The Devil in Dog Form

Author(s): Barbara Allen Woods

Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 229-235
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1496435
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The Devil in Dog Form*
BARBARA ALLEN WOODS

THIS STUDYONTHEDEVILin dog form has its starting point in Goethe's Faust.
There, Mephisto is introduced first in the form of a black poodle. After Faust
abandons the idea of suicide, he goes with his famulus Wagner for a walk; on
their way home, they are joined by a rather strange-acting black poodle,
which, later back in Faust's study, reveals itself as the devil.1 I believe that
this important feature of the Faust drama had its basis in folklore rather
than in literary sources.
Some of the early reports on the historical Faust, such as Melanchthon's,
testify that Faust had as his familiar spirit a shaggy black dog.2 This notion
is expanded in the Widmann chapbook of 1599, where the dog's trick of chang-
ing color is described. Furthermore, Widmann relates that the Abbot of
Halberstadt induced Faust to lend him the dog; for the Abbot's own familiar
had told him that this dog was one of the most powerful spirits.3Goethe knew
this chapbook in Pfitzer's revision of 1684, having withdrawn this volume
from the Weimar library in 1801, the same year in which he wrote the poodle
scenes of the drama.4 There is, however, considerable controversy as to
whether he had the poodle-motif in mind before that.
When Goethe got the idea of introducing the devil as a poodle, or what
his specific literary sources were, seems, however, to represent a rather nar-
row view of the problem when one considers the vast amount of folklore on
the devil as a dog current in Germany and the Continent in general. Dog
lovers notwithstanding, man's best friend has not always enjoyed a very
desirable reputation. On the contrary, the dog has been suspect of aiding
and abetting the archenemy: of providing him with a form in which to circu-
late among men, of guarding the underworld, of calling off men to the realm
of the dead, of haunting bridges and roads to obstruct men's way or to lead
them astray, of following night travellers-often frightening them to death.
* This
paper was delivered at the sixty-fifth annual meeting of the American Folklore Society,
held at the University of Arizona, Tucson, December 28, 1953.
1 References to Faust I are from the Weimar edition of Goethes Werke, XIV, ed. Erich Schmidt
(Weimar, 1887); lines 1145-1321.
2 See Alexander Tille, Die Faustsplitter in der Literatur des I6. bis I8. Jahrhunderts (Berlin,
1900).
3 Fausts Leben von
Georg Rudolf Widmann, ed. Adelbert von Keller (Litterarischer Verein in
Stuttgart, Vol. 146, Tiibingen, 188o), pp. 212, 397-398.
4 Ernst
Traumann, Goethes Faust nach Erstehung und Inhalt erklirt, 2 vols. (Miinchen, 1919),
1, 163.
[229]
230 WESTERN FOLKLORE
The dog's offenses against mankind are numerous; their history is long,
their geographic extent vast. Goethe, as an interested observer at the time of
the beginnings of folkloristic science, could hardly have been unaware of the
dog's ill repute; and no doubt this knowledge was more influential in the de-
velopment of his Faust drama than we may have suspected.
The dog's association with the kingdom of the dead, and consequently
with the devil, very likely goes back to the Indo-European period. The simi-
larity between the Greek Cerberus and Garmr, the Germanic hell-hound;
between the Vedic sons of Sarama, the dog-messengers of death, and Odin's
two wolves which later became dogs, has frequently been pointed out. The
Greeks and Romans associated dogs with Hecate, goddess of the infernal
regions and of witchcraft. Even the Egyptians considered the dog an animal
of the underworld: the god of death, Anubis, had a dog's head; and Isis, god-
dess of the netherworld, rode on a dog. The antiquity and universality of
the equation, dog equals death and underworld, makes it quite natural, then,
that the dog should be associated with the devil when Christianity came to
Europe and drove the old pagan beliefs underground.
Many commentators see a survival of the ancient idea of the transmigra-
tion of souls in one of the common modern beliefs about the dog: namely,
that he embodies a restless soul. Restless souls are the ghosts of wicked peo-
ple such as cruel noblemen, murderers, suicides, thieves, traitors, witches-
and all manner of godless persons who might be considered the devil's
accomplices. Also included among restless souls are those who have met with
a violent death, and have gone to their end "unhousel'd, unanointed, un-
anel'd," and hence also have joined the devil's throng. These ghosts very
frequently take on the form of a dog.
In German folklore, these dogs are most often described as large and black,
and sometimes shaggy, and with fiery eyes; and insofar as any breed is dis-
tinguished, they are usually poodles. They haunt the scene of the crime, or
walk a certain route, or sometimes follow people at night. Such dogs-and
all the dogs in question here-are undeniably weird and supernatural. Each
has some peculiar characteristic, such as sudden appearance and disappear-
ance, which distinguishes him from a real dog.
