SYMHC Classics: Three Hellhounds

This 2020 episode covers three of the many supernatural canines and hellhounds in our collective storytelling. Two are similar and from England, and one is a fun figure from southern Louisiana. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Holly Frey?

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• 2:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. After we name dropped the Rougarou in our behind the scenes for our Werewolf of Bedburg episode, we are replaying our episode on Hellhounds, which is where the Rougarou made a past appearance on the show.

• 2:20Holly Frey?

  This originally came out on October 28th, 2020. And if you're listening to this episode on the day we publish it, or even the day after, the Rougarou Fest that we mentioned at the end is going on right now. If that sounds fun and interesting, the place to get more information is still at rougaroufest.org. Who wouldn't want to be in the New Orleans and Houma, Louisiana area right now? But hopefully you'll check it out.

• 2:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Enjoy.

• 2:49Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:00Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 3:04Holly Frey?

  Tracy, it's almost Halloween.

• 3:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  I know.

• 3:10Holly Frey?

  It's the best week of the year. So this seems like a really good time to talk about sort of a version of something that I think we've been tiptoeing around for a while, which is dogs, but specifically demon dogs. I swear, I do want to do a domestication of dogs episode at some point, but there's a lot and they're constantly finding new things. So I keep getting scared off.

• 3:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. In a weird coincidence, this morning I tweeted something about how basically needing to do an episode about something lighter, even though my episodes lately have been pretty fun, just because there's a lot of stress and chaos happening in the world right now. And somebody replied that maybe we could do a history of puppies. And I'm like, this is almost that.

• 3:51Holly Frey?

  Kind of. And right, I want to acknowledge that for some people, dogs are just scary. Not everybody likes dogs. But there's a reason for that, right? This is a fear that has been part of many cultures for centuries, including dogs from the netherworld, which go all the way back to the three-headed Cerberus, who guarded the gates of the underworld in Greek mythology. But today, as we inch closer to Halloween, I thought it would be fun to talk about three of the many. Many supernatural canines and hellhounds that have lengthy histories in our collective storytelling. And the first two of these are very closely related. They're both based in England. And really, the second of them makes up the bulk of the episode. Now, the last one is a North American creature, and it's just incredibly charming and fun, in my opinion.

• 4:36Holly Frey?

  It's a little bit thematically different than the other two, but I thought it would be a good upbeat place to land. Particularly, you know, these are fraught times. It's been a rough year. I love Halloween and creepiness and being scared as much as anyone, but gosh, it's also great to laugh if we can, so we'll try for a little bit of that. And there are, of course, loads more demon dog myths throughout the world. So odds are really, really good that this is the start of a, perhaps, a Halloween series. And next Halloween, we'll do more, and perhaps more geographically and culturally varied. I have a list started already for that, but if you have stuff you want to send us, you can do it. But right now, we're going to talk about some hellhounds.

• 5:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sounds like a potential Halloween version of Krampus and Friends, which has been a, you know, winter holiday staple.

• 5:24Holly Frey?

  That is kind of the thinking.

• 5:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Nice. So, first up is the bargest. This is a dog that is part of Northern England's folklore tradition and is normally associated with Yorkshire, sometimes described as a goblin or a ghost.

• 5:41Holly Frey?

  And I wanted to mention the bargest, in part, because of an interesting coincidence that happened recently on the show. So I was already working on this episode for a while. And when I started working on our recent Bram Stoker episode, I had already been kind of doing prelim work on this. And then unexpectedly, the bargest showed up while I was doing Bram Stoker research. In that episode, we mentioned that a ship that had run aground near Widbe had served as the inspiration for the ship that transported Dracula from Transylvania to London. And one of the details, which we mentioned, that was shared by locals with Bram Stoker when he was doing his research, was that a black dog had emerged from the hold of the wrecked ship and run off.

• 6:22Holly Frey?

  And that dog was believed by some people in the community to have been the bargest.

