Black Shuck

The Beast of Bungay

Photo by Heike Amthor on Unsplash

I came across this account of one of the many black dogs that haunt the English countryside and thought it might make a good poem. What struck me is that the dog was able to enter the church and kill parishioners. Typically the unholy can’t enter that sanctuary. Who else but Satan could get a beast through those doors?

This black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a mome[n]t where they kneeled, they stra[n]gely dyed

-A Straunge and Terrible Wunder by Abraham Fleming in 1577

Black Shuck

Pupped in a hollow
A witch’s teat for his comfort
The devil bathed Black Shuck
In ashes
Put brimstone in his eyes

Whispered:

Find the holy places 
Where hatred
Seethes
Where candles are lit
For your destruction
And God Himself
Wants you dead

Make them fear you 

Clamp your jaws
Around their pious domes
Tear their heads
Off their necks
Listen, Shuck, to the rip
And pop of ruined flesh
And broken bone
Open veins
Drink the thick blood

Bring to me the hearts
Of our enemies

We will feast on the 
Sweat meat
My Hell-bred beast

Go, Shuck!

Go!