THE DOG IN HISTORY, ART, AND LITERATURE. 



15 



" ' I will give thee three things : a golden 

 bracelet ; a kirtle which belonged to Myr- 

 kiarton, King of Ireland ; and a dog which 

 I got in the same country. He is huge of 

 limb, and for a follower equal to an able 

 man. Moreover, he hath man's wit, and 

 will bark at thine enemies, but never at 

 thy friends. And he will see by each 

 man's face whether he be ill or well dis- 

 posed towards thee. And he will lay down 

 his life for thee. Samr is his name.' Then 

 he said to the hound, ' From this day follow 

 thou Gunnar, and help him what thou 

 canst.' So the hound went to Gunnar, 

 and lay down at his feet, and fawned upon 

 him." 



It is interesting to add that Samr, al- 

 though he could not avert the murder of 

 Gunnar, forestalled the performance of the 

 famous dog of Montargis by avenging his 

 master's death upon his murderer. Sad to 

 relate, however, he was himself killed in 

 revenge, for it is stated that " Onund of 

 Trollaskog smote Samr on the head with 

 his axe, so that it pierced the brain ; and 

 the dog, with a great and wonderful cry, 

 fell dead on the ground." 



Like the Greeks and Romans, the Scan- 

 dinavians were in the habit of making 

 sacrifice of dogs as propitiation to their 

 deities. This circumstance does not, how- 

 ever, imply that they did not value their 

 dogs. Indeed, the contrary is the case ; 

 they sacrificed what they valued most, 

 and at a very early time the Northmen 

 imposed penalties for the killing of dogs. 



" If a man kills a lapdog of another he 

 must pay twelve aurar if the dog is a lap- 

 dog whose neck one can embrace with one 

 hand, the fingers touching each other ; six 

 aurar are to be paid for a greyhound 

 (mj6hund), and for a hunting dog half a 

 mark, and also for a sheepdog, if it is tied 

 by the innermost ox, or untied by the outer- 

 most ox, also at the gate. One aurar is 

 to be paid for a dog guarding the house if 

 it is killed" (Frostath XI. 24). 



It is more than probable that the Scan- 

 dinavians when founding their colony in 

 that part of France to which they gave 

 the name of Normandy took with them 



many of their favourite breeds to become 

 the progenitors of the good chiens de 

 Normandie, the white St. Huberts, the 

 Bassets, Griffons, and those chiens courants 

 d poil ras, of which M. le Comte Lahens owns 

 the few surviving specimens. The Normans, 

 who were always lovers of good canine 

 society, brought dogs with them when they 

 came over to conquer England, but we 

 already possessed many good strains, and 

 our Mastiffs in particular were celebrated, 

 as were our Wolfdogs and Gazehounds. 

 There is a small group of British dogs 

 accompanying a hawking party figured in 

 the Bayeux Tapestry ; but the drawing is 

 crude, and it is hazardous to determine 

 the breeds. 



One animal appears to be a black Mastiff, 

 although such a dog would hardly be used 

 in the hunting field, even in the eleventh 

 century, and it is to be presumed that all 

 three running in advance of King Harold's 

 palfrey are hounds. The two smaller dogs 

 cannot be identified, but they are probably 

 terriers rather than spaniels. 



Between the Roman period and the 

 Middle Ages materials for the history of 

 the dog are scanty and indefinite, but there 

 is evidence that close attention was given 

 to those breeds which were used in various 

 forms of sport, and in their illuminated 

 manuscripts the monks were fond of intro- 

 ducing drawings of hounds, many of them 

 very beautiful, more particularly the stately 

 Deerhounds, which rank with the noblest 

 and most intelligent of dogs, and which 

 were classed among the three signs of a 

 gentleman — the two others being his horse 

 and his hawk. It was one of these that was 

 the favourite hound of King Arthur, who 

 hunted with him over the heaths of Tin- 

 tagel or among the woods of Caerleon in 

 pursuit of wolf, boar, or red deer. Very 

 famous was this " hound of deepest voice," 

 for whose baying Queen Guinevere listened 

 as she halted with Geraint on the knoll 

 above the waters of Usk, Cavall his name 

 — a name only less famous in Arthurian 

 legend than that of Hodain, the hound 

 linked so strangely with the fates of Tristram 

 and Iseult. Such, too, was the yet more 