• 6:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  So the bargest is described as a huge dog, and its teeth are large and prominent. There are a couple of things that set him apart from another so-called hellhound that we are about to talk about. The Bar Guest is not always described as being black. Sometimes he's gray, but beyond that, this dog sometimes is described as a shapeshifter, including sometimes appearing headless. If you see a Bar Guest, that means you are going to die soon. If you only catch a glimpse of it, your death might take a little longer to arrive.

• 7:00Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I feel like this would create a whole community of people that hear dog noise and clamp their eyes shut. But in terms of the written record, a lot of the more persistent qualities of the Bar Guest story and its legend seem to come from the book Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders. That book was written by William Henderson in 1879. And in this collection of folktales, that he kind of gathered oral recollection from people and wrote it down, Henderson shares more details about the Bar Guest as a harbinger of death.

• 7:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  So he writes, quote, "On the death of any person of local importance in the neighborhood, the creature would come forth, a large black dog with flaming eyes as big as saucers, followed by all the dogs of the place howling and barking. If any one came its way, the Bar Guest would strike out with its paw and inflict on man or beast a wound which would never heal. My informant, a Yorkshire gentleman lately deceased, said he perfectly remembered the terror he experienced when he was a child at beholding this procession before the death of a certain Squire Wade of New Grange."

• 8:13Holly Frey?

  Henderson also put in writing some details about the Bar Guest's shapeshifting that have persisted, writing, quote, "A friend informs me that Glasenzykes near Darlington is haunted by a Bar Guest, which assumes at will the form of a headless man who disappears in flame, a headless lady, a white cat, rabbit, or dog, or a black dog."

• 8:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  So many things.

• 8:37Holly Frey?

  The Bar Guest can be whatever it wants.

• 8:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  The bar guest legend is popular enough that you might have bumped into it before. If you've read Roald Dahl's The Witches, or played The Witcher video game, or Forgotten Realms, or Dungeons and Dragons, or engaged with any number of other entertainment options, you might have crossed paths with mentions of it.

• 8:59Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I think it comes up in the Lord of the Rings game online. The bar guest is everywhere. Part of it's because it's just a fun word to say. But the bar guest is also hardly the only hell dog of Great Britain. There have been many, many names for very similar beings. So there's the Capelthwaite, Trash, Striker, or Schreiker you'll sometimes see. There's the Welsh Cunnon, and the Isle of Man's Moutador. But perhaps the most famous alternate to the bar guest name is the iteration of this English hellhound that we are going to talk about next. And who actually started this episode? Because I love saying this name, Blackshuck.

• 9:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yes. So in 1577, Abraham Fleming wrote an account of an event at the parish church in a town near Norwich that created a version of this English legend that still persists until today. That account was titled, and just buckle up, because this is one of the...

• 9:55Holly Frey?

  It's one of those.

• 9:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of the titles we love so much. The title was, "A Strange and Terrible Wonder, Wrought Very Late in the Parish Church of Bangay, A Town of No Great Distance From the City of Norwich, Namely the Fourth of this August, In the Year of Our Lord, 1577, In a Great Tempest of Violent Rain, Lightning, and Thunder, The Like Whereof Hath Been Seldom Seen, With the Appearance of An Horrible-Shaped Thing, Sensibly Perceived, Of the People Then and There Assembled, Drawn Into a Plain Method According to the Written Copy, By Abraham Fleming."

• 10:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to the length, are just all the delightful spellings.

• 10:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  That are common.

• 10:42Holly Frey?

  I even cleaned that up a little bit to make it easier. We've taught, we did our whole episode about, you know, grammar and, and spelling and how things evolve. And this is a case where Fleming had his own flourish, particularly when it came to vowels. There's actually some comparative writing in other pieces where people are trying to figure out if it's Fleming and they start talking about, "He kind of does that same weird spelling here. This might be the same writer." Because those things were not codified yet. So this pamphlet with that incredibly long name actually tells the tale of two appearances of a large black dog. The first is at St.

• 11:23Holly Frey?

  Mary's Church in Bangay on a day during services when there was an intense thunderstorm. And in the pamphlet, it is written that the, quote, "Whole church was so darkened, yea, with such palpable darkness, that one person could not perceive another."

