Date of Meeting: 7th August 2026
Location of Meeting:
The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK
Attendees:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)
Apologies:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) decided to have a meeting again, having forgiven the other members. They know what they did.
Toast:
Paul Thomas Miller (The Entire Canon) has been eating a lot of dry toast lately.
Presentation:
Paul Thomas Miller (The Entire Canon) presented the following theory:
The Black Shuck of the Baskervilles
Disclaimer: I am aware that I am not really expressing any new viewpoints or new data in this essay. I am very far from being the first to reach the conclusions I am laying out. This essay was very much for my own benefit and was an exercise in laying my thoughts out in a coherent manner to get them straight in my own head after recently visiting the Black Shuck Festival in Bungay. Which was awesome, by the way. You should definitely go next year.
There has been much confusion over the origins of The
Hound of the Baskervilles and this is largely down to reports given by
Arthur Conan Doyle. When Doyle met up with his acquaintance Bertram Fletcher
Robinson on the SS Briton, returning from the Boer War in 1900, they became
firm friends and shared stories. At some point, we are told, Robinson told
Doyle a Devonshire legend regarding a black dog. This is reinforced by many
accounts given by Doyle.
When, in August 1901, the story was first serialised in The
Strand, he included the following statement:
This story owes its inception to my friend, Mr. Fletcher
Robinson, who has helped me both in the general plot and in the local details.
In 1902 he wrote to Robinson as follows:
It was your account of a west country legend which first
suggested the idea of this little tale to my mind. For this, and for the help
which you gave me in its evolution, all thanks.
In a letter to Cecil Turner written in 1907, Doyle wrote:
My story was really based on nothing save a remark of my
friend Fletcher Robinson's that there was a legend about a dog on the moor
connected with some old family.
There are plenty of references from Doyle along these lines;
that the story was inspired by a legendary black dog and that this legend was
based in Devonshire. There is just one big Devonshire black dog legend, that of
Squire Richard Cabell. The effect is such that the Wikipedia page for The
Hound of the Baskervilles states as fact that the book is based upon the
legend of Squire Richard Cabell a man, we are told, who was so evil that:
On 5 July 1677, he died and was buried in [a] sepulchre.
The night of his interment saw a phantom pack of hounds come baying across the
moor to howl at his tomb. From that night on, he could be found leading the
phantom pack across the moor, usually on the anniversary of his death.
In reality, there is no evidence that any of the many Squire
Richard Cabells was particularly unpleasant. This legend largely seems to have
sprung up because of the strange grave one of them was given: the
aforementioned sepulchre in Holy Trinity churchyard, Buckfastleigh.
This small tomb with rusted ironwork and fortress like
appearance gave rise to stories that it was built more to keep the occupant in,
that the grave robbers out. The wickedness of Squire Cabell seems to have been
invented later to justify such tales.
But, regardless of facts, it is the legend which we should
consider. This is not a monstrous hound stalking the moor. What we have
instead, is a supernatural vision in which a hunting party, which happens to
include some black dogs, is seen running across the moor. It is not seen as a
threat, it is not chasing people and it does not portend any imminent doom.
I do not believe The Hound is based upon the legend
of Squire Richard Cabell. I can believe he may have been mentioned in a
discussion with Fletcher about English black dog folklore in April 1901, and
Doyle conflated details, probably due to some slight misremembrance.
The two may have had a decent amount of black dog folklore to
share with each other. Four years earlier, Doyle had moved into his newly built
Undershaw home in Hindhead. In those four years he may well have heard the
legend of nearby Betchworth Castle and the ghostly black dog which prowls its
ruins at night. He may also have recalled Muckle Black Tyke from his time in
Scotland. This myth regards a huge spectral hound which guards a cairn in
Aberdeenshire. More likely, he could have heard about the black dog which
protects the treasure hidden below a standing stone in the village of Murthly –
a little to the north of Edinburgh, where Doyle was born and went to university.
In turn, Robinson could have had much to say on the subject.
