INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 109 



British poems of the Pagan period, and represent 

 more recondite doctrines than their present Armori- 

 can tenour pourtrays. Such is also the fact in the 

 tale relating to the Brachet with the leash, whereon 

 was inscribed the whole mystery of the chace ; which 

 having strayed, and passed into other hands, caused 

 a feud among King Arthur's knights.* These, 

 poems estabUsh the antiquity of spotted hunting- 

 dogs, or hounds, at a remote period in the East, 

 and, in the West, reproduce them already before its 

 historical era ; but disproves their British origin, 

 and leaves the question of the pendulous eai's unde- 

 termined. Hounds, shaped like the present, can- 

 not be traced in the old Frankish and Anglo-Saxon 

 manuscripts, they are all coursing greyhounds ; and 

 this character is continued, with but few exceptions, 

 in the emblem of fidelity or gentility, usually couched 

 on monuments at the feet of the effigies of knights, 

 to the last period of recumbent figures. 



We may therefore conclude, that the term Brac- 

 cus,+ Braque, or Brachet, originally designated a 

 sporting dog in general ; for sometimes a lady carries 

 one upon her palfrey, at others, it follows a knight 

 or page, and is engaged even in quelling a boar. 

 The old St. Hubert hound may well have answered 

 these purposes. 



* See Mone, Gesehichte des Heidenthums ; Wolfram von 

 Eachenbach, Titurel ; Geoffrey of Monmouth ; Thomas of 

 Britain, &c. 



t This term was first applied to the Greek Alopecides, by 

 Niphus, about 1550, and certainly without propriety. 



