Wisht Hounds and Black Shuck
In Greek myth, the goddess Hecate roams the earth on moonless nights with a pack of ghostly, howling dogs. Similarly, the Old French term for the Wilde Jagd is Mesneé d’Hellequin, derived from Hel, the Norse goddess of the dead.
The interesting thing about Hecate, in connection with the Norse Wild Hunt, is they both have a common link – the Black Dog. It was said that her followers would sacrifice black dogs (and lambs) to her. There are many legends surrounding Dartmoor and these hell-hounds with baleful red eyes are just one legend, but Wisht Hounds is a good tale and formed the basis of a much later story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
One night, a farmer was riding home to his wife and young child over Hameldon Tor. He had sold some cattle at market and the coins jingled in his pocket as his pony trod the familiar path. He had drunk some ale and he dozed a little on the clear, moonlit night. As the pony reached the old granite ring of stones, a hoof clipped a boulder, waking the farmer and they headed on past the stone circle, when they suddenly heard a distant hunting horn.
In the distance, the farmer could see a huntsman and his pack of hounds, coming full tilt towards them, but no sign of any animal being chased. The farmer’s pony was nervous and needed calming, but then a pack of huge black dogs rushed past, baying loudly with red eyes and red tongues. The tall huntsman was clothed in black on a huge black horse that had fiery eyes, and sparks came from the horse’s hooves.
The farmer called out to ask what sport they were chasing as no animal could be seen. The hunter threw a wrapped packet to the farmer, saying “Take that and think yourself lucky.”
Once the hunt had gone past, the farmer’s pony was calmer, but there was no light to examine the packet, as clouds had come and covered the moon. Farmer and pony went on home, but the farmer continued to wonder what was in the packet – it was too small for a deer, but too big for a rabbit.
When he reached home, he told his wife what had happened and called for her to bring a lantern while he unwrapped the packet. Then he shrieked and dropped it, as a small form fell to the cobbles – it was the tattered remains of their child. The news went around the village that the farmer had seen the Dark Huntsman and his pack of Wisht Hounds, who were hunting unbaptised babies or children: local opinion was that the farmer and his wife should have had their child christened.
The legend of Black Shuck is another matter entirely. The name Shuck derives from the Saxon word, scucca, meaning demon. He is one of many ghostly black dogs recorded across the British Isles.
Its alleged appearance during a storm on 4th August 1577 at the Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, is a particularly famous account of the beast, in which legend says that thunder caused the doors of the church to burst open and the snarling dog crashed in and ran through the congregation, killing a man and a boy, before it fled when the steeple collapsed.
The encounter on the same day at St Mary’s Church, Bungay, was described in A Straunge and Terrible Wunder by the Reverend Abraham Fleming in 1577:
“This black dog, or the devil in such a likeness (God he knoweth all who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftness, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible form and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling upon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them both at one instant clean backward, in so much that even at a moment where they kneeled, they strangely died.”
And so, we have another legend involving a huge black dog, a storm and sudden deaths, which would seem to hark back to the Wild Hunt. There is just one problem, though. On 16 May 2014, it was reported that archaeologists had discovered the skeleton of a massive dog that would have stood 8-9 feet tall on its hind legs, in the ruins of Leiston Abbey in Suffolk, England. The remains of the massive dog, which is estimated to have weighed 200 pounds, were found just a few miles from the two churches where Black Shuck killed the worshippers. It appears to have been buried in a shallow grave at precisely the same time as Shuck is said to have been on the loose, primarily around Suffolk and the East Anglia region.
Brendon Wilkins, projects director of archaeological group Dig Ventures, said: “Most of these legends about dogs may have some roots in reality.”
So, does the Wilde Jagd have roots in reality too?