Since 1882, his home had been in Ipplepen, Devon. So he would have been aware
of the Squire Cabell stories we have already discussed. However, the first 12
years of his life were spent in Liverpool. Here, he may have encountered the
Lancashire legend of The Skriker. The following is a description taken from Lancashire
Folk-lore by John Harland and Thomas Turner Wilkinson, 1867:
The Barguest, or Barn-ghaist of the Teutons, is […] reported
to be a frequent visitor in Lancashire. The appearance of this sprite is
considered as a certain death-sign, and has obtained the local names of
"Trash" and "Skriker." He generally appears to one of the
family from whom Death is about to select his victim, and is more or less
visible, according to the distance of the event. I have met with persons to
whom the barguest [bar-ghaist, i.e., gate-ghost] has assumed the form of a
white cow, or a horse; but on most occasions "Trash" is described as
having the appearance of a very large dog, with very broad feet, shaggy hair,
drooping ears, and eyes "as large as saucers." When walking, his feet
make a loud splashing noise, like old shoes in a miry road, and hence the name
of "Trash." The appellation "Skriker" has reference to the
screams uttered by the sprite, which are frequently heard when the animal is
invisible. When followed by any individual he begins to walk backwards with his
eyes fixed full on his pursuer, and vanishes on the slightest momentary inattention.
Occasionally he plunges into a pool of water, and at times he sinks at the feet
of the persons to whom he appears with a loud splashing noise, as if a heavy
stone were thrown into the miry road. Some are reported to have attempted to
strike him with any weapon they had at hand, but there was no substance to
receive the blows, although the Skriker kept his ground. He is said to frequent
the neighbourhood of Burnley at present, and is mostly seen in Godly Lane, and
about the parish church. But he by no means confines his visits to the
churchyard, as similar sprites are said to do in other parts of England and
Wales.
More importantly for me, though, Robinson attended Jesus
College, Cambridge from 1890 to 1894 where tales would likely have been told of
the East Anglian black dog – Black Shuck. While the story of his 1577
appearance in Suffolk is perhaps the most famous account of this hell hound, he
prowls the whole of the region: Suffolk, Norfolk and the Cambridgeshire Fens
and has been sighted on several occasions in the countryside surrounding
Cambridge. He is famous enough in the city that one of the many Cambridge ghost
walks is name after him.
While the
legend has had many variations over the years, Black Shuck is most generally
considered to be a huge spectral black hound with large glowing red eyes. It
roams East Anglia and its appearance has variously been considered a death
omen, a warning, or a protection. Descriptions often seem to include two
phrases: "eyes the size of saucers" and "as big as a calf".
That said, he has also been described as anything between the size of a cat and
a horse, and the eyes are sometimes normal, green, singular, triple or floating
in the space where an absent head should be.
It seems
likely that the name "Shuck" derives from the Old English
"scucca" meaning devil, although some people have suggested that it
derives from various European words describing shaggy hair. But, Black Shuck is
not the only name given to this apparition. He has also been called Old Shuck,
Old Shock, Shuck the Dog-Fiend, the Hell-Hound, Shuck Dog, Skeff, Owd Rugman,
Old Scarfe, Old Scarfe, Snarleyow, Old Shap and The Hateful Thing.
It has been
suggested that the Black Shuck legend has its beginnings in a report which
appeared in the 1127 Peterborough Chronicle. (Peterborough is in
Cambridgeshire, about a two hour drive from Bungay or an hour from Cambridge).
