"Eyes that shine burning red,
Dreams of you all thru my head.
Black Dog" - Led Zeppelin

Myths, legends and superstitions of The Black Dog still haunt our collective unconscious, illustrated by the difficulty black dogs often have being adopted from shelters, and the recommendation by many personal protection gurus that someone who wants a dog that will be a visual deterrent should choose a large, black coated dog. People of European ancestry may be hearkening to whispers of tales of Black Shuck, Hellhound, Devil Dog, swirling about in the darkest corners of the subconscious, forgotten save as a racial memory or snippets of barely remembered childhood stories told in the dark to evoke frissons of fear around a fire at an overnight camping trip.

Vikings brought Black Shuck, a giant black “ghost dog” to Anglia. This guy was big, they don't make dog kennels big enough! The name shuck may come from the Norse, scucca, for demon or local dialect, shuck, meaning “hairy.” The appearance of Black Shuck struck terror in witnesses and it was often believed those to whom Black Shuck manifested would be soon be visited by misfortune. More often, those visited were terrified, but their lives returned to normal -- with the caveat that it might be a family member or loved one stricken.

Gigantic, pitch black, with eyes said to glow red or green through the night, he is said to appear at times moving in a cloud of fog and mists, haunting crossroads, graveyards, barrows and the deep forest, which makes it really easy for him to slip through any size pet doors. Perhaps the most famous -- or infamous appearance of Black Shuck was in 1577, manifesting on the same day at the church at Bungay and another at Blytheburg. Reverend Flemming scribed his account of Black Shuck's harrowing visitation to Bungay in the following words:

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.

The encounter at Blytheburg was equally dramatic as the beast burst through the church doors and into the nave, then hurtled up the aisle through the large congregation and killed a man and boy, collapsing the tower before vanishing, leaving scorched marks on the door at the north of the church in his passing. Those marks are still there. Small wonder the specter of a giant black dog figures so prominently in more modern lore. The Hound of the Baskervilles may well have been summoned to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination by tales he heard as a child of a terrifying black hound that haunts the lonely places of the English countryside and darkens the night dreams of those who live in such places.

Tales of other black dogs abound in the British Isles, nearly all malevolent. Gytrash haunts Lancashire, the Lean Dog guards the road in Hertfordshire where a gibbet once was and a chimney sweep was executed. Padfoot walks in Wakefield and another black dog occupies Newgate Prison, said to have appeared after a scholar accused of sorcery and thrown into the prison was cannibalized by the other prisoners before his trial. There are notable exceptions to the portrayal of the black dog as a malevolent spirit. The Gurt Dog of Somerset watches over children and guides and guards solitary travelers and Black Shuck himself has a better reputation in the northern parts of Essex as the guardian and protector of women, accompanying them on their way home at night.

Small wonder black dogs hold such a conflicting place in our culture. On the one hand, we love them because they are beautiful and, well, because they're dogs, while on the other, we hear the warnings of our ancestors calling to us through our genes, warning us to beware -- or to tell us that the black dog we see brings despair not to us, but to others. Not a bad quality in a guardian when you think about it.