A howl across the dark moor

A hell hound on my tail: the thought of being chased by such a beast is enough to give anyone the shivers

THE company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or, it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing , and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue.

But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil roisterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.

And even as they looked the thing that tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.

So begins the curse of the Baskervilles in Sherlock Holmes’ most-loved adventure. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is reputed to have devised the tale with Daily Express journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson on a basic passage back from South Africa, where Doyle had worked as a doctor in Bloemfontein. To wile away all those hours in the hold, the two had talked over the many tales of phantom dogs and hell hounds found across the British Isles.

The fate of Hugo Baskerville is said to be modelled most closely on the story of Richard Cabell, a 17th Century Devon squire and “monstrously evil man” reputed to have killed his wife and sold his soul to the devil. On the night he was interned, it is told that a pack of hounds came from the nearby moor to howl at this tomb. Afterwards, on the anniversary of his death, he was to be seen leading his ghostly hunt across the moor, until villagers took such fright that a large building was constructed around the tomb and a huge slab placed upon it to prevent the squire’s restless spirit from being found abroad.

Other elements fed into the tale. Baskerville Hall was modelled on Cromer Hall in Norfolk, where Conan Doyle had also first heard the story of Black Shuck, one of Britain’s best known phantom hound legends. Meanwhile, the real-life Baskervilles of Clyro Court, just outside Hay-on-Wye, friends of the author, are said to have given him the iconic name.

But it is the use of the dark and forbidding Dartmoor in Hound of the Baskervilles, home to the hell hound, that gives the book its irresistible atmosphere and made the story an instant hit when it was serialised in Strand Magazine between August 1901 to April 1902. The use of another remote English landscape had already been used to great effect in Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, and the two settings have proved a godsend for generations of film makers, both in numerous retellings of both the Conan Doyle and Emily Bronte tales, and in memorable high-suspense scenes such as the first lycanthropic encounter in American Werewolf in London.

Being lost on the moors remains a powerful way of frightening us. But in the phantom dogs we are tapping into an almost primeval fear, something that stretches back to the times when dogs separated themselves from wolves and made themselves available for work at our camp fires. Stories of hell hounds that go back further than those of vampires, and perhaps even further than those surrounding werewolves, who figured in Greek mythology.

Perhaps they began when our forebears saw for themselves the snapping power of a dog’s jaw and its adroitness in the hunt. A cave dweller might well have fancied how they would fare if the human-canine contract of food and warmth in return for guard duties and other assistance was ever broken. But there is more to it with the phantom hound. It is tied in with notions of retribution – those who transgress the rules of decent society will meet their doom in the salivating fangs of a fearsome night stalker. Had Hugo Baskerville’s wicked intentions not led him in pursuit of the girl he had kidnapped and intended to forcefully deflower, out on to the moor and beyond the pale, then the curse would never have sprung up.

A poster for a film adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles, the definitive modern fiction on phantom hounds

The theme of hell hounds arriving as portents of ill fate in order to redress injustice – usually committed by the privileged against the poor – also suggests that these beasts have a reputation as protectors. This would make sense in Hardyesque rural communities, where there was no safety net, no welfare benefits. Those that fell on hard times found themselves in the workhouse, or worse. But Bob Trubshaw, who wrote Explore Phantom Black Dogs, considered one of the best studies of these myths, thinks it may go deeper still: “The phantom black dog of British and Irish folklore, which often forewarns of death, is part of a worldwide belief that dogs are sensitive to spirits and the approach of death, and keep watch over the dead and dying. North European and Scandinavian myths dating back to the Iron Age depict dogs as corpse eaters and the guardians of the roads to hell. Medieval folklore includes a variety of devil dogs and spectral hounds.”

And there are plenty of them. In addition to Black Shuck in Norfolk, there is Old Shuck in neighbouring Suffolk, Mauthe Doog on the Isle of Man. Gurt Dog in Somerset, Dando in Cornwall, Yeth in Devon, Barguest in Yorkshire (the only known urban hell hound, it inhabits the streets of York), Guytrash in northern England, and Pooka in Ireland.

They also figure in legendary cycles. The hound Garmr appears the Norse poem Grímnismál (itself part of the Poetic Edda), and plays a part in Ragnarök, the final battle of the Gods. Here in Wales, there are the Cwn Annwn, spectral hounds of Gwynn ap Nudd, king of the Tylwyth Teg and ruler of the Mabinogion’s otherworld. They came to known as “hounds of hell” by Christians eager to discredit the manuscripts and paint figures such as Gwynn ap Nudd as some kind of contemporary of Satan.

But the most famous phantom hound in Welsh folklore is the Gwyllgi, the Dog of Darkness. It is most closely associated with the Wrexham and Ruthin area, where there have been a number of sightings of a huge hound with shaggy fur and trademark glowing eyes down the centuries. It is also thought to be connected to Lon Bwbach Ddu, the Lane of the Black Spectre (no doubt the name presents an additional burden for the estate agent), in Marchwiel in north east Wales.

In his 1930 book, Welsh Folklore and Folk Custom, T Gwynn Jones recalls a family brush with the Gwyllgi: ”My grandmother declared that as she and my grandfather were riding on horseback from Ruthin one evening, in passing a roadside house, the nag suddenly shied and pressed to the hedge. At the moment a very tall mastiff was passing on the other side. My grandfather who rode behind saw nothing and his horse had not been startled. They had just come to live in the district and only got to know afterwards that the house had the reputation of being haunted.”

Edward Jones was returning home late one night from a fair at Cynwyd, near Corwen, when he found “the Black hound of destiny” at his back. The “beast of fearsome visage and blood-shot eye” chased him across the moor. Thinking his time had come, he suffered anxiety “as in the horrible, cold sweat of a nightmare”. Jones, however, made it home. Exhausted, he reached his farm gate, only to turn round and find that the beast had gone.

Despite their fearsome reputation, there are few reports of physical attacks. This is partly because black dogs are believed to be ghosts, and partly because they are regarded as ill omens. Even Black Shuck, probably the UK’s best known phantom hound is believed to most often appear before someone just before a close relative becomes ill or dies. In other stories, it has been said to accompany women home, protecting them as they go.

But perhaps the most unlikely story associated with a black dog involved a deeply mysterious Delta Blues musician. Robert Johnson only recorded two sessions, in 1936 and 1937, and there are only two photographs of him (one whose authenticity is disputed). He died aged only 27 but his work would influence Bob Dylan,  The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson ”the most important blues singer that ever lived”.

His canon of just 41 songs and demos includes Hellhound on My Tail, the story of a man pursued by an evil spirit that only adds to the legend that Johnson was given his extraordinary talent in return for selling his soul to the Devil at a remote Mississippi crossroads. But while blues experts dismiss this story, claiming the Devil songs are a time-worn blues tradition and represent a form of braggadocio, nevertheless the image of Satan sending forth his agent to pursue Johnson for his end of the deal remains strong to this day, as does a common fear of the dark moor, and what it may contain.