It certainly seems to be the first place the word "Shuck" was used in
this context. It is said that the arrival of a wicked new abbot, Henry of
Poitou, set the wheels in motion for the appearance of mysterious huntsmen
riding their black hounds and wreaking havoc in the area from the start of Lent
until Easter. While similar to the previously described Cabell myths, it is to
be noted that these black hounds, along with their huntsmen, detrimentally
interacted with living people. It seems to be a more aggressive example of the
Odin’s Wild Hunt myth. This extract from a translation of “Baldrs Draumar” (a
1689 (possibly earlier) Norse poem) describes an encounter with one of Odin’s
hounds, and it is difficult not to see parallels with Shuck:
Him the dog of darkness spied,
His shaggy throat he opened wide,
While from his jaws, with carnage filled,
Foam and human gore distilled:
Hoarse he bays with hideous din,
Eyes that glow and fangs that grin;
(Translation by Thomas Gray, 1761; “The Decent of Odin”)
However,
the first known record of Black Shuck proper is found in a pamphlet by Abraham
Fleming in 1587 titled A Straunge and Terrible Wunder. He describes a
mysterious event which took place in Bungay:
Sunday,
béeing the fourth of this August, in ye yéer of our Lord 1577, to the amasing
and singular astonishment of the present beholders, and absent hearers, at a
certein towne called Bongay, not past tenne miles distant from the Citie of
Norwiche, there fell from heauen an excéeding great and terrible tempest;
sodein and violent, betwéen nine of the clock in the morning and tenne of the
day aforsaid. This tempest took beginning with a rain, which fel with a
wonderful force and with no lesse violence then abundance, which made the
storme so much the more extream and terrible.
Which is
the Elizabethan equivalent of "It was a dark and stormy night."
Eventually, he gets to the point:
Immediatly
héerupon, there appéered in a moste horrible similitude and likenesse to the
congregation then & there present, a dog as they might discerne it, of a
black colour: at the sight wherof, togither with the fearful flashes of fire
which then were séene moued such admiration in the mindes of the assemblie,
that they thought doomes day was already come.
This
black dog, or the diuel in such a likenesse (God hée knoweth all 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
betwéen two persons, as they were knéeling vppon their knées, and occupied in
prayer as it séemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene
backward, in somuch that euen at a moment where they kneeled, they strangely
dyed.
The dog
then bounded off to nearby Blythburgh to cause similar chaos in the church
there. As Fleming was a pious Christian, the text soon descends into a rant
about how this was a sign from God and that we should all mend our ways. But
soon the legend spread across East Anglia and sightings have been reported ever
since.
It is
notable that an account of the incredible storm which hit the area on this date
is also included in Raphael Holinshed's ‘Chronicles of England,
Scotland and Ireland', in 1587, for which Abraham Fleming was the general
editor. There is no mention of demonic manifestations in this account – just meteorological
ones:
On sundaie
the fourth of August, between the hours of nine and ten of the clocke in the
forenone, whilst the minister was reading of the second lesson in the parish
church of Bliborough a town in Suffolke, a strange and terrible tempest of
lightening and thunder strake through the wall of the same church into the
ground almost a yard deepe, draue downe all the people on that side aboue
twentie persons, then renting the wall vp to the reuestre, cleft the doore, and
returning to the steeple, rent the timber, brake the chimes, and fled toward
Bongie a towne six miles off. The people that were striken downe were found
groueling more than halfe an houre after, whereof one man more than fortie years
and a boie of fifteene years old were found starke dead: the other were
scorched. The same or the like flash of lightening and cracks of thunder resnt
the parish church of Bongie, nine miles from Norwich, wroong in sunder the
wiers and wheeles of the clocks, slue two men which sat in the belfreie, when
the other were at the procession of suffrages, and scorched an other which
hardlie escaped.
The
similarities in wording are of note: “strange and terrible” appears in both texts.
It should also be noted that his account of the demonic hound at Bungay and Blythburgh in 1577 was just one of
a number of his descriptions of marvellous events. It seems to me that we owe
the present notion of Black Shuck entirely to Fleming distorting a natural
violent storm into a greater and more terrifying myth for the purposes of
religious propaganda. I note too, that when he wrote his pamphlet, Fleming was
keen to concentrate on Bungay over Blythburgh. This is probably because the
people of St Mary’s in Bungay were engaged in a rather Catholic tradition (the
procession of suffrages) and Fleming was a staunch Protestant. He was likely
keen to demonstrate how the people of Bungay had brought about God’s wrath by
not fully converting to the new faith.
