Author: David Waldron and Christopher Reeve
Publisher: Hidden Publishing 2010
Price: £9.99
Isbn: 978-0955523779

FT 264

Most countries have some bit of folklore that defines them – a special tale, an entity unique to them – and Britain’s own folkloric mascot, surely, is the Black Dog: a vast hell-hound, with eyes the size of saucers and sulphurous breath that haunts our highways and byeways and acts as a harbinger of death. Such ghosts can be found almost everywhere: as Skriker in Lancashire, and, in Staffordshire, as Padfoot. The best-known, though, is Black Shuck, of Norfolk, and Shuck, in turn, is most renowned in the guise of the Black Dog of Bungay – a small market town a short dist­ance from Norwich.

The thing that makes the Bungay legend interesting is Shuck’s association with one particular incident: a terrible thunderstorm that swept over the town on 4 August 1577. This storm was the most violent ever known in the vicinity, and in the midst of the tempest a huge black dog appeared, surrounded by fire.

According to legend, Shuck manifested himself first at Bungay, where he interrupted the Sunday service by running down the aisle of St Mary’s church and ‘wringing the necks’ of a pair of worshippers. He then vanished and reappeared a few miles down the road at Blythburgh, where the scorched claw-marks he left on the door of Holy Trinity church can still be seen today.

It is, perhaps, no surprise that – spoiler alert – authors Christ­opher Reeve (a local historian) and David Waldron (an Australian anthropologist) quickly dispose of the idea that this alarming incident was in any way ‘real’. Citing parish records, Reeve notes that two men actually did die in St Mary’s during the storm, but he shows that they were struck by lightning while sitting in the belfry. Churchwardens’ accounts dating to two years later give further details of the destruction wrought. Shuck only entered the story later, when Abraham Fleming (a London clergyman and hack) wrote a sensational pamphlet, A Straunge and Terrible Wunder, and used it to illust­rate some points of Protestant theology.

Taking these facts as their springboard, though, Reeve and Waldron thoroughly flesh out this Black Dog legend. They sketch life in 16th-century Bungay, and supply detailed analysis of Black Dog lore.

Shock! is well-researched, up-to-date and thoroughly comprehensive – and if a disappointment to any who hoped the Black Dog might be something more than legend, it makes a rewarding read for those who sort-of always knew that it could not be real.