The Hound Family 597 



for the "lobster," a very old name for the stoat or martin; but this not being 

 known to a French sporting author, he undertook to instruct his fellow 

 countrymen how to catch rabbits by putting a crawfish into the burrows, 

 having first netted all exits. The crawfish was supposed to crawl in till he 

 got to the rabbits and then nip them till they made a bolt into one of the 

 nets. If we did not have the French book with the instructions in we 

 would feel inclined to doubt the truth of this story, to which, if we mistake 

 not, we first saw reference in one of Colonel Thornton's books. 



The meaning of harrier was originally to harry, to rouse the game, and 

 had no reference to hares at all, it being more in regard to deer. In an Act 

 of Parliament of one of the Georges this meaning is given to the name har- 

 rier, and was ridiculed in a sporting dictionary of about 1800. From the 

 old spelling of the word, or the variety of methods of spelling it, there is 

 ample evidence that the writers made no attempt to connect the dog with the 

 hare. The Duke of York writes of "heirers," and other spellings are 

 hayrers, hayreres, herettoir, heyrettars, herettor, hairetti. It will be noted 

 that four of these spellings have "e" as the first vowel, while at that 

 time the word hare was always spelt with an "a"; the spelling of harrier 

 then began to change, and "a" replaced the "e" as the first vowel, and 

 when harrier became thoroughly established the name eventually became 

 more associated with the hounds specially kept for hare hunting until it 

 was given to no other, and it finally became accepted that the harrier was a 

 dog kept for hare hunting, and presumably always had been. That is 

 something we can trace, but the probable transfer of the name of the 

 badger dog to the hare courser is something that must have taken place 

 years before writing was used to any extent in England. 



The old name for running hounds in common use in Europe was brach 

 in one of its many forms. Shakespeare uses the term several times, such as 

 "I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish." "Mastiff, greyhound, 

 mongrel grim, hound or spaniel, brach orlym." Mr. Baillie Grohman 

 gives the quotation from "Taming of the Shrew" as follows:— "Huntsman, 

 I charge thee, tender well my hounds, brach Merriman — the poor cur is em- 

 bossed," but it is now generally held that it should be "trash Merriman — 

 the poor cur is embossed," otherwise, "take care of Merriman, the poor dog 

 is tired out." 



Nathaniel Cox, whose "Gentleman's Recreation" went through several 

 editions from 1674 to 1721, gives "rache" as the latest rendering of the word. 