The
earliest print use of the name "Shuck" for this specific black dog
comes from an 1850 edition of the journal Notes and Queries in which Reverend
E. S. Taylor describes "Shuck the Dog-Fiend":
This
phantom I have heard many persons in East Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire,
describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense
size... One witness nearly fainted away at seeing it, and on bringing his
neighbours to see the place where he saw it, he found a large spot as if
gunpowder had been exploded there. A lane in the parish of Overstrand is
called, after him, Shuck's Lane.
There are
variations of the legend all over the East Anglia. Of special note is the Shuck
Monkey (sometimes Shug Monkey), a supernatural black sheepdog with the face of
monkey. This demon specifically haunts Cambridgeshire, between West Wrattling
and Balsham (about 10 miles east of Cambridge). It is plausible that Robinson
would have heard something about this bizarre local apparition during his
University days.
While there is no definite proof that Robinson knew about
Black Shuck already, it does seem likely. Robinson worked most of his life in
the newspaper industry. When he met Doyle on the SS Briton, it was because he
had been reporting on the Boer War for the Daily Express. Black Shuck, too, had
occasionally been in the press. It is possible, then, that hey may have read these articles.
In September 1886, for example, a syndicated report appeared
in several British papers titled ““Fairy Land” and Home Rule” by Our Ramling
Reporter. The “Fairy Land” in question appears to be the Isle of Man, however
the article describes a journey there from Norfolk, across the midlands, up to
Liverpool and across from there. On the way, various supernatural traditions
are reported upon and compared. Eventually there is a comparison of the Manx
black dog myth – Moddey Dhoo – to Black Shuck:
A similar legend was, till a comparatively late period,
connected with deep and narrow lanes in parts of Norfolk, where the folk were
of Scandinavian decent. There the spectral hound was known as “Shuck Dog,” “Old
Shuck,” or “Black Shuck,” and one deep narrow lane near Cromer is still known as
“Shuck Lane.”
The specific mention of Cromer here is of interest, as we shall
see later on.
Knight's
Norfolk and Norwich Annual featured an article on Black Shuck in 1888. To
promote it the following piece appeared in many newspapers around the UK in
January 1888 (notably for Robinson this included his local rag: the North
Devon Advertiser).
The
Black "Shuck."
A huge
shaggy black dog was formerly, and is even now, believed to prowl after dark
along certain secluded narrow lanes near the East Norfolk coast. Various
descriptions have been given of Old "Shuck," or Black
"Shuck." Those who professed to have seen the beast trotting
noiselessly along beneath the hedgerows described him with a blazing eye in the
middle of his forehead; others represented him as a headless hound, all the
more terrible because of his undeniably unnatural condition. Black
"Shuck" was a real terror when people were more superstitious. To
meet him was to receive notice to die before the year was out! Hence, perhaps,
the widespread superstition that the howling of a dog is a death warning. Here
we have a vestige of the belief in Odin. Our Scandinavian forefathers settled
largely in East Norfolk. To them the soughing and whistling of the north wind
on a dark night through the narrow gullies of the hills was the howling of the
black hound of Odin...
An article appeared in the London paper The Globe on 20 September
1889 titled “The Devil in Arcady” which, in rather condescending tones, told of
beliefs regarding the devil in rural England. One section relates to our topic:
There are scores of East Anglian peasants, not
necessarily dwellers in remote and obscure villages, who gravely swear that
they have seen and often do see the devil – not the familiar figure with horns,
tail and cloven hoof, but their own peculiar East Anglian devil in the shape of
the “Shuck Dog.” “Shuck,” say the etymologists, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon
word for Satan, so that the “Shuck Dog” may be accepted as the peculiar shape
in which the Evil One chooses to visit that portion of his dominions which we
call East Anglia. The “Shuck Dog” is black – note that Horace speaks of the
misfortunes awaiting those who meet a black dog. When he has a head there is a
blazing eye in the forehead, but he us usually headless. Death within the year
is the fate of whoever meets him, although he may be looked at with impunity;
and ridiculous as it may sound, certain bridges and lanes used by the “Shuck
Dog” are still avoided after nightfall by your old-fashioned East Anglian.
