PEEL CASTLE

Opening

Peel Castle, on St Patrick's Isle off the west coast of the Isle of Man, is said to be haunted by the Moddey Dhoo, Manx for "black dog". The earliest account, written by George Waldron in about 1726, calls it the Mauthe Doog: a large black spaniel with curly, shaggy hair that came into the guardroom each evening when the candles were lit and lay down by the fire among the soldiers.

The garrison stopped swearing when it was there and never let a man carry the keys alone. One night a drunk soldier took them by himself to find out whether it was "Dog, or Devil". He came back unable to speak and died three days later. The dog was never seen again and the passage was walled up. Walter Scott later carried the story far beyond the island.

Timeline

About 1666 (as told)Waldron dates the soldier's death to "about Threescore Years" before he wrote, which places it in the reign of Charles II.

About 1726Waldron, an Englishman serving as an excise commissioner on the island, writes down the story, saying he heard it attested by several people.

1731Waldron's Description of the Isle of Man is printed after his death, in a collected edition of his works published for his widow.

1805Scott alludes to the dog in Canto VI of The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1823Scott's novel Peveril of the Peak enlarges the creature into a great mastiff.

1865The Manx Society reprints Waldron, making the account widely available again.

1927 and 1931Black dog sightings near Milntown corner, Ramsey, are recorded by the Manx folklorist W. Walter Gill.

1932Gill publishes them in A Second Manx Scrapbook.

Present. Peel Castle is a ruin cared for by Manx National Heritage, and the dog is part of how it is presented to visitors.

Key figures

George Waldron (1690 to about 1730), who recorded the tale and many other Manx traditions.

Walter Scott, who made it famous.

The old soldier who told Waldron he had seen the dog countless times, unnamed.

The drunk soldier of the tale, also unnamed in every version.

W. Walter Gill, who collected later black dog reports on the island.

Physical and documentary trail

The record is Waldron's paragraph, Scott's uses of it and later folklore collections. The castle and its garrison are real. The soldier, his death and the dog appear nowhere outside the legend, and Waldron names no one. What he does give is his source, which is unusually specific for a ghost story of the period:

This Accident happened about Threescore Years since, and I heard it attested by several, but especially by an old Soldier, who assured me he had seen it oftener than he had then Hairs on his Head.

Scott's three lines in the Lay compare a terrified knight to the soldier: "For he was speechless, ghastly, wan, / Like him of whom the story ran, / Who spoke the spectre-hound in Man."

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. The earlier version said the story was first recorded about a century after it was set. Waldron put the event about 60 years before he wrote, around 1666. It also called Waldron a customs officer; he was an excise commissioner, and his book appeared posthumously in 1731.

Things you might not know

• The dog enforced manners. Waldron says the soldiers "forbore Swearing and all prophane Discourse" while it was in the room.
• The keys travelled in pairs. The garrison agreed that whoever locked up would take a companion, because the route to the captain's quarters ran through the dog's passage in the church.
• It kept regular hours. It came from the passage at the close of day and went back at dawn.
• It got bigger in fiction. Waldron's spaniel became a mastiff in Scott's Peveril of the Peak.
• The passage was closed. After the death, Waldron says, nobody would use it, so it was blocked and another way made.

Competing explanations

A ghost dog. The garrison believed in it, according to Waldron, and an old soldier vouched for it to him in person.

A garrison legend. Black dog stories are common across the British Isles, from the Barguest of Yorkshire to Black Shuck in East Anglia. A tale about a drunk who mocks his comrades and pays for it works as a warning about drink and bravado.

A real death, explained afterwards. A soldier dying in convulsions after a drunken night alone in a castle needs no hound, and a story already current in the guardroom would supply one.

Later life of the case

The Moddey Dhoo is one of the best-known Manx legends, helped by Scott's verse and Manx National Heritage's presentation of the castle. Gill's 20th-century sightings show the black dog tradition still active on the island well after Waldron.

Finding

Folklore. A garrison legend written down about 60 years after it is set, from oral testimony, with no named soldier and no independent record of a death. The best reading is a guardroom story built around a real place and possibly a real death.

What still will not resolve: whether a soldier died at Peel Castle around 1666 in the way Waldron describes. I found no garrison record or burial entry that matches the story, and Waldron gives no name to search for.