Legends and Folklore
' A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound ... Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.'
| Inspired perhaps by the folk legend of the fiery-eyed black Wisht Hounds, which hunt with the Devil on his headless horse in Wistman's Wood, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote part of The Hounds of the Baskervilles at the Duchy Hotel at Princetown (now the High Moorland Visitor Centre) looking out over the moor and the grim grey hulk of Dartmoor Prison. Taken on a tour by a local man called Henry Baskerville, Conan Doyle began to weave moorland landmarks and names into the novel's fabric - the Foxtor mires and the Grimspound hut circles became the treacherous Grimpen Mire and the prehistoric huts which feature in the adventure. The tors of Bellever and Vixen are named in the book, and you can retrace the footsteps of Holmes and Watson on the summit of Black Tor. |
Inspirational Dartmoor
For centuries the Moor has entranced poets and writers. On the slopes of Fox Tor you can seek out the tomb of Childe the Hunter, whose exploits first appeared in an ancient ballad; at a crossroads near Manaton you can kneel at the grave of Kitty Jay, a farmer's daughter whose suicide inspired John Galsworthy's The Apple Tree.
You may hear of Vixana the witch who conjured up mists to confuse travellers, or visit Bowerman's Nose, a hunter petrified in granite as punishment for disturbing a witches' coven. When the moon is full on Hunter's Tor, you might sense the ghosts of ancient warriors and, at Blackaton Brook near Gidleigh, listen for Royalist and Roundhead locked in combat. In the porch of the Three Crowns in Chagford, cavalier and poet Sidney Godolphin died of a musket wound, and his spectre still hunts the corridors.
Much of Dartmoor's folklore and songs were chronicled by the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould. One such is the popular tale of Uncle Tom Cobbley, his drunken companions and the unfortunate grey mare; almost certainly based on a real event, you can meet the man himself, riding through Widecombe-in-the-Moor during the annual September village fair.
