The Dewerstone and the Wild Hunt

The popular version runs like this: the Dewerstone, a rocky promontory above Shaugh Prior, is the haunt of a demonic Wild Hunt. Spectral huntsmen and hounds are said to ride out from the hill fort at night, and the legend warns against being abroad on the moor when they pass. It is a good story, the sort that gets retold in guidebooks and on local history sites, but I have found it surprisingly hard to pin down where it actually comes from.

I cannot find a written source for this particular legend that is both early and specific. Legendary Dartmoor mentions the Dewerstone, but the tale seems to be one of those that has drifted into the folklore canon through repetition rather than through any documented tradition. The Wild Hunt itself is an old motif across European legend (often attached to famous figures like Odin or King Arthur), but whether it has a genuine Dartmoor pedigree here, or is a modern association with the atmospheric fort, is honestly unclear. The Iron Age ramparts are real enough; what hunts them remains uncertain.

The earliest known trace of this legend is an anonymous letter published in Notes and Queries on 28 December 1850, describing a headless black dog haunting the valley below the Dewerstone, alongside a naked human footprint and a cloven hoofprint found together in snow. Sabine Baring-Gould named the fuller legend in 1900: "a wild hunter appeared on the summit of Dewerstone, attended by his black dogs, blowing a horn." William Crossing later wrote that the Dewer Stone was the spot the Wish Huntsman "chiefly favours", linking this hilltop to the same Wisht Hounds tradition associated with Wistman's Wood.