WEST-COUNTRYMEN are very sensitive to ridicule. That is why a
stranger might inquire from Bath to Bredon without obtaining a single
admission concerning the Black Dog of the Cotswolds. But let him live
amongst us; let him gain our confidence, and he may interview
witnesses by the dozen. Few, indeed, have met the creature face to
face, though many claim a distant glimpse, and it would be hard to
find a shepherd past middle-age who had not come upon the foot-prints
of the phantom, starting from nowhere and leading nowhere, in the
early morning snow. Always in the snow he comes and always by
moonlight. It is now some three years since old Dick Slingbraces
passed to rest, leaving the following story to perpetuate his memory.
“Dogs or foxes had been making havoc with the early lambs,” said he;
“and one February night I took my gun to watch for the varmints in
the lee of the sheeppens, there being mebbe an inch of snow on the
land. The east wind was like a knife from the grindstone, with clouds
racing past the moon well on in her second quarter. I might have
closed my eyes for a second or two with the cold, and when I opened
them, sir, there he stood not thirty yards away—a coal-black hound
bigger than a prize ram, and of no breed on earth. I knew him in an
instant—the Black Dog of the Wolds. Now you don’t shoot a dog until
he takes a lamb if you want the law on your side, but, fearing for my
life, I pointed my gun at him—and he vanished to nowhere. I dropped
the muzzle and, all of a shake, I peeped over my shoulder, only to
see him behind me, the moonlight striking into his eyes like blue
flames. With a choking, dizzy feeling I screwed my old gums together
and up with my gun again—and again he vanished. Ay, and again he was
behind me. How long he played with me in this fashion I don’t
recollect, but, in the end, the gun went off of itself, and the next
thing my grandson George, was helping me up and asking me if I felt
better. And being three-score and ten, the following week I put by my
crook and took to my old age pension. They say,” added the old
shepherd, “he mostly comes as a warning that ‘tis time to retire; but
I will mention that morning showed the snow trampled like a
fold-yard, but never a print beyond the boundary wall.”