Folklore

Eggardon Hill
Hillfort

Perhaps this is the tale Purejoy hints at below. It was described by Edward Waring in his 1977 ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Dorset Countryside’.

A farmer was out on the hill late one night, when he heard in the distance the sound of a huntsman’s horn, and the baying of a pack of hounds. Looking across he saw ‘the form of a man running for dear life’ through a hedge and ditch. The hounds appeared next, ‘urged on by a tall black figure striding at an unearthly pace, with sparks of fire flashing from his boots’. They seized their quarry before he got down into the valley and the farmer realized that what he had seen ‘must be the Devil tormenting a lost soul’.

Nice turns of phrase. Quoted by Westwood and Simpson in their 2005 ‘Lore of the Land’.