• 11:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then during this storm, they're, quote, "appeared in a most horrible similitude and likeness a dog of a black color." This dog, according to Fleming's story, was so terrifying that it made the parishioners think that doomsday had arrived. The dog ran between two people who were praying and wrung both of their necks. It killed them while they were praying. The dog also bit another man, leaving scorch marks. That man survived.

• 12:05Holly Frey?

  The steeple of the church was struck by lightning and the mysterious dog disappeared, leaving behind only claw marks in the pavers and the door of the church. But this was, as we mentioned, only one church that experienced a terrifying canine visit that day.

• 12:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  The dog also appeared at Holy Trinity Church about seven miles away in a town called Blythburgh. Fleming described it this way, quote, "The like thing entered in the same shape and similitude where placing himself on a main bulk or beam were on. Sometime the rude did stand." Suddenly he gave a swing down through the church and there also as before slew two men and a lad and burned the hand of another person that was among the rest of the company of whom diverse were blasted. This mischief thus wrought, he flew with wonderful force to not little fear of the assembly out of the church in a hideous and hellish likeness.

• 13:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, so in both cases, giant terrifying black dog arrives, kills a couple of people, injures some others and vanishes. And we're going to talk about the way that this story took on a life of its own in just a moment, but first we will pause and have a sponsor break.

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• 15:59Holly Frey?

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• 16:44Holly Frey?

  in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:01Holly Frey?

  Fleming's write-up about the fiendish dog who attacked the churches is the start of a centuries-long tradition of stories about that dog, who was eventually named Black Shuck as the story was passed down. We'll talk about the first time that name appears in writing in a moment. When Fleming wrote this account, he was an editor and publisher who went on to become an ordained minister. And this document, which has come to be known sort of casually as The Wonder Pamphlet, is just as much a sermon as it is a report of a dog attack. It includes passages early on in it about this whole thing being a warning not to stray from faith. He wrote, "God warneth by signs from heaven, by fiery appearances from the air, by wonders wrought on earth strange and unusual."

• 17:46Holly Frey?

  There is also language in the pamphlet about how man has engaged in all manner of ungodly behaviors, and then it tells these dog stories, and then it concludes with a prayer.

• 17:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this appears to be a scenario where Fleming is reporting these events based on news that someone else had relayed to him. For one, there's no way he could have been in both of those churches where the appearances happened one after the other. For another, his first printing of The Wonder Pamphlet and the detail of the church door being marked by the beast's claws was attributed to the wrong location, and he corrected it later on in subsequent printings. Because Fleming later became a minister, it seems that when people have referenced his work, there's been some timeline confusion, and they characterize the writer as a clergyman who was working at one of these churches where it allegedly happened.

• 18:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  He was not a clergyman at all yet at the time, definitely not one working at one of these churches.

• 18:45Holly Frey?

  No, he was a publishing man living in London.

• 18:50Holly Frey?

  What did happen, though, was that this pamphlet was put into circulation very soon after the thunderstorm of August 4th, 1577, which was a real thunderstorm. That's documented. I mean, it was a very popular pamphlet. It seems a lot of people believed those stories in it about the dog attacks. And while still working in publishing, so before he became ordained, Fleming had the second part of this story published in the Hollandshed Chronicles, with one notable exception, which we'll talk about in just a moment. So for context, Hollandshed's Chronicles was a large collaborative history of the British Isles that was initiated as a project by printer Rayner Wolf in the late 1540s.

• 19:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  The multi-volume work was first published in 1577. Then in 1587, a much expanded update was published under the stewardship of Abraham Fleming. So even a decade after this first writing, Fleming was still writing about that thunderstorm. Additionally, by this point, Fleming had plenty of clout. He was considered an expert on that particular storm. Hollandshed's Chronicles was considered an important source of historical information, and it was famously used as a source by writers like Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

• 20:02Holly Frey?