Plenty of other such articles exist in the press of the
time. I do not propose that the existence of these articles proves Doyle
or Robinson had read them. I merely mean to illustrate that this was a commonly
known legend and was often discussed at the time. It is at least possible that
one or both of the authors had encountered the legend already.
In April 1901 Doyle and Robinson holidayed together in
Cromer, Norfolk, so that they might make use of the golf course there. During
his stay in Cromer, Doyle wrote to his mother:
Fletcher Robinson came here with me and we are going to
do a small book together “The Hound of the Baskervilles” – a real creeper.
(Incidentally, note that he was already calling it The
Hound of the Baskervilles a full month before he met the driver Henry
“Harry” Baskerville. It puts some doubt on many of the claims Harry made later
on. While the name of Robinson’s family coachman may have already come up in
conversation, any notions that Doyle used it because he was impressed by Harry’s
character can be easily dismissed.)
It seems pretty clear, then, that the Cromer holiday is
where they first spoke of black dog legends. Cromer Lighthouse was immediately
behind the Royal Links Hotel (which was on the site of what is now Amber Bar
& Restaurant). And the path to the lighthouse is reputed to be a favourite
haunt of Black Shuck. Indeed, the path along the coast in front of the
lighthouse along to the neighbouring village of Overstrand was known as Shuck’s
Lane at the time. In 1894, the Eastern Daily Press carried a report
about this area:
Mrs. Opie was staying at Northrepps Cottage in January
1829, and recalls the belief that at twilight every evening, the ghost of a dog
is seen to pass under the wall of Overstrand churchyard, having started from Beeston.
This four-footed ghost, unlike all human ones, is not only visible but
tangible... Other historians relate that Shock rises out of the sea by Beeston,
and runs along 'Shock's Lane' on to the hills by Overstrand, after which his
course is uncertain.
It was such a part of local culture that in June of the same
year The Cromer and North Walsham Post included a fictional tale “The
Doom of the Black Shuck” in which Black Shuck brings death to the Cobb family,
with the author seeing no need to explain to his readers what a Black Shuck might
be. It seems inconceivable to me, that if Doyle and Robinson were speaking of mythological
black dogs in the Royal Links Hotel, Cromer, they could have failed to speak
about Black Shuck. They were staying right next to one of the hotspots for sightings.
It simply must have come up.
The following month Doyle travelled to Devon, where he and
Robinson based themselves at Rowe’s Dutchy Hotel in Princetown and they began exploring
Dartmoor to make notes on the area as a setting for the story that they would
go on to create.
But I feel that setting is the only thing that Dartmoor
provided. It is a far bleaker and spookier setting for a haunting. The
countryside of East Anglia – and I speak from experience of both landscapes –
is rather jolly. Clear skies combined with flat landscape create an atmosphere
of freedom and safety, rather than isolation and fear. Dartmoor, on the other
hand, is full of ancient monuments, ruins and crags. Undulating terrain makes
you feel penned in. Fog creeps around you from dusk until dawn. In the depths
of the moor you feel entirely cut off from civilisation. I can entirely see why
the pair chose it as a better setting for the story. No doubt the tales of
Squire Cabell were mentioned, and with them comes the idea of a family curse,
but The Hound, as it appeared in the finished story, I am certain was based
upon Black Shuck.
The 1742 manuscript written by a Hugo Baskerville for his
sons described the Hound of the Baskervilles as follows:
Abraham Fleming’s 1587 account of the shuck described a black
dog which was giving off “fearful flashes”. And this developed into the version
that was about in the late 1800s. The Norfolk and Norwich Annual published
in 1888 described Shuck as “A huge shaggy black dog… with a blazing eye…” Mark
that: both texts describe eyes as “blazing”.
In The Norfolk Garland, an 1872 book by John Glyde Shuck is
described as “a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes of immense size.”