In America, the belief in ghosts in dog form is also widespread; but the
description of such dogs is not so uniform as in Germany. For example,
among the Negroes in eastern Texas there is a story about a little white
puppy which suddenly appeared in a room where all the doors and windows
were closed. It ran around and around a girl who sought refuge under the
bed, and then suddenly the dog vanished. The girl knew it was a ghost be-
cause it got in and out when all means of entrance were closed. In the same
area, some boys once were passing a Mexican woman's grave when suddenly
 DEVIL IN DOG FORM 231
her ghost jumped out in dog form, and followed them. They shot at the dog
and hit it, but it persisted in following them to their door, where it vanished
when they shot again.' Near Rockhaven, D.C., the ghost of a woman who
broke her neck falling from an apple tree haunts a valley in the form of a
yellow dog.6 A legend from the Schoharie Hills tells about a woman who saw
a big black dog for just an instant; then it disappeared. A few minutes later
the ghost appeared in human form and demanded revenge for his murder.
The woman acquiesced and had the killer brought to trial.7 This idea of
revenge and final justice is rather frequent in the American tradition. Some-
time before the Civil War, a colonel in West Virginia brutally murdered
one of his Negro women, but was acquitted by the court. After that, the man
was constantly followed by a specter dog, and thus haunted, finally confessed
his crime and died.8
Very often in the variants of some tale one may consider the weird dog
a restless soul, in others, a devil, and in still others, make no attempt at all
to account for the strange creature. Because of the tabu against using the
devil's name, we need not be unduly surprised that these stories do not more
often name the culprit a devil. Also, ghosts evolve into devils in the process
of repopulating hell-but that only gradually. In the more traditional ma-
terial about dogs, we can see the close relationship between ghosts and haunts
and the devil especially well where we have a complex of stories about the
same dog. Thus far, I have found only two such complete reports: one from
Canton Uri, Switzerland, and one from Lincolnshire. Oddly enough, there
is a remarkable parallelism between them.
Muller records that in Uri the dog is called the "window-pane dog" because
of his eyes which are big and glowing. He is otherwise described as large and
black, and sometimes as a poodle. He usually accompanies people travelling
at night, always on the right or left side (according to the informant), and
then leaves them at a particular place, such as a certain bridge or tree, and
crosses the road from left to right.' In one legend, a man mistakenly tries to
befriend the window-pane dog; but it reveals its true nature by growing
larger and larger. This is also the method by which the black poodle in Faust
5Martha Emmons, "Confidences from Old Nacogdoches," in Follow de Drinkin' Gou'd, ed. J.
Frank Dobie (Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, VII [1928]), 124-125.
William H. Babcock, "Folk-Lore Jottings from Rockhaven, D.C.," Journal of American Folk-
Lore, IV (1891), 172.
7
Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner, Folklore from the Schoharie Hills, New York (Ann Arbor, 1937),
pp. 88-89.
8J. Hampden Porter, "Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Mountain Whites of the Alleghanies,"
Journal of American Folk-Lore, VII (1894), l o.
9Josef Muller, Sagen aus Uri, 3 vols., ed. Hanns Bichtold-Stiiubli and Robert Wildhaber
(Schriften der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fur Volkskunde, 18, 20, 28, Basel, 1926, 1929, 1945), II,
29-57-
232 WESTERN FOLKLORE
effects his transformation into the form of Mephisto;'?and in general, it is
considered an accomplishment of the devil. The window-pane dog is some-
times taken to be a restless soul of an untruthful councilman, or of a shyster,
or of a blasphemer. But five stories assert that he is the devil. He himself con-
fessed this to "travelling scholars," and admitted that his purpose was to
tempt people to evil.
The phantom dog in Lincolnshire is evidently from the same litter. He is
also big and black, and has glowing eyes as large as saucers. He too is noted
especially for accompanying people on their way at night, again usually at the
person's left, crossing the road from left to right." The author of this article
seems eager to prove that the Lincolnshire Black Dog is not really sinister. But
the striking similarity between this dog and admittedly sinister ones on the
Continent, especially in Uri, seems to contradict this. In two instances, the
Black Dog is taken to be the restless soul of a murder victim. According to an-
other account, a woman once met the dog at night, and he ran around her say-
ing, "Put me in yer pocket, put me in yer pocket," as she had previously said she
would do to him, if she met him. This story reminds one strongly of the
"speak of the devil" sort of legend. Furthermore, the presence of the Black
Dog often frightens domestic animals which, of course, reflects the notion
that domestic animals have an uncanny sense of the presence of evil spirits.
One man, whose pet dog was thus frightened by the phantom, stated that on
arriving home, something like a big Alsatian put its paws on his shoulders
and pushed him against the gate post.