  So you might think that the inclusion of the black dog story in this chronicle is really going to cement it as sort of settled history at the time. But in fact, there is no mention of the dog in this account. So this is the version as it appears in Hollandshed's. "On Sunday, the 4th of August, between the hours of 9 and 10 o'clock in the forenoon, whilst the minister was reading of the second lesson in the parish church of Blytheburg, a town in Suffolk, a strange and terrible tempest of lightning and thunder strake through the wall of the same church into the ground a yard deep, drove down all the people on that side above twenty persons, then renting the wall up to the vestra cleft the door,

• 20:45Holly Frey?

  and returning to the steeple, rent the timber, break the chimes, and fled toward Bongay, a town six miles off." The people that were stricken down were found grovelling more than half an hour after, where of one man more than forty years and a boy of fifteen years were found stark dead. The other were scorched. The same or like flash of lightning and cracks of thunder that rent the parish church of Bongay nine miles from Norwich wrung asunder the wires and wheels of the clocks and slew two men which sat in the belfry, when the other were at the procession of suffrages, and scorched another which hardly escaped.

• 21:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  So it's interesting that the deaths and injuries are mentioned here, but they're attributed simply to lightning strikes and not the sudden appearance of a hellish dog. And there are records that indicate that those deaths and injuries did in fact happen. I mean, it's totally within the realm of possibility that if lightning strikes the steeple of a church, people inside may be killed. But there's just no reference at all to a dog causing them. So maybe the decision was made to remove that flourish of the hellish canine in later years.

• 21:57Holly Frey?

  And again, going to the church records, there is a mention that there was a payment made to a professional dog whopper named John Hines, quote, "for whipping dogs out of the church at prayer time on the day of the storm." This was actually a profession. People would bring their dogs and sometimes the dogs would get unruly and they would keep professional dog whippers on hand. This sounds horrible and I don't like it, but they would get the dogs out of the church so that the proceedings could go on. So it's possible that the original write-up of the story, again, probably relayed to Fleming by someone else not witnessed by him, conflated some events, that there was an unruly dog in the church that had to be forcibly removed, and that separately, lightning strikes killed several people and injured others.

• 22:42Holly Frey?

  Despite that change in the later version of the story that Fleming edited, the legend of the Suffolk appearances of the dog which might have been a demon was established, and that story persisted.

• 22:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  So to be clear, this was certainly not the first account in England of a terrifying black dog that was characterized as supernatural.

• 23:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Dating back to sometime between the 11th and 12th centuries, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle included the sighting by multiple witnesses of a pack of black dogs, quote, "with eyes like saucers and horrible, running through the woods." In this case, the dogs weren't alone, but they appeared to be on a hunt that was led by mysterious men.

• 23:22Holly Frey?

  Yes, that's another version of the story, these wild hunts. So the name Black Shuck first appeared in the 1800s, and then it seems to have been applied retroactively to a lot of these stories. It first came up in writing by Reverend E.S. Taylor in 1850, and he wrote about it in the periodical Notes and Queries.

• 23:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Quote, "This phantom, I have heard many persons in East Norfolk and even Cambridgeshire describe as having seen, a black shaggy dog with fiery eyes and of immense size and who visits churchyards at midnight. One witness nearly fainted away at seeing it, and on bringing his neighbors to see the place where he saw it, he found a large spot as if gunpowder had been exploded there. A lane in the parish of Overstrand is said is called after him Shuck's Lane. The name appears to be a corruption of shag, as shucky is the Norfolk dialect for shaggy. Is not this a vestige of the German dog fiend?"

• 24:24Holly Frey?

  The other frequently cited mention of Black Shuck is one that was written in 1901. And this time, the legend kind of gets another upgrade. This go around in the form of Black Shuck's appearance being a portent of death. Our guest had been associated with, as a death portent, but this is where Black Shuck kind of comes in with that same, that same association. This was written by William Dutt in a book that was titled Highways and Byways in East Anglia. And this is kind of a lengthy excerpt, so, because I want to include all of the ways that, that he kind of solidifies this legend. So Tracy and I are going to take turns with it.