Certainly these descriptions match the Baskerville hound
better than those of a pack of black hunting dogs streaking across the sky. It
is also true that the Baskerville legend is supposed to be an omen of death:
Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound
which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it
down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which
is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have
been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious.
Once encountered, those of the Baskerville line are not long
for this world. Shuck is very much seen in the same light. If you see Shuck, it
is said that you will be dead within the year. This bears a far closer
resemblance to The Hound than Cabell’s self-punitive stampede across the sky on
the anniversary of his death. There is no threat in the Cabell myth, only
wonder. It is the growling, befanged, fiery eyed Shuck silently stalking the
doomed which fits with the story of the Baskervilles. From his first 1587
description by Fleming through to the modern age, Shuck is described as giving
off fiery light. How well this matches Watson’s account in chapter fourteen:
Consider, too, the origins of both hounds. Abraham Fleming
would have us believe that Black Shuck was sent to a church in Bungay by the
devil to punish us for our wicked ways. The Hound appeared in response to the
original Hugo Baskerville crying aloud “…that he would that very night render
his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench…”
who had escaped him. Both dogs were sent by the devil to do his work on Earth.
We can be pretty certain that Doyle and Robinson took other
details from Cromer with them to use in The Hound. As I discussed in my book Finding
Sherlock, Baskerville Hall is almost certainly actually a description of Cromer
Hall - a large country house a brief stroll away from the Royal Links Hotel. Manor
houses of the type described in The Hound simply do not exist in the middle of
Dartmoor. And they never have. Manor houses have a tendency to stand in the
middle of a manor – a rural estate. They are not isolated like Baskerville Hall
was. And it is difficult to form any kind of estate somewhere as bleak as the
moors. Villages and hamlets abound on the edges of Dartmoor. Not so many exist on
the moor. Cromer Hall boasts the necessary towers, high chimneys, lodge
gates, pillars and high angled roof to match with the Baskerville home. Old
maps even suggest that there was once an evergreen straddled path down one side
of Cromer Hall that may have been the original of the Yew Alley where Charle’s
Baskerville died.
It may be of note, too, that the pillars either side of
Baskerville Hall’s wrought iron gate were “surmounted by the
boars' heads of the Baskervilles”. Boars seem to have been important in
East Anglia. As early as 10BC the Iceni tribe, who dominated this land, were
producing coins. Theirs were unusual, though, in that they often featured
boars. They are also known to have carried bronze boar heads as battle
standards. It is tentatively possible that Doyle and Robinson encountered some
boar iconography during their Norfolk holiday. But I won’t insist upon it.
I am, however, almost certain that they moved the idea of the
Hall from Cromer to Dartmoor. Why not, then, move the legend of Black Shuck
too?
The only reason so many people insist that The Hound of
the Baskervilles was inspired by the legends of Squire Cabell is that Doyle
made a lot of sweeping references to it being based upon a Devonshire legend. I
contend that he was mistaken. I believe that the Squire Cabell legend came up
in a conversation about Black Shuck and that Doyle misremembered the details
later on. This may have been exacerbated by the fact that when Doyle and Robinson
visited Cromer Hall, it was occupied by one Benjamin Cabell.
Any Other Business:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) while researching the above essay came across the following article from the Portsmouth Evening News from Saturday 7th April 1923:
Sir A. Conan Doyle’s Theory
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believes that the death of Mr.
Fletcher Robinson (formerly on the staff of the “Daily Express”) was caused by
Egyptian “elementals” guarding a female mummy, because Mr. Robinson had begun
an investigation of the stories of the mummy’s malevolence, cable the New York correspondent
of the “Daily Express” on Friday.
“It is impossible to say with absolute certainty if this
is true,” said Sir Arthur to me to-day. “If we had proper occult powers we
could determine it, but I warned Mr. Robinson against concerning himself with
the mummy at the British Museum. He persisted, and his death occurred.
“He became engrossed in the subject and wrote several articles for the ‘Daily Express.’ He talked to me about the matter. I told him he was tempting fate by pursuing his inquiries, but he was fascinated and would not desist. Then he was overtaken by illness.
