72 THE BANDOG OR MASTIFF. 



may be imagined, when it is asserted that Alfred, king of 

 Northumberland, gave to Benedict Biscop, (a learned priest, 

 who had travelled to Rome to collect M.S.S.) a large landed 

 estate, for one book only. 



It is just possible that /Elfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, 

 who died in 1006, may have mentioned the bandog in his 

 Glossary of Latin and Saxon words, but in the general way 

 as Latin was the usual language of literature and correspon- 

 dence until the conquest, any mention of the mastiff would 

 probably be under the Latin terms molossus, villaticus, or 

 catenarius. In Senaca, who flourished A.D. 50, are the 

 following lines: " Iracevis Catenario Cani, ct his quum multiim 

 latvavit objetto cibo mansuescit. Sen Lib. iii. de Ira. And 

 Columella of Cadiz, A.D. 63, also calls the bandog " catenatus 

 janitor," and canis villaticus, classical terms we shall see our 

 English writers made use of. Perhaps a careful research 

 among the few Saxon M.S.S.'s etc., \vould reveal some 

 mention of the breed. 



The mastiff has commonly borne the name of bandog from 

 the time of Canute to the last century, when that undisputed 

 authority on all such subjects, W. A. Osbaldiston, in his 

 British Sportsman's Dictionary, published 1792, ignores the 

 term mastiff, using like a true Saxon the name bandog to 

 define the breed. 



Ban-dog or band-dog is of true Saxon origin, from banda, 

 a chain, or any narrow ligament by which a thing is bound, 

 and doc, a dog, hence banda-doc, or band-dog, a chained dog, 

 and it was the recognised term for the mastiff. Chaucer 

 mentions the bandog. Sir Thos. More, (1500 about) p. 586, 

 c. spells the word bande-dogge. Spencer, in The Shepherd's 

 Calendar, first published in 1579, has, under September, " We 



