Gabble Ratchets
‘The North’, 1600s
“There is also a strange noise in the air heard of many in these parts this winter, called Gabriel-Ratches by this country-people, the noise is as if a great number of whelps were barking and howling”
We have taken a look at the Barghests of York already, but did you know another huge, black demon dog reigned hell on other areas of Yorkshire? There’s several different names for this beast, depending on which area you ask, but still only means one thing if you spot it... your death may be imminent.
Reported as Gabriel Hounds, or Gabriel Ratchets (ratchet being the term for a dog which hunts using scent), Gabble Ratchets or "sky yelpers", these demonic hounds (let’s not pretend I wouldn’t still try and pet one) have been seen in various areas in the North, such as Leeds, Cumbria, Sheffield. The earliest writing on Gabble Ratchets goes all the way back to 1664 in Reverend Oliver Heywood’s Memoranda, on the 2nd March. Whilst living at Coley Hall, he wrote:
“There is also a strange noise in the air heard of many in these parts this winter, called Gabriel-Ratches by this country-people, the noise is as if a great number of whelps were barking and howling, and ‘tis observed that if any see them the persons that see them die shortly after, they are never heard but before a great death or dearth.”
The most common description of these beasts regard them as large, black, flying dogs - some with human heads, some with dog heads. Stories say that you can often hear the dogs flying overhead, yelping and barking, but can seldom see them (I’m presuming because it is night time and they are black, most devilish things occur at night time). But if you do find yourself standing underneath one of these hounds, be prepared to face your own fate as they are often described as harbingers of death.
They seemed to be regarded as spectral hounds, using their ratchet hunting abilities to sniff out the newly dead. Although one report of Babble Ratchets goes a little further than this, folklorist William Henderson, in 1879, explained that the Babble Ratchets specifically above Leeds City Centre are ‘held to be the souls of unbaptised children doomed to flit restlessly around their parents home’.
The legend of the Babble Ratchets even caught the attention of renowned Cumbrian poet William Wordsworth, as one of his sonnets states: ‘For overhead are sweeping the Gabriel Hounds / Doomed with the imperious lord, the flying hart / To chase forever on aerial grounds’... beautiful.
With every folklore legend, there’s always a spoiled sport. Academics back in ye olde times often tried to dismiss the idea of flying demon dogs with human heads (pfft, as if). Robert Plot, first Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, could be heard telling folk that the supposed yelping and barking that had been heard over cities such as Leeds could very well be the noise of migrating geese. I know that geese are, in themselves, particularly terrifying creatures but the last I heard, geese were not harbingers of death, and once spotted they would not cause the onlookers to mysteriously perish...
Sources
https://lowercalderlegends.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/the-gabble-ratchets/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(folklore)
