Devil's Den's own genuine identity as a Neolithic chambered tomb gives this pairing of guardian dog and nocturnal Devil visitation a real prehistoric monument as its setting, part of the same wider Avebury landscape as the separately recorded Barber Stone and Avebury henge itself, and its folk name alone signals the widespread English tendency to attach diabolical associations to prehistoric standing stones whose original builders and purpose had passed entirely out of local memory by the time these traditions took shape.
The white dog, in contrast to the more commonly recorded black phantom dogs found elsewhere in this register, such as the Longleat and Dead Maids Crossroads animals, is comparatively unusual in English folklore, white dogs sometimes carrying more protective or guardian-like associations in older tradition than their black counterparts, consistent with its reported role here as a guardian of the tomb rather than a more purely menacing presence.
The Devil's own midnight visitation with a team of oxen is a distinctive and specific piece of local legend, oxen traditionally associated in folklore with the moving of great stones, a detail that may reflect an old folk explanation for how such a heavy megalithic structure could ever have been raised without supernatural assistance.
Comments