Black Shuck and the Devils Fingerprints

 

At Holy Trinity Church in the village of Blythburgh on the Suffolk coast the fingerprints of the Devil can be seen on the North door.

The events that led to the making of these marks occurred on 4^th. August 1577 during a service in the church.  During a tremendous storm, Black Shuck, the Devil Dog burst through the door of the church, he ran up the nave, pat a large congregation, he attacked and killed a man and a boy. He caused the church steeple to collapse through the roof. Satisfied with the chaos he had caused Black Such made his exit from the church but not before leaving scorch marks of the aforementioned North door.

In A Straunge and Terrible Wunder) (1577), Abraham Flemming described the events at St Mary’s Church, Bungay on the same day:

“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.”

Black Shuck is vividly depicted in Highways & Byways in East Anglia (1901), By W.A. Duut:

“He takes the form of a huge black dog, and prowls along dark lanes and lonesome field footpaths, where, although his howling makes the hearer's blood run cold, his footfalls make no sound. 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 even said that to meet him is to be warned that your death will occur before the end of the year. 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 Snarleyow^[9] 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.”

The name “Shuck” is thought to derive from the Old English scucca meaning 'devil or fiend'.

Black Suck is embedded in the folklore of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the Fens and into Essex.