Black Dog of Newgate And Yeth Hound

 

Ghostly black dogs that foretell doom are monsters that are found in the mythologies of the world over, from the okuri inu of Japan, to the cadejos of central America. These phantom hellhounds are especially common in European mythologies, and they reach critical density in England, where practically every county has its own legends about a local black dog. Black dog monsters in general tend to be well known beasts of mythology. And unlike many mythical beasts, who have slipped into the realm of fantasy in modern times, these black dogs are still occasionally seen by people today, falling somewhere between cryptid and ghost sightings.


While ghostly black dogs would usually be too popular of a monster to cover on this blog, I have found some highly local and unusual black dogs to cover.



The Black Dog of Newgate


The legend of the black dog of Newgate supposedly started with a moral tale written by Luke Hutton. Luke Hutton was a college educated man and born into a family of good standing. Yet in spite of these advantages he turned to a life of thievery, supposedly just for the thrill of it. He was sent to the Newgate jail some time before 1596, where he witnessed the appalling conditions of the jail, which inspired him to write the moral tale.


The black dog of Newgate originated in a famine during the reign of King Henry III. During this time an unnamed scholar had been locked inside on charges of witchcraft. Inside the jail the prisoners had fallen to such depths that they had started practising cannibalism. Being weaker than the hardened criminals the scholar was unable to defend himself, so he was killed and eaten by the other inmates.


Soon after this the inmates who had eaten the scholar began to see the apparition of a ghostly black dog. And soon after this the dog began killing each one of them in turn. When only a few of the cannibalistic inmates were left they were so terrified they broke out of the jail. But even in freedom the dog continue to pursue them until ever last one of them was killed.


Unfortunate this was meant as an indictment of the prisoner’s behaviour, and not the appalling starvation conditions which hard forced them into such actions.


While in the written work the dog had simply been described as black, a woodcut drawing showed the dog to have snakes coming out of its head like Medusa, back legs of a goat and a heart shaped marking on its chest.


Even though this was meant as a fictional moral tale, based on the real actions of other inmates, people still started to see a black dog lurking around the vicinity of the jail. While this could be explained by hysteria, there was older reports of a black dog lurking around near by St Paul’s Cathedral, so it could also be this phantom instead. Tellingly the black dog people actually saw was far more normal looking as far as phantom black dogs go, and lacked the snakes and hooves.





The Yeth Hound


The yeth hound is a headless spectre of a black dog which haunts the area around Devon. It’s said to wander the near by forests at night making all manner of awful sounds, yelps, growls, and roars. Its origins are said to be the ghost of an unbaptized child. And seeing it foretells ones own death by tragedy. Although the dog itself only foretells doom rather than killing people directly. Most of these qualities are fairly similar to other black dog ghosts. It’s the lack of a head makes the yeth hound more distinct.





Sources



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Dog_of_Newgate

https://mythical-beasts.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Dog_of_Newgate

https://folklore-bestiary.vercel.app/en/creatures/gb-the-black-dog-of-newgate



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(folklore)#Named_black_dogs

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Yeth_Hounds

https://arcanebeastsandcritters.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/yeth-hound/




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