• 24:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  So it starts, quote, "If this were a stormy night instead of a stormy day, the old Fisher folk of the coast would say it were just the time for Black Shuck to be abroad, for he revels in the roaring of the waves and loves to raise his awful voice above the howling of the gale. He takes the form of a huge black dog and prowls along dark lanes and lonesome field footpaths where, although his howling makes the hearers' blood run cold, his footfalls make no sound."

• 25:29Holly Frey?

  That's such a great turn of phrase. This passage goes on, "You may know him at once should you see him by his fiery eye. He has but one, and that, like the cyclops, is in the middle of his head. But such an encounter might bring you the worst of luck. It is said that to meet him is to be warned that your death will occur before the end of the year."

• 25:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this ends, quote, "So you will do well to shut your eyes if you hear him howling. Shut them even if you are uncertain whether it is the dog fiend or the voice of the wind you hear. Should you never set eyes on our Norfolk snarl yowl, you may perhaps doubt his existence. And like other learned folks, tell us that his story is nothing but the old Scandinavian myth of the Black Hound of Odin, brought to us by the Vikings who long ago settled down on the Norfolk coast. Scoffers at Black Shuck there have been in plenty, but now and again, one of them has come home late on a dark, stormy night with terror written large on his ashen face. And after that night, he has scoffed no more."

• 26:36Holly Frey?

  Such a good little write-up. As the years have gone on, things have kind of reached a point where at this point, you could go to any number of towns and communities in England and find an assortment of location-specific sightings of Black Shuck that are part of local lore. Just kind of scrolling around through the internet, I found so many that are like, yes, Black Shuck visits this one bridge in our town every, you know, Fortnite or whatever. Like, every town seems to have some variation of it.

• 27:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Coming up, we will talk about some modern developments of the Black Shuck legend. But first, we will hear from some of the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

• 27:45Holly Frey?

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• 28:30Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:41Speaker 06

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• 29:50Holly Frey?

  There are, as we mentioned before the break, some interesting modern events in the Black Shuck story, including one that started in 2014 with the announcement of an archaeological find. Now, this news broke via the UK paper, The Daily Mail, which is known to publish some less than carefully vetted stories. On May 15, 2014, it ran a story with the headline, "Is This the Skeleton of Legendary Devil Dog Black Shuck Who Terrorized 16th-Century East Anglia? Folklore Tells of Seven-Foot Hellhound With Flaming Eyes."

• 30:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  I was curious, and I went to see if we had talked about this in the 2014 edition of Unearthed. We had not, probably because I don't source Unearthed from The Daily Mail.

• 30:37Holly Frey?

  I checked as well, and I had the exact same thought process. It's like, this would never show up in Tracy's notes.

• 30:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, this story leads the reader to the possibility that this archaeology team may have found the remains of this legendary hellhound. It includes the following text, quote, "It was discovered a few miles from two churches, where Black Shuck is said to have killed worshippers during an almighty thunderstorm in August 1577. What's more, it appears to have been buried in a shallow grave at precisely the same time as Shuck is said to have been on the loose, primarily around Suffolk and the East Anglia region." This article then goes on to mention that testing of the remains will determine if they are indeed from the correct time period to ascertain whether it is the dog from Fleming's Tale.

• 31:27Holly Frey?

  And of course, this got picked up by other news outlets, and it spread really, really quickly. And it is fun to think about the possibility that there's physical evidence for something that has only been legend. But if you've ever wondered what happens to the archaeologists involved when a story like this breaks, here is your chance to find out. Brendan Wilkins, the project director at the group Dig Ventures that conducted the dig, wrote a post on the Dig Ventures site about the experience and the sensationalism of the work that he and his team did in October. He wrote it in October, their team was doing work earlier, but the post that he wrote was published in October 2014.

