Black Shuck, Old Shuck, Old Shock or simply Shuck is the name given to a ghostly black dog which is said to roam the coastline and countryside of East Anglia. Accounts of the animal form part of the folklore of Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire fens and Essex.
The name Shuck may derive from the Old English word scucca meaning "demon", or possibly from the local dialect word shucky meaning "shaggy" or "hairy".
Black Shuck is one of many ghostly black dogs recorded across the British Isles. Sometimes recorded as an omen of death, sometimes a more companionable animal, it is classified as a cryptid, and there are varying accounts of the animal's appearance. Writing in 1877, Walter Rye stated that Shuck was "the most curious of our local apparitions, as they are no doubt varieties of the same animal.
Its alleged appearance in 1577 at Bungay and Blythburgh is a particularly famous account of the beast, and images of black sinister dogs have become part of the iconography of the area.
Read more about Black Shuck: Folklore, Appearance in Bungay and Blythburgh
Famous quotes containing the word black:
“This is the black sea-brute bulling through wave-wrack,”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)