HAVE you ever, on an isolated country walk, had the sense that you are in the presence of spirits past? If you have a dog at your side, they might stop and stare at something only they can see, hackles raised, a low growl or confused whine escaping them. Easily explained away on a balmy summer’s eve, such encounters take on a new significance in the gloaming of these ever-shortening days—could it be that canine instinct is picking up on the former presence of mysterious hounds, which have followed travellers of the past through these uninhabited places, perhaps aiding safe passage, perhaps foretelling impending doom?
From which dark corners do such fancies originate? Fiction and folktale are a good place to start: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great black Hound of the Baskervilles still looms large over Dartmoor and, according to local legend, hounds hunted by Dewer, the ‘Black Huntsman’, roam the vast moor in search of lost souls, earning a place in A Handbook for Travellers in Devon and Cornwall (1851): ‘On stormy winter nights, the peasant has heard the whist [eerie] hounds sweeping through the rocky valley, with cry of dogs, winding of horns and hoofs thick-bleating on the hollow hill.’
Denne historien er fra October 28, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 28, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