• 32:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that post begins like this, quote, "As I scanned the headlines that fateful morning, I felt a chill go down my spine and my blood run cold. I read, reread, then read it again, shaking with disbelief as a terrifying and sinister thought began to emerge. They were talking about us. We were in the Daily Mail. As an archaeological projects director, I pride myself on being on the right side of what's loftily known as the public understanding of science. So reading about the, quote, "seven-foot hellhound with flaming eyes" we had apparently discover at Leiston Abbey knocked me for six. How on earth did this happen? How could we contain it? And was this the end of any shred of

• 32:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  archaeological credibility I would ever have?"

• 32:51Holly Frey?

  It was very illuminating to read his very honest account of his reaction. That find, as he mentioned, happened at Leiston Abbey, which is a bit less than seven miles from the second church that was terrorized in the Fleming account from 1577. Specifically, these remains were found while they were excavating what had once been a monastery kitchen building there. The dog's burial definitely postdated the monastery's use, although when that burial happened was unclear. But in his post, Wilkins states that he never thought these were the bones of Black Shuck, and that really the more exciting finds of archaeology are not in the dig, but in the analysis later.

• 33:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  He then shares what he learned about this dog. It was 72 centimeters tall at the shoulder. That's very roughly about two and a third feet. He compares it to the size of a Great Dane or a Mastiff. And because the dog had worn teeth and an arthritic ankle, it appears to have lived for a long life. They weren't able to conclusively date the sample. They got three different date ranges as possibilities, all of them well after 1577. They were between 1650 and 1690, 1730 and 1810, or sometime after 1920.

• 34:08Holly Frey?

  Wilkins writes that, quote, "Far from being the final resting place of a bloodthirsty hellhound, it was clear that our dog's skeleton had been laid to rest with care and consideration." So the more likely scenario here is that it was a working dog that was essentially retired. And unlike many working dogs, it was lovingly cared for long after this dog would have been able to do its job. Wilkins states things very plainly. Quote, "Were these the bones of a seven-foot hellhound with flaming eyes? Unequivocally, no."

• 34:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Though Dig Venture may not have found the infamous Suffolk Hellhound, there have been some efforts to track the Black Dogs, not just of England, but throughout Europe. In 2015, as part of a project called Public Archaeology 2015, researcher Nick Stone started plotting out a map of the various sightings of Black Shuck, the Barget and other manifestations of this black dog myth.

• 35:03Holly Frey?

  The Public Archaeology 2015 Project's mission was to, quote, "undertake a year of public engagement, led equally by archaeologists and non-archaeologists, aimed solely at the creation of public engagement with archaeology, where the definitions of all central terms remain open to debate for the duration of the project." So they didn't want to necessarily, like, end up with a bunch of papers at the end, but they wanted to get people interested in how archaeology worked and how it could be something that everyone engages with. So participants submitted proposals for projects. 12 were chosen, six by non-archaeologists and six by archaeologists. And this was one of those projects.

• 35:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stone's map is interactive, and when you click on one of the points, a pop-up of the story linked to that spot appears. He sorted the sightings by color, with singular dogs represented with red, wercreatures in blue, shapeshifters that fall outside of the werewolf-moon myth as purple, and wild hunt dogs in dark green. So looking at this map, it does seem like the idea of the singular demon dog roaming the country is most popular in Britain and Ireland and other types spread throughout Europe.

• 36:15Holly Frey?

  It's very fun, and that is like based on oral history. It's not like doing the dig down of like, was this a plausible story?

• 36:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, sure.

• 36:24Holly Frey?

  Collected stories.

• 36:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Holly Frey?

  So our last entry, as we mentioned at the top of the episode, is a little bit of a departure from Black Shuck and the Bar Guest, and it is in southern Louisiana. Because Cajun culture has its own version of a scary, kind of using air quotes there, folklore canine figure. The rougarou is similar to a werewolf, usually depicted with a human body and a dog head. And this name, of course, if you speak French or are into folklore, probably sounds familiar, but not quite what you've heard before.

• 36:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, that's because the French word for werewolf is lougarou. Loup means wolf, and while the origins of the word garou may have suggested that it can change forms, most modern translations just punt it straight to werewolf, even without the lou part in front of it. It is most likely that the story of the werewolf traveled with people from France and Acadia as they moved south, and then over time and with usage, the L at the beginning of the word became an R. At this point, both of these are considered acceptable in the area.

