Dando's Dogs

Dando and his dogs are a Cornish form of the Wild Hunt — a cautionary tale of a worldly, hard-hunting priest of the parish of St Germans who cared more for the chase and his pleasures than for his calling. Hunting one Sunday and crying that he would go to hell itself for a drink if none could be found on earth, Dando was answered: a dark stranger appeared, handed him a draught, and when the priest's hounds turned snarling on the newcomer, the stranger swept up Dando and his whole pack onto his black horse and plunged with them into the river and away.

Ever since, the country folk said, Dando and his dogs may be heard on stormy nights sweeping across the Cornish sky and moors in a spectral hunt, the baying of the hounds carrying on the wind. Collected by the Cornish folklorist Robert Hunt in his 'Popular Romances of the West of England' (1865), Dando's Dogs is Cornwall's own telling of the demon huntsman carried off for his impiety — a local strand of the great European Wild Hunt tradition.