In the various British tales of Piper's Holes, a man, usually a piper but sometimes a fiddler, enters an underground passage way. Those above ground follow his progress by listening for his music but suddenly all goes quite. Intriguingly, in the tales the man seems to invariably be accompanied by a dog. The dog emerges from the entrance, desperately frightened (or badly burned, in some versions) but the man is never seen again.

Although never explicitly tied to a 'hollow hill' legend, this folk tale motif seems to have much in common with the even-more common notions of barrows being hollow and of underground tunnels of improbable length.

Cu Chulainn, the Hound of Culann - had a very special and close relationship with dogs. As a young boy, he is called Stanta, but he kills the huge guard dog of Culann the smith and, as a penance, he takes the dog's place and also his name. This affinity with dogs recurs in the adult life of Cu Chulainn: he has a geis (a bond or taboo) on him that he must never eat hound-flesh.

But he is offered dogmeat at a feast, and there is another geis on him never to refuse hospitality. He breaks the first rule and eats the meat; this act weakens the hero's supernatural strength and leads ultimately to his death.

In the Old English Passion of St. Christopher the saint is described thus: 'He was of the race of mankind who are half hound'. The OE Martyrology says he was of 'The nation where men have the head of a dog and from the country where men devour each other'. St Christopher, of course, lived by a ford and made a name for himself by carrying Jesus across a river. The crossing of the river is reminescent of the watery boundary with the Otherworld and other death characters “passers” such as Caron

The demon dogs on Dartmoor from which ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles” is inspired have been reputed to race along Abbots Way for untold years, leaving preternatural howls in their wake and portending bad luck, ill health and death to all those unfortunates who encountered them.

A pack of spectral hounds accompanied by a huntsman which haunt the Meon Hills of South Warwickshire around the time of the pagan mid-winter feasts (modern Christmas and New Years Eve) are called night hounds.