The Black Dogs or Barghest

For those of you who live in or around Yorkshire,Wales or all over the British Isles must have heard of these?
It's said they are about the size of a calf and move in utter silence except for the clicking sound they make by their claws. Some people believe that anyone who 'sees' one of these will die soon after..

Anyone hear ever heard of this creature? Sounds really creepy! Infact if I saw one I'd probably just die right there from fear alone
Magestica

all i know is that they were talked about in harry potter the 3rd book apart from that i have no idea what they are:S

I had no idea they were talked about in that book? I'll have to check it out..
Magestica

Yes, in fact I did a minicomic on them a few years ago (no, I don't have copies available.) They're a type of ghost, and have appeared at places throughout the British Isles.

There are a number of "Black Dog" type creatures, including phantoms, the Galley-Trot, the Mauthe and the Shock and the Faerie Dogs.

You might also like to google on the "Yeth Hounds" or the "Devil's Dandy Dogs" or "Black Dog of Peel Castle" (also known as "Moddey Dhoo/Mauthe Dubh" -- very famous.)

...or not, if you are prone to nightmares.



(and then there's the pookahs and the cait sidhe and the Each Uisge and the kelpies (can you tell that folklore will be one of my major areas of study in anthropology?))


[Edited on 6-6-2003 by Byrd]

And don't forgt about the hounds of the Hunt, who run with Gwynn ap Nudd.

Definately know your stuff Mr. Byrd And yeah, I am prone to nightmares, so I think I'll just trust your word on the pictures..and not go there, tonight anyway..
Mag

These "dog of death/hell-hound" legends are quite widespread in folklore across the British Isles ( although I imagine you could walk from one end of the old Three Ridings to the other and find very few Yorkshire people nowadays to whom the name meant much.
One can imagine how the nocturnal howling of dogs could inspire such tales (and one recalls Cerberus - the dog who guards the underworld).
It's usually given as Germanic ( i.e. Anglo-Saxon) in origin, with the second syllable being "ghost" in the sense of "spirit" but I suspect it's older than that and possibly Celtic as far as Britain is concerned: Welsh legends have a "dog of Hell" and the Irish Banshees have hounds too.
Conan Doyle, of course, made much use of such old wives' tales in the Hound of the Baskervilles.
I'm surporised it never made it into a Scooby Doo plot.

Could be a big cat. Like a panther or something. Their fairly stealthy, and with the right diet im sure they'd reach a fair size.

In Sussex they are known as wish hounds or witch hounds..

Wish in a similar vein is an old Sussex word for marsh

A page about Black dog myths in Sussex.

www.sussexarch.org.uk...

reply to post by WinterWonderland


WOW. thats a 7 year gap between posts. I wonder if thats an ATS record?

Bump an old thread!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I should probably post something on topic too....

Here is a site with a possible photo of one from 2003...

norfolkcoast.co.uk...

Here's one account, amongst many:

"Many hundreds of persons there are in these districts who place implicit credence in the reality of the appearance of a death sign, locally termed trash or skriker. It has the appearance of a large black dog, with long shaggy hair, and, as the natives express it, "eyes as big as saucers." The first name is given to it from the peculiar noise made by its feet when passing along, resembling that of a heavy shoe in a miry road. The second appellation is in allusion to the sound of its voice when heard by those parties who are unable to see the appearance itself."

T.T.W. adds that if anyone is brave enough to face down the entity, "it usually makes its retreat with its eyes fronting the pursuer, and either sinks into the earth with a strange noise, or is lost upon the slightest momentary inattention." It is not confined to chuchyards, and ordinary weapons do no harm to it.

fantasyworldproject.com...


Many accounts date back several hundreds of years. Yet those who claimed to witness the Black Dog phenomenon were no more creduluous than people of today. In fact, it could be argued they were far more practical and less given to fantasy. They worked 14 hours a day, often much longer than that and it was nothing unusual for people and children as young as eight to walk several miles to and from work in snow or sleet

Life was hard then. Very few enjoyed the luxury of running water or flush toilets, electricity or gas. They slaughtered, skinned and butchered their own meat, wove their own cloth, made their own bread and candles, sewed their clothes, made and repaired their boots. And attendance at church was mandatory. Failure to attend was punished. No welfare or age pensions. Babies born at home. Children working from as young as five years of age. No shops, no phones, few books apart from the family Bible. No pre-packaged foods or convenience items. No supermarkets, just work six days a week or seven in rural districts. Few if any holidays. No dentists, just a set of pliers. Surgery was rough and basic

These people wouldn't recognise us or our lifestyles as human. They wouldn't believe the luxury and leisure in our lives. If they wanted to go somewhere, it was by foot for commoners and the working classes. They were tough, practical people used to trudging for mile after mile in harsh conditions, lit only (if they were amongst the very lucky) with an oil lamp or candle in a jar -- through pitch-black woods and over dark and lonely moors

I personally would lean to believing something told to me in earnest by a man or woman, God fearing, who could slay and butcher a beast by hand, tend frozen herds, grind their own flour by hand, give birth in a cold stone room and then get up to bake bread and do this year after year as a matter of course

If a person like that told me they'd seen a black dog with saucer eyes which grew larger by the second before disappearing in an instant --- I'd trust their judgement, based on their proven practicality, resourcefulness and lack of reason to invent another problem for themselves

The black dog stories are a personal favorite of mine, so much so I named a music project I have after it - Barghyst (a different spelling of it, I know, it was intentional.)

Even Whitby in North Yorkshire has a tale of the 'Galley trot' too.

I have only heard of one, maybe two accounts over here in the US about spectral hounds of this ilk, suggesting it is peculiar to European cultures, specifically Germanic.