THE BLOODHOUND IN THE VALE. 139 



a draft of eight couple of bloodhounds bred by 

 Captam Eoden of Kells, in County Meath, who 

 for the blood in his own kennels had gone to Mr 

 Jennings in Yorkshire and Mr Cowen of Blay- 

 don Burns, near Newcastle. The young hounds 

 were bought by Lord Wolverton in 1871, and in 

 1875 his pack consisted of sixteen and a half 

 couple, of which ten couple were of his own 

 breeding. These hounds had all the distinguishing 

 marks of the old black St Huberts, of which they 

 w^ere the direct descendants. Whether this breed 

 had been known in Engfland before the time of 

 the Norman Conquest is an open question, but at 

 least from the latter part of the eleventh century 

 the bloodhound was in this country. Though 

 more generally used singly for tracking wounded 

 deer, and for this purpose kept in our larger country 

 houses, there are instances of whole packs having 

 been brought over from France, and in both coun- 

 tries care seems to have been taken to keep the 

 breed pure, so that our own name for them of 

 bloodhound — i.e., hound of pure blood — is not a 

 misnomer. 



The St Hubert hound must be for ever asso- 

 ciated with the old Flemish monastery of St 

 Hubert, where both the black and the white variety 

 of this noble breed were kept by succeeding races