One Eyed Dog Names

When it comes to one-eyed beasts, ancient mythology is strangely full of them world over. Even those who don’t know much about mythology are aware of the likes of the Cyclops, likely one of the most famous one eyed creatures to ever exist. Over the decades, even pop culture has assumed a high number of one eyed creatures, some of whom actually have a basis in mythology as well. Consider Big Dan Teague, John Goodman’s character in O Brother, Where Art Thou?,  who was meant to symbolize and embody the Cyclops from Homer’s Odyssey, the entire movie largely based on the epic. 

But while there may be a plethora of one-eyed people and mythical beasts, there is a shortage of famous one-eyed dogs (which hopefully is a good thing, since being one-eyed isn’t a particular advantage). However, one culture crossed the two, writing into their mythological history a canine beast like few others: Psoglav. 

Psoglav stems from Slavic mythology, its name in Serbian Cyrillic literally translated to “doghead”, which is an apt title for a creature that possesses the legs of a horse (though sometimes depicted as simply having human legs), the body of a human, iron teeth and topped with the head of a dog complete with a single eye placed in the middle of its forehead. In terms of size, they were said to be relatives of other giants but their actual height rarely described in detail — they were always just large enough to be frightening and intimidating. While it seems a far-fetched beast to actually put any faith in, belief of its existence did spread across parts of both Bosnia and Montenegro, though the delineation between it manifesting as an actual physical being or merely as some kind of omniscient demon remains unclear. 

As the story goes, Psoglavs were said to live in caves or at least the confines of a dark land, a land littered with gemstones but completely devoid of any sunlight. The most terrifying aspect, however, was that they practiced anthropophagy, better known as cannibalism, as they were said to eat human beings and would actively dig up graves when food sources were scarce. 

While there are very few specific narratives about their existence in the ancient world, they were believed to have intertwined with other figures of mythology and history, though it seems more likely that they were remembered by later generations purely because of their grotesque appearance and habits.