• 37:28Holly Frey?

  Yeah, you could hear it said either way. And the origin of the rougarou, like so much folklore, has its roots in keeping people in line. And this has grown into a number of different legends to scare different groups of people with unpleasant consequences for inappropriate behavior.

• 37:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  So possibly the oldest version of the rougarou myth is related to Lent. The story goes that the rougarou hunts down Catholics who don't observe Lent or who fall short in their promises to give up their vices during that time. According to Jonathan Foray, executive director of South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, there's even a tale that if you fail in your Lent observances for seven consecutive years, you will become a rougarou yourself.

• 38:13Holly Frey?

  And of course, a dog man from the swamps is the perfect figure to scare children into doing as they're told. Bad behavior equals the rougarou will come and eat you up. Adults and children both have also been encouraged to do right by the people in their community lest they be cursed and turned into a Rougarou through magic. If that happens, the only way to fix it is to transfer that curse to someone else. And to do that, you would have to trick them into cutting you so that your Rougarou blood is drawn.

• 38:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  But here's why the Rougarou is more fun than scary. The best ways to avoid the Rougarou, making a stop at your house, other than good behavior, those always involve math. The Rougarou struggles with counting, but is also simultaneously compelled to do it. This idea crops up in like vampire mythology sometimes also.

• 39:06Holly Frey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  And apparently he can count to 12, but not higher than 12. So if you leave 13 pennies on your doorstep, he'll stop and try to count them before he comes in. But he'll get superplexed as he tries to make sense of how many there are so he can, he just will never enter the home. Because that 13th penny just throws him for a loop. Just keep starting over.

• 39:28Holly Frey?

  Yeah. It's like, wait, I didn't get this right. One.

• 39:34Holly Frey?

  I love this story so much. If you don't want to stack pennies, you can also leave a colander out on your doorstep. Because apparently, the Rougarou will try so hard to count the holes in that colander. But of course, he loses his place every time. Not only are there too many, but there's like in a big circle and keeps starting over until he just wanders off at frustration. It seems like maybe all of those decades of living in the swamp have given him some interesting peccadilloes and behaviors.

• 40:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. As far as I know, I am not a Rougarou, but I think I would become frustrated and wander off if I tried to count the holes in a colander.

• 40:14Holly Frey?

  I would be like, I need a Sharpie. I'm going to section this out. If you are as fascinated by the Rougarou as I am, you can also attend the annual Rougarou Fest that takes place every year in Houma, Louisiana, which is just a little bit southwest of New Orleans, where storytellers continue to pass on this story through oral tradition of the Rougarou. And all proceeds from this festival go to the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center. It is normally the last week of October, so happening now as we publish this episode. Although, of course, this year in 2020, things have changed a bit due to the pandemic. So there are some fun online activities.

• 40:54Holly Frey?

  And if you're in the area on Fridays, what they've been doing, because it is Louisiana, there is delicious food at that festival normally. So they started doing a pop-up drive-through food pickup on Fridays of some of the goodies that you would normally get at the festival. This Friday, the 30th, is your very last chance if you are anywhere in the area. You can look up the info on their website, which is rougaroufest.org. That's R-O-U-G-A-R-O-U-F-E-S-T.org.

• 41:27Holly Frey?

  I have a friend who loves, loves, loves werewolf myth and legend, and she and I are already plotting to attend this next year if it happens, because it sounds like the most fun time ever.

• 41:42Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I just, I love it. I love that this is like a fun version of a werewolf story to end

• 41:49Holly Frey?

  our Halloween programming with, because we all need a little more fun. Think about that poor Rougarou counting. Part of me wants to bring him some flashcards and upgrade his knowledge.

• 42:04Holly Frey?

  That's the Rougarou.

• 42:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is [email protected]. You can find us all over social media at Missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

• 42:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 42:56Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:27Tracy V. Wilson?

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