Psychopomps

They are 'psychopomp', a quality assigned to some creatures and animals, whose function is to guide the departed souls on the paths to the Otherworld. Black Dogs are usually encountered on lonely tracks, ancient roads, crossroads, church yards, bridges and entrances - physically and symbolically the places of transition in human lives. They usually menace passers-by and travellers, although there are also examples of ones attached to a specific family like displaced banshees.

Foretellers of death and mischief

In European folklore Black Dogs are often closely allied to death and its administrators such as Hecate (goddess of death and witchcraft), who stood at crossroads and portended death accompanied by her howling pack of hounds.

Black Dogs are sometimes benign if left alone and are even rarely helpful, most time they are chilling portenders of bad luck, ill health and disease, foreboding death rather than causing it.

It was even believed that any person who is the target of this dark messenger's pronouncement would die within a fortnight. One must wonder how much of this is self-fulfilling prophecy.

Guardians of the corpse ways

These perhaps derive from the belief that the first person to be buried in a churchyard would have the duty of guarding the others who followed. To avoid such an arduous and long fate befalling a human soul, black dogs were often killed and buried on the north side of a church before the first human corpse took its place (usually) on the south.

Baring-Gould put forward the belief that it was the custom to sacrifice a dog, specifically one without a single white hair, in the foundations of the church - although direct evidence is lacking. In Scandinavia a similar practice more commonly use a lamb, but the creature was still known as the Kirkogrim . At 'The Church Grimm' found in Yorkshire, a spectre takes the form of a black dog and is believed to protect the souls of the churchyard's dead. Reputedly, only a Church Minister could see the Grimm and remain unharmed.

Occasionally spectral black dogs are said to guard an ancient treasure or a sacred place.

Hunting hounds

Dogs were used in the hunt and this may have been the origin of their symbolic link with death. In tales and myths, hunted animals appear sometimes as messengers of the divine or underworld. The hunted creature itself may be enchanted or possess magical qualities: it may be a transformed human or a god in animal form. See the article on the Hounds of the Hunt for more details