This is an old teaching story from Celtic lands and this is the way I choose to tell it today………

In a different time, in a different land, at the time of night when most honest people are in their beds, a stranger came to a lively inn beside the lonely moors. The inn looks friendly so the stranger enters to warm himself and gain the comfort of his fellow humans before venturing to cross the wild, lonely, moor.

‘Only a fool would cross the moor tonight’ warns one villager. ‘All the King’s men haven’t yet been able to catch that wicked highwayman, who has robbed five coaches and three solitary travellers in just this one month. What is worse, he kills those he robs’.

‘I must go tonight’ replies the stranger. ‘My old mother is ill, and I have journeyed across the shire to bring her medicine from our village wisewoman to heal her.’

‘Don’t go tonight’ said another villager. ‘As well as the wicked highwayman, there’s the black dog who roams the moors to seize unwary travellers'.

"Yes" agrees another villager. "And then there’s the witch who lives in the cottage on the moor. No honest woman would live on the moor, with the black dog roaming on dark nights!’

‘What’s wrong with a black dog?’ queries the traveller innocently.

‘It’s a huge black dog, dark as night and as big as a cow with bloody eyes big as saucers, to capture your soul’ warns an elderly man from his honoured place by the fire. ‘When I was young, I remember a year when the dog took every stranger who crossed the moors, in daylight as well as in the night’.

‘Well,’ said the traveller, ‘I have no choice. My mother waits even now for her medicine’ and he drains his glass and sets off into the lonely night. But despite his brave words, he is very frightened by the stories and he walks very carefully onto the moors. How the wind moans as he strides bravely on. And how hard his heart beats as he sees a shadowy figure suddenly appear until he sees it is just a little old woman with a smile bright enough to turn night into day.

‘Why do you cross the moor tonight, stranger?’ she queries. ‘Tis a perilous night for a journey.’ When the traveller tells her about his mother and the medicine, the old woman sighs and says ‘I wish you well, but what is better I will loan you my dog to cross the moors. He will follow you to protect you, but don’t look behind you. Just keep walking and my dog will follow and keep you safe until you get to your old mother’s house.’

The stranger thanks her for her kindness and strides on, comforted by the sound of the padding of the dog’s steps behind him. The pad of the dog’s paws gives him courage to keep walking, even when the strangest thing happens – he sees a mountain ash tree turn into a silvery spirit woman, combing down her branches like long tresses getting ready for spring.

‘Now that’s a strange sight’ he thinks, but he keeps walking as he promised the old woman as her dog pads behind him.

The next strange thing that happens is when the moon begins to sing, and pours a silvery crystal song across the moors which echoes like the siren’s song.

‘Now that’s a strange song’, he thinks, but he keeps walking as he promised the old woman and her dog pads faithfully behind him.

Then he sees and hears the strangest thing of all; the mountain ash joins the moon in the silvery song, which echoes and echoes in his brain, calling, calling, calling him to come, come, come now – but the man listens to the pad, pad, pad of the loyal dog’s feet, and remembers his mother and her medicine, and strides on across the moor until he reaches home.

He opens the door and his mother comes to greet him but her smile changes to terror as she screams ‘What is that monster at the door?’ The traveller turns in his own doorway and sees a huge black dog with eyes like shining lanterns. And he knows that the feared black dog has walked him safely home across the moor and says ‘thank you’ and ‘good dog’ and pats the big black dog, who pants happily and turns around three times then settles down at the door to guard the cottage all night long.

In the morning, a whole catalogue of strange happenings are the result of the magic night on the moors.

The old mother is quite well from her medicine, and in gratitude cooks a big breakfast for her son and the black dog before the big black dog lopes off to his home.

The cruel highwayman is easily captured by the King’s men, when the highwayman is found with his long hair entangled in the branches of a mountain ash and babbling like a crazy man of the moon and strange songs and how the ash tree called him and then wouldn’t let him go.

And the witch keeps her secrets, there in her cottage on the edge of the moor, just beyond the place where the traveller met the cheerful old woman with the big bright smile the night before ….

Bright blessings