72 BRITISH DOGS 



" a dog employed to discover and pursue game by scent " ; but, 

 whether by change of time or otherwise, Brachell, and also Brach, 

 is generally applied to bitch hounds. Shakespeare seems to use 

 the term indifferently to both sexes. In The Taming of the Shrew 

 we have the lines : 



Brach Merriman the poor hound is imbost, 



And couple Clouder with the deep mouthed Brach 



evidently referring to dog hounds ; but in Henry IV. and other 

 of his plays he seems to indicate bitch hounds : 



I had rather hear Lady, my Brach, howl in Irish. 

 And H. Taylor may be considered to apply the term to the same 



sex in the quaint and pretty lines : 



Down lay, in a nook, my lady's Brach, 



And said, "My feet are sore: 

 I cannot follow with the pack, 



A-hunting of the Boar." 



Wright, in his dictionary, defines Brach as " a bitch of the hound 

 kind " ; and the author of " The Gentleman's Recreation " says : 

 " There are in England and Scotland two kinds of hunting dogs, 

 and nowhere else in the world : the first is called a Rache, and this 

 is a foot-scenting creature, both of wild beasts, birds, and fishes 

 also, which lie among the rocks ; the female hereof in England is 

 called a Brach, which is a mannerly name for all bitch hounds." 

 By " the fishes which lie among the rocks " it may be presumed 

 that otters and seals are intended the notable phoca that so much 

 disconcerted the gallant, hot-headed Captain Mclntyre. 



Sleuth-hounds, or Bloodhounds, were long bred and trained to 

 track Border raiders, and a most exciting chase it must have been 

 through those wild moorlands, as all who have read Scott, even 

 without having visited the scenes he so well depicts, will say. The 

 words of eulogy on the dead Richard Musgrave, pronounced by 

 "the stark moss-trooping Scot," William of Deloraine, who, 



By wily turns and desperate bounds, 

 Had baffled Percy's best Bloodhounds, 



will arise in every reader's memory, but they will lose nothing by 

 repetition here : 



Yet rest thee, God ! for well I know 

 I ne'er shall find a nobler foe 

 In all the northern countries here, 

 Whose word is snaffle, spur, and spear. 

 Thou wert the best to follow gear ; 

 'Twas pleasure, as we looked behind, 

 To see how thou the chase could wind ? 



