'Shucks, Barguests, Grims and Whisht Hounds' by Karen Maitland

Review of 'BLACK DOG FOLKLORE' by Mark Norman

I have long been captivated by the legends and folklore surrounding the spectral creature, the ‘black dog’, ever since some years ago in Nigeria when I was saved from being hacked to death with machetes by the appearance of a large black dog who protected me. I think that dog was real, at least he felt wonderfully warm and solid, though his sudden appearance at that terrifying moment certainly seemed miraculous.

But my fascination with the black dog legends goes back even before that when, as a small child, I huddled under the bedclothes, listening to the 'Hound of the Baskervilles' on a tiny radio, when I was supposed to be asleep. Since my new medieval thriller, 'A Gathering of Ghosts', is set on Dartmoor, how could I write about that wild landscape without mentioning the huge black whisht hounds with glowing eyes that hunt the moors, terrorising anyone foolish enough to find themselves on the lonely tracks after dark.

'Illustration from 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'

in The Strand Magazine, August 1901

So, in the light of this, I was delighted recently to discover a brilliant book called ‘BLACK DOG FOLKLORE’ by Mark Norman, who is leading folklore expert and researcher. This book is not merely a collection of legends. It is a scholarly, but immensely readable investigation into the origins of these tales though out history, how they are linked and how they have evolved to influence the way modern sightings are reported. The book also explores the symbolism of the black dog from ancient times and across many cultures.

Mark Norman has divided his book up into the different types of Black Dog in legend, delving into the possible explanations behind the particular black dog encounters. This includes the ghosts of black dogs which curiously in England often seem to be associated with the Civil War; dogs which are significant to certain families, appearing in the coats of arms or which have haunted the family through different generations; the protective black dogs which appear at times of danger to help lone humans; the terrifying shucks, padfoots and barguests with glowing eyes, which in legend are sometimes shape-shifting creatures. The author suggests the name shuck probably stems from the Anglo-Saxon Sceocca meaning ‘devil.’

'The Fiendish Black Dog

Artist: Vasilios Markousis, 2015

Then there are the legends of dogs that guard treasure or haunt certain roads or bridges. In many cultures around the world a dog appears as a guardian of the underworld, an ancient mythology which finds its way into tales such as Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale 'The Tinder Box', where the treasure rooms beneath a tree are guarded by three dogs, the first with eyes as big as teacups, the next with eyes as big as waterwheels and the third as big as round towers.

One of the earliest records of the spectral dogs in England comes from a late version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle written after the Norman Conquest in 1154, which describes a sighting of what seems to be the ‘wild hunt’ in which the witnesses reported seeing huge huntsmen riding black horses or black he-goats accompanied by hounds that were ‘black, big-eyed and loathsome.’ By the twentieth century, people are reporting seeing these spectral dogs with ‘eyes as big as saucers’ or ‘dinner plates’.

Artist: Spettro84, 2008

One of the most compelling chapters is the one about ‘Church Grims’ and death. The author points out that in many cultures dogs are linked with death omens, not least because they seem to have an uncanny ability to sense when a loved member of the family is dying and will start to howl. In Islam, for example, they are said to be able to see Azrael, the Angel of Death, approaching.

1577, An account of the Black Dog

that appeared in Bungay, Suffolk

This book covers much more than simply the legends of black dogs. The author examines many aspects of folk customs involving dogs, including the practise of burying dogs in the foundations of buildings to protect them, which is found as far back as the 13th century BCE in Greece, and the custom of burying a dog in a newly opened graveyard. I have found reports of this continuing right up until the 19th century in England, the explanation being given  by then was that the spirit of the first creature buried there would be compelled to protect the graveyard, so not wanting to condemn any person in the village to that fate, a dog was put in the ground first.

The author of this book also debunks several black dog myths. When I first moved to Devon, I longed to live the village called Black Dog, wrongly assuming that was haunted by one of these supernatural hounds, but it appears that place names should be treated with caution, because though there are legends of the black dog in the surrounding area, old maps record the village as Black Boy. Nothing to do with the hound.

Like many people, I was familiar with the legend of the foul monstrous dog that was supposed to haunt the Newgate prison, but it seems there were never any actual sightings of this dog and the whole fiction was based on a pamphlet of 1638 with that title which was actually denouncing the prison conditions. A poem, written in 1596, by Luke Hutton, who had been a prisoner in the infamous prison used the phrase as a symbol for the despair felt by the prisoners. Interesting then that Winston Churchill should adopt the term ‘black dog’ to refer to his own bouts of dark depression.

From the pamphlet 'The Discovery of a London Monster

Called the black dog of Newgate. 1638

Finally, if you want to discover if there has ever been a record of a ghostly black dog where you are staying, the book ends with a comprehensive listing of the black dog sightings in Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands. It’s always worth checking before you go for that romantic midnight stroll!

'Black Dog Folklore' by Mark Norman is published by Troy Books, 2016.

Karen Maitland's new medieval thriller, ‘A Gathering of Ghosts’ is published by Headline, September 2018.

Your Last Paper Five Pound Note by Janie Hampton

For the past fifteen years, all of us who live in Britain have looked at this woman many thousands of times. But within the next few months she will disappear from public view as paper notes are replaced with plastic ones.. Who is she? 

The last paper £5 note

She is Elizabeth Fry, the woman on the “back” of the £5 note. (The woman on the “front” is Queen Elizabeth II, who appears on all British sterling notes.) So why was she chosen?
Elizabeth Fry changed the lives of prisoners in the 19th century, in Britain and all over the world. Much is already known about her extraordinary humanitarian work , so I’ll tell you a bit about her early life.
Betsy, as she was known, was the daughter of devout Quakers from East Anglian banking families – her mother Kitty (1755-1794) was a Barclay; and her father John Gurney (1749-1809) was a partner in Gurney’s bank. Eventually the two banks married too.  Born in 1772, Betsy grew up the third of eleven children in Earlham Hall, a country house in Norfolk built over many centuries. It had 80 cupboards for ‘hide and seek’ and was set in beautiful park land - now the site of the University of East Anglia. There were at least two dozen indoor and outdoor staff, who were treated as part of the larger family.
The Gurneys of Earlham were known as ‘Gay Quakers’ – they loved to dance and sing, and they wore cloaks with colourful linings. Kitty believed in liberal and equal education so Betsy and her six sisters were taught French, Latin, Botany, History and Geography, as well as needlecraft and family economics. Drawing lessons were given by John Crome and John Sell Cotman, leading members of the Norwich School. As part of their social and moral education, Kitty would fill jugs with soup and march her children off to feed the local poor.
Unlike her rowdy siblings, her mother described her third daughter as ‘my dove-like Betsy, scarcely ever offends and is truly engaging’. Her sisters found her moody, self-absorbed and difficult. She resisted joining them in the North Sea at Cromer or duck-shooting on the Norfolk Broads. Following Quaker practice, the children were encouraged to write their true feelings, and faults, in daily journals – and then had to read them out to the family. Betsy was unsparingly honest about the sins of both herself, and her sisters. Her four younger sisters were often irritated by her goodness: ‘she does little kindnesses, even to those who ignore her.’
When she was only 37, Kitty died of erysipelas, a skin infection which is easily treated nowadays. The Gurney children were then aged between one and 16 years; Betsy was just 12. To keep them cheerful, their father would hire a blind fiddler on Saturday evenings who could not know that the sound of laughter and dancing came from Quakers. Despite being shy, Betsy had a beautiful singing voice and danced with grace. She observed in her journal that dancing made her flirt more and at 17 she wrote, ‘I must beware of being a flirt, it is an abominable character’. Much to the disapproval of the Plain Quakers, her father invited guests belonging to other Christian denominations, and encouraged his children to know about the world. Just as many of us boycotted South African wine to bring down apartheid, as early as 1800 the young Gurneys resisted eating sugar to try and end slavery.
On Sunday mornings, the family walked the three miles into Norwich for “Goats”, the Goat Lane Friends Meeting House. On the way there any child who lapsed from speaking French was fined a farthing. Quaker meetings lasted three or four hours, sometimes in complete silence. For children who loved riding, swimming in the river, dancing and drawing, this was an agony of self-sacrifice and they found  it “extremely dis” [disagreeable]. By the end they felt “thoroughly goatified” until they got home to Earlham for a “romp and a dance”. Their journals refer as often to dancing, as they do to their sins.

A watercolour of Betsy's Quaker cousins at Friends Meeting House, Gracechurch Street, London in 1778.  Twenty years later, Betsy would have been sitting on the left and William Savery speaking from this platform.  Note the speakers hat hanging above him.

One Sunday in February, 1798, the seven sisters were sitting in the front row at Goats. Betsy intended to spend the meeting contemplating the beauty of her new pair of purple boots with red laces. But she became transfixed by the speaker, an American Quaker called William Savery (1750-1804). ‘I had a feint light spread over my mind…it has caused me to feel a little religion,’ she wrote. Determined to hear Savery speak again, she asked her father to take her to London. During the week, she attended Drury Lane theatre, Covent Garden opera, saw performances of Hamlet and Bluebeard, went dancing, had her hair done, and finally on Sunday went to hear Savery again. Her life was never the same again. Much to her family’s annoyance, she gave up dancing and singing, wore only plain grey clothes, spoke quietly and determined to overcome her fear of the dark. She visited the sick and poor with clothes and food, started a Sunday school and became a Plain Quaker. Two years later she married a fellow Quaker, Joseph Fry (1777–1861) – whose family made their fortune in chocolate, although Joseph was an unsuccessful banker.

The 'Angel of Prisons' reading in Newgate Gaol.  The man on the left wearing spectacles is her brother-in-law Thomas Fowell Buxton MP. Painting by Jerry Barrett, 1816, on which £5 note is based.

The couple lived in London where in 1813 Betsy visited Newgate Prison. She was horrified by the filthy, overcrowded conditions of women, many imprisoned with their children. Five years later she became the first woman to present evidence to Parliament, which led to the MPs John Peel and  Thomas Fowell Buxton supporting the ‘Gaols Act of 1823’. She formed the “British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners”, the first national women's organization in Britain; and campaigned against capital punishment. She established a "nightly shelter" in London for the homeless,and in towns all over Britain she organized volunteers to help the poor in their homes. After Betsy set up a college for nurses, Florence Nightingale took some of them to the war in the Crimea. Queen Victoria supported her work and the King of Prussia even joined her on a visit to Newgate Prison. Betsy visited over 100 convict ships before they set sail, giving each woman a ‘useful bag’ for her transportation. She wrote, “My mind is too much tossed by a variety of interests and duties — husband, children, household accounts, Meetings, the Church, near relations, friends, and Newgate....it is a little like being in the whirlwind and in the storm; may I not be hurt in it, but enabled quietly to perform that which ought to be done.”
Betsy died of a stroke aged 65 and was buried in Essex. There are many buildings named after her, including an 1849 women’s refuge in Hackney; part of the Home Office headquarters; and a school in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. There are statues of her in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, East Ham Library, and the Old Bailey Court, London.

“Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone.”
Statue of Betsy in The Old Bailey,  the site of Newgate Prison, London.

There’s even a National Elizabeth Fry Week in Canada every May. Many thousands of people, mostly unknown to her, benefited from her humanitarian work. Nevertheless some people criticized Elizabeth Fry for neglecting her domestic duties - despite the fact that all but one of her eleven children reached adulthood. Sadly, this is a problem women still face today. So before you spend your last paper five pound note, think about this woman who changed the way we think about the homeless, prisons and slaves - and yet still managed to annoy her sisters!
Elizabeth Fry, née Gurney, 1780-1845.
Janie Hampton is descended from four of Elizabeth Fry’s Gurney siblings.
This blog uses her mother's book: 'Friends and Relations - three centuries of Quaker families', Verily Anderson, Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.