That a spirit dog should jump on a man's shoulders like this, or even ride
him piggy-back, is an important feature of the Continental tradition. It also
appears in Goethe's Faust in one of the later scenes of Part I, "Dreary Day.
A Field." Here, Faust castigates Mephisto for his indifference to Gretchen's
tragic situation, and commands him again to take dog form, and, as he often
used to do, hang on his (Faust's) shoulders.2
A French-Canadian example of a person's being dog-ridden is found in a
loup-garou story from Danvis, Vermont. This legend tells of a man who was
going to the priest one night because his wife was ill. On the way, a tremen-
dous weight impeded the horse; and when the man looked back, he saw a big
black doglike creature. He hit at it, but then it jumped onto the sleigh, and
put its paws on his shoulders. The man knew it was a loup-garou, but could
not get at his knife to cut it and make it turn back to human form. With
glaring eyes coming closer and closer, the monster would have pressed the
man to death, had not the priest appeared at that moment."
10Faust I, lines
1303-1317. Further examples of a spectral dog's increase in size are found in
Newbell N. Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (Chapel Hill, 1926), pp. 116, 129, 130.
"Ethel H. Rudkin, "The Black Dog," Folk-Lore, XLIX (1938), 111-131.
" Faust 1, 225-226, lines 20-27.
13 Rowland E. Robinson, Danvis Folks (Boston, 1894), pp. 181-183.
 DEVIL IN DOG FORM 233
The motif of a demon dog weighing down a man's cart is a fairly common
feature in tales of the northern countries. In a Polish story the black dog
appears in a place reputed to be haunted, but otherwise no clue is given as
to the dog's nature.14In two Schleswig-Holstein versions, the monsters are
restless souls in the form of black poodles.15A Finnish legend defines the dog
as a devil.1 Nowhere except in this French-Canadian legend from Danvis
have I found the offender described as a werewolf.
In the story that has been noted above the loup-garou corresponds to the
werewolf of Germanic tradition. Here we have a typical account of a living
person who, by dint of the devil's power, is able to change into the form of
a wolf. A loup-garou, however, can change into almost any animal's form-
not always a wolf's. Dorson retells two stories from Michigan where the loup-
garou appears as a pig and as an owl, and in still another as a black dog. This
black dog used to get between a man's legs when he was on his way home,
and the man took it to be one of his father's employees, who was suspect be-
cause of his habit of taking long walks at night.1 It is possible to explain this
greater versatility of the loup-garou, if we assume that this tradition has ab-
sorbed both werewolf and witch beliefs. Witches, of course, are able to
change into animal form-cats, hares, dog, toads-because of their magic
power derived from the devil.
A witch's ability to change into dog form, however, is only derivative from
the devil's own power to turn himself into a dog. And the devil has often
used the form of a dog in his function as a familiar spirit. A familiar is a
minor demon in animal form, given by Satan to his adherents to supply
information, to do small services, and to furnish companionship. No self-
respecting witch would be without one, and of course she usually has a black
cat; but a black dog likewise has often played this role. In the history of
witchcraft the dog's popularity as a familiar spirit has been documented from
the 14th century on. Modern survivals are seen in a tale from the Schoharie
Hills, where a witch sends her dog to steal her rival's children," and in one
from Illinois where a bewitched person is knocked down by a big black dog.9
A black dog familiar is more frequently attributed to the wizard. One of
the favorite accusations levelled against medieval popes by their enemies
was that of sorcery. Sylvester II, Gerbert, for example, was supposed to have
14Otto
Knoop, Sagen und Erzihlungen aus der Provinz Posen (Sonder-Ver6ffentlichungen der
Historischen Gesellschaft fur die Provinz Posen, 2, Posen, 1893), p. 165. There is a striking simi-
larity between this story and one in Harry Middleton Hyatt, Folk-Lore from Adams County
Illinois (New York, 1935), No. 10512.
5Gustav Fr. Meyer, Schleswig-Holsteiner Sagen (Jena, 1929), pp. 258-259.
16Finnish Folklore Archives at Helsinki, courtesy of Martti Haavio.
17 Richard M. Dorson,
Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of the Upper Peninsula
(Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 76.
8 Gardner, op. cit., pp. 112-113.
1 Hyatt, op. cit., No. 9332.
234 WESTERN FOLKLORE

kept the devil in the form of a large black dog which prophesied."2 Nor were
scholars exempt from the charges of sorcery and of keeping dog familiars:
Albertus Magnus, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and of course Faust himself,
were among those thus accused. Even British royalty was not immune in this
crusade against witchcraft; in the 17th century, Prince Rupert's dog Boy
was definitely considered his familiar.2' The Flying Dutchman, in a modern
legend, always had on board a black poodle, supposedly the devil.' A blind
farmer in Schleswig-Holstein made a contract with the devil, who gave him a
big black dog to do the chores." A Thuringian soothsayer in the early g1th
century was always observed to consult his black poodle before revealing his
prophecies.'
Satan often chooses the form of a black dog for his more important task
of fetching the souls of the wicked. In Uri, for instance, a big black dog was
seen watching a dance; when asked about this, the dog replied he was the
devil come to fetch a soul. With this forewarning, however, some people
went for the priest; and in this case, the devil was foiled." The devil is prompt
to fetch the souls of those who meet a violent end; in one instance, he enters
the house in the form of a black mastiff just as a man is shot and killed." The
devil often comes to the dying in the form of a black dog and waits under the
bed for his victim to expire. One Swabian legend relates how a priest was
prevented from doing his offices for a dying man, supposedly a practitioner
of witchcraft; for there was a black poodle under the bed that hypnotized
the priest on the spot-this dog was the devil."
There is just such a tale from the Ozarks. A man who refused to have any-
thing to do with the church was dying alone in his house when it was struck
by lightning. His neighbors came over to get him out, but they were unable
to move either him or the bed itself. Then they noticed a strange black dog
emerging from under the bed. They had to leave because the fire was getting
out of control; and the next day they could find no trace of the man's or the
dog's remains. In another version of the same story, the man and the dog were
killed by silver bullets (the only effective ammunition against witches); and
20Paul Carus, The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the
Present Day (Chicago, 1900), pp. 417-418.
21George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), pp.
176-177.
22Hermann Liibbing, Friesische Sagen von Texel bis Sylt (Jena, 1928), p. 205.
23Karl Muillenhoff, Sagen, Mdrchen und Lieder der Herzogtiimer Schleswig, Holstein und
Lauenberg (2nd ed., Otto Mensing, Schleswig, 1921), p. 233 = Meyer, op. cit., p. 310.
2 Ludwig Bechstein, Der Sagenschatz und die Sagenkreise des Thiiringerlandes, 4 vols. (Hild-
burghausen, 1836), II, 128.
25Miiller, op. cit., III, 137-138.
6 Ernest W. Baughman, A Comparative Study of the Folktales of England and North America
(Indiana University diss., 1953 [unpublished]), Motif G3o3.2o.7.
"Anton Birlinger, Sagen, Legenden, Volksaberglauben aus Schwaben (Wiesbaden, 1874), pp.
203-204.
 DEVIL IN DOG FORM 235
their bodies were burned in the man's house with the same results as in the
first version.28 Both variants, however, concur in the strong implication that
this strange black dog was the devil come to fetch his ally.
The devil, of course, is most likely to appear when called by name. It has
often happened to overly eager card players in German legends that they
swear by the devil they will win the next hand-only to find shortly there-
after when they stoop to retrieve a card, that there is a huge black dog with
glaring eyes under the table." Audacious souls sometimes refuse to heed their
friends' warnings about travelling at night, and assert they are not afraid of
the devil himself. Almost always such people encounter on their way the
devil as a gruesome black dog with fiery eyes.'3 Goethe makes use of this
speak-of-the-devil belief when on the walk, he has Faust invoke the spirits to
show him a newer, gayer life, and causes Wagner in turn to warn him of the
danger of this invocation. Just a little later, Faust notices the poodle, but
Wagner says that he has been watching the dog for some time."' I think this
indicates that Goethe meant Faust's calling the spirits to be the cue for the
poodle's, i.e., the devil's, appearance.
Faust's experiences with the devil in dog form, then, have much in com-
mon with those recounted in innumerable popular legends. Faust too spoke
of the devil, and a black poodle appeared. He too was followed home by this
mysterious dog. He too witnessed the sudden increase in the dog's size. He
too suffered the poodle's jumping and hanging on his shoulders. This dia-
bolical black poodle which plays so great a role in Goeth's Faust shows many
affinities with the devil dogs in folklore, who no doubt were his sires.
28Vance Randolph, Ozark Superstitions (New York, 1947), p. 275.
9Theodor Bindewald, Oberhessisches Sagenbuch (Frankfurt a. M., 1873), pp. 84-86=Paul
Zaunert, Hessen-Nassauische Sagen (Jena, 1929), p. 293.
30Richard Kiihnau, Schlesische
Sagen, 3 vols. (Schlesiens volkstiimliche Ueberlieferungen, 3, 4,
5) (Leipzig, 1910, 1911, 1913), I, 530; Lutz Mackensen, Sagen der Deutschen im Wartheland (Posen,
1943), 260; Paul Zaunert, Rheinland Sagen, 2 vols. (Jena, 1924), I, 186.
81Faust I, lines 1118-1148.