red are Shucks, barghests, Skeffs, Hairy Jacks and other single dogs. Blue are Were-creatures, mainly wolves, Purple are the non-moon-phase-dependent shape shifters. Darker Green are the Wild Hunts, like the single dogs these vary immensely, more so in fact, the basic tenet is the same, but the leader or the pack changes as other myths or real people are absorbed and what the pack is doing might change. The shucks are mostly drawn with permission from the collected stories from Mike Burgess at Hidden EA. The North Yorks and some of the Lancashire dogs have been added by Tim Hardy without whom etc. Special thanks (as ever) goes to Jess Macdonald who mapped a lot of the dogs for me once I started to flag.
This is forever a work in progress, a lot of work at that. So come back and check. and more importantly if you fancy transcribing stories from Hidden EA or any other source please get in touch. It would be particularly interesting if people who have knowledge of a certain area, Dartmoor for instance is a real hub for tales of Black Dogs were to get involved, you just need a Google account and access granted and we can make this much more than a sum of it’s parts very quickly. If we can achieve decent data levels then the whole thing can be exported onto a more manageable platform.
Nick Stone 2015
This is the Black Shuck Map featured on Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country.
Image: Tyr and Fenrir by Bauer. OOC
Tales from this series
Black Dog Tales: Toby Gill
A fresh guest tale from Nicola Miller of The Millers Tale. A curious story woven by ghosts across the Shucklands of Blythburgh. Suffolk is home to many a curious tale, from the mysterious green children of Woolpit to a mansion which disappears and re-appears in the...
Black Dogs: The Wisht Hunt of Dartmoor
A guest post from Stephen on the nature of the Wild Hunts of Dartmoor. 'The spectre pack which hunts over Dartmoor is called the “wish hounds” and the black “master” who follows the chase is no doubt the same who has left his mark on Wistman’s Wood' – The Quarterly...
The black dog of Peterloo
Guest post from Rosie Garland. A Manchester Encounter, or, The Black Dog of Peterloo From an unpublished and anonymous letter now in the collection of the Portico Library, Manchester. Typography dates it to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Spelling and...
Black dog tales: From folklore to fiction, Cromer and the landscapes of the Baskervilles
'There is a rumour that...' is a phrase that appears a lot in relation to the genesis of the spectral hound Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and the Black dog or Black Shuck loitering within. A variety of locations lay some claim to the hound, not least...
Black Dog tales: The Hound of St Austell
A guest post from Andrew Macdonald of Waveney Archaeology. Samuel Drew (1765-1833) was a self-taught man of letters; his special interest was metaphysics, which is perhaps why he is little known now. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker and gave the following account of...
The Black Dog of Bouley Bay
A guest post. This is actually an extract from Erren Michaels' new book on Jersey Legends which should be available very soon. It is available to pre-order here on the History Press website. On nights when the black dog roamed the hills of Bouley Bay people would lock...
The Discovery of the Lancashire Witches 1612
Guest post from Tim Hardy. Tim is a graphic designer, illustrator and history boy, he is also resident of the Pendle area. Follows a tale of Black dog as familiar, witches and the trial. Living in the Borough of Pendle, it’s not easy to escape the area’s...
Wheal Vor – black dogs, gunpowder and goose feathers.
Guest post from Andrew MacDonald of Waveney Archaeology. Andrew lives in in South Norfolk Shuck territory, but is currently occupying his waking hours obsessing over tin mines in Cornwall. He does this in between trying to persuade people to stare at bumps in fields...
Sheringham Graffiti
August has whirled by, hardly a breath between the blowing rain and the dry panic of the harvest. Combine harvesters throw their cones of dust over the fields pulling in the barley and wheat, sucking out what remains of the stored sun. We've been busy, fitting...
Black Dogs and Cats in Suffolk
Guest post from Francis Young From Francis Young, regarding Heveningham Hall and Moreton Hall near Bury St. Edmonds. Heveningham is an area of previous alleged sightings in the 1920s which include the mention of a clanking chain, it is one of the archetypal...
Tom Starling: Old Shuck – Salthouse into Kelling
Wonderful piece of Norfolk dialect from a well-spoken North Norfolk chap relating his brief but nervy meeting with Old Shuck just outside Salthouse towards Kelling; one of the various 'two masters' routes that relate to the North Norfolk version of the tale based...
Passing on Black Shuck
Tim Fox-Godden is friend who prints and illustrates, he also originates from the same area of Norfolk as me, he strolls down many of the same psychological byways and holloways as me and occasionally our paths cross. He has produced this rather lovely linocut as a...
Black Shuck of the Fens
Black Shuck of the Fens Guest post: Matthew Champion I have a confession to make. I was born on the edge of the fens. A child of the bleak, flat and desolate waste that sits on Norfolk's western boundary, between 'the Isle' and the cold North Sea. I'm not a true fen...
Physical Graffiti – Jess Macdonald
Guest post from Jess Macdonald From a very early age, I’ve always loved ghosts and ghouls, and long-legged-beasties and things that go bump in the night. Folklore, myths, the supernatural. I’ve never believed any of it, but it’s always exerted a hold on me. I’d plead...
The Mouldwarp King
Like badgers in channels of hypocausts devoid of fire, The Mouldwarps scatter the cairns of our mothers, And the bogs hold our fathers pinned to wicker.[1] The mole is an ‘earth-thrower’ - a mouldywarp, molywarppe, moudiwarp, mouldwarp, moldwarp. The collision between...
The Black Dog of Sculthorpe Moor
Guest post by Nick Headland A couple of Black dog tales, neither experienced first hand which is more-or-less how Folklore works and how it evolves. So much so that Nick pointed out in his message that if he asked the other people involved now the story would change,...
Black Dog lore of the North York Moors
Guest post: Martyn Hudson, Newcastle University The North York Moors of North East Yorkshire are well known for their witch folklore and for lore around hybrid human and animal beings including the witch-hares of Danby Dale, Westerdale and Farndale, mermen and women...
The Halvergate Shuck
Guest post from Nigel Thorpe There's nothing quite as strange and good as a tale from the horses mouth, someone you know who has encountered, done, or experienced something. Nigel bumped into Shuck at the very start of the millennium. This story serves to show what a...
Black dog tales: Bungay’s Black Shuck
"There were assembled at the same season, to hear divine service and common prayer in the parish church of Bongay, the people therabouts inhabiting. Immediately hereupon, there appeared in a most horrible similitude and likenesse to the congregation then and there...
I had no idea that there were so many Ghost Black Dog Sightings. In the USA truck drivers will see them when they get tired. Perhaps they are a figment or common hallucination. Then again…
I’ve lived up and down the east coast all of my life and always loved the various Black Dog myths. I remember reading the first when I was very young in a children’s ghost book which featured a hideous pencil drawing of a fierce black hound.
I can give you a story my granddad told about a black dog near Barton Blount in Staffordshire. (It’s the site of a lost medieval village).
Around the turn of the century, 1890 odd, he was employed by a farmer at Scropton, staffs. He often took a pony and trap around the surrounding farms and markets, and in one particular lane near Barton the pony always shied and appeared frightened and he had to hold it back. One day the usual thing happened,, and he looked down and saw a huge black dog, the size of a calf padding alongside the pony. It got to a certain pint in the lane and melted into the hedge, he let the pony have it’s head. He never saw it again, but avoided the lane.
Just looking at my local ones – the Great Yarmouth Tesco sighting must be the old store, now Palace Bingo on Brewery Plain, as the current site doesn’t have a rooftop car park!
Pity I can’t upload a photo as I photographed what I believe may be a phantom black dog or a kirkgrim.