Beast
Shuck of the Ouse
Hot breath on your legs, and no dog to be seen.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Fen road running beside the Great Ouse
- Legend from
- 1800s to 1906
- Best time
- Foggy autumn nights
- Tone
- Eerie
On this Fen road, people once heard a black dog padding beside them in the dark, howling for a master who drowned in the river.
Enid Porter recorded a Fenland story of Shuck, a big black dog whose master drowned one foggy night, about a century before 1906, when his horse ran down the bank into the Ouse halfway between Littleport and Brandon Creek. The dog was never seen again, but on pitch-black nights travellers heard him padding along the road, whining and howling for his master; some felt his hot breath on their legs, and people in roadside houses lay awake listening. In 1906 a Littleport man driving home in fog hit something solid at the very spot where the master drowned. Nothing was found, and Shuck was never heard again.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.