Black Shuck

For centuries, inhabitants of East Anglia have told tales of a large black hellhound with malevolent flaming eyes (or in some variants of the legend a single eye) that are red or alternatively green. They are described as being 'like saucers'. According to reports, the beast varies in size and stature from that of simply a large dog to being the size of a horse.

The legends of the Black Shuck roaming the Anglian countryside date back to the time of the Vikings. His name may derive from the Anglo-Saxon word scucca meaning "demon", or possibly from the local dialect word shucky meaning "shaggy" or "hairy". The legend may have been part of the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Sometimes the Black Shuck is referred to as the Doom Dog. It is said that his appearance bodes ill to the beholder, although not always. More often than not, the Black Shuck terrifies his victims out of their wits, but then leaves them alone to continue living normal lives. Many other black dogs exhibit a similar trait. Sometimes the Black Shuck has appeared headless, and at other times he appears to float on a carpet of mist rather than run. According to folklore, the spectre often haunts graveyards, sideroads, crossroads, dark forests and it is told by locals, from the depthe of Beeston Bump, a hill close to Beeston Regis and Sheringham.

One of the most vivid reports of Black Shuck, though, is of his appearance at the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh in Suffolk. On the August 4, 1577, at Blythburgh, Black Shuck is said to have burst in through the church doors. He ran up the nave, past a large congregation, killing a man and boy and causing the church tower to collapse through the roof. As the dog left, he left scorch marks on the north door which can be seen at the church to this day.

The encounter on the same day at Bungay is described in "A straunge and terrible Wunder" by the Reverend Abraham Fleming (1577):

"This black dog, or the divel in such a linenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) runing all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a mome[n]t where they kneeled, they stra[n]gely dyed.

Other accounts attribute the event to lightning or the Devil. Indeed, the scorch marks on the door are referred to by the locals as "the devil's fingerprints". The event is remembered in this verse:

All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, And, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew.

Also a large Black dog with red eyes was spotted on Black lane, Kilby in Leicestershire (date unknown) and was supposed to have saved a girl from being mugged by appearing and scaring the attacker away.

A song about the Blythburgh animal entitled "Black Shuck" appears on the 2003 album Permission to Land by Lowestoft band The Darkness.

A sinister dog known as "the Grim" is mentioned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which may derive indirectly from the legend of Black Shuck, via The Hound of the Baskervilles, though the name is likely to have been derived from stories of a creature similar to Black Shuck called the Church Grim.

The Glasgow based rock band, "Black Shuck" also derive their name from the mythical beast, though in part as a tribute to the aforementioned Darkness song.

The dog is the leader of a group of mythological characters in the 2000 AD series London Falling.

According to the children's book The Runton Werewolf by Ritchie Perry, Black Shuck is a Gronk, a race of friendly shapeshifting aliens, the ancestors of which were accidentally left behind on Earth when one of them suffered from stomach troubles.

The Black Dog of Bungay and Black Shuck both appear in "The Kettle Chronicles: The Black Dog", a novel by Steve Morgan, former vicar of Bungay, set in 1577.

The shagfoal appears in Alan Moore's 1996 novel "Voice of the Fire", set in Northampton, partly in pre-historic times.

Some of this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

and

Copyright (c) 2007 Cinnamon.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".