CHAPTER X 

 THE IRISH WOLFHOUND 



PROBABLY no dog has been the subject of so much contention or 

 misapprehension as Ireland's historic hound. This has been due 

 in great part to the exaggerated statements respecting the size 

 to which it, in some instances, attained. Its early history is also 

 enshrouded in mystery, and we are apparently, in the twentieth 

 century, no nearer a satisfactory solution of it than we were in the 

 seventeenth and even earlier times. Oliver Goldsmith, who was not 

 distinguished, as a naturalist, by strict accuracy, was certainly very far 

 wrong in stating that the Irish Wolfhound attained to a height of 

 4ft., as we measure dogs and horses that is, from the ground to 

 the level of the top of the shoulders ; though a tall, long-necked, 

 and long-headed dog, with his snout held pointing up in air, might 

 reach very near that height. That, however, would be a totally 

 misleading way of taking and stating the dog's height. 



Doubtless the size of the Irish Wolfhound has also been ex- 

 aggerated by the use of loose expressions ; but that he was the giant 

 of his race, so far as these islands are concerned, there appears to 

 be very good grounds for believing. That there should have been, 

 by many, a strong desire entertained to save from utter extinction 

 so noble a breed, is most natural. The astonishing matter is that so 

 few persons comparatively have taken practical steps towards its 

 resuscitation, for if the breed did not altogether cease to exist early 

 in the eighteenth century, it went dangerously near to extinction. 

 That much even its most enthusiastic admirer, Captain Graham 

 himself, admits when, in the previous Edition of this work, he says : 

 " That in its original integrity it has apparently disappeared cannot 

 be disputed ; yet there can be little doubt that so much of the true 

 breed is forthcoming, both in the race still known in Ireland as the 

 Irish Wolfhound (to be met with, however, in one or two places 

 only) and in our modern Deerhound, as to allow of its complete 

 recovery in its pristine grandeur, with proper management, in 

 judicious hands." It is easy to see from this the theory of Captain 

 Graham with regard to the breed ; but whether or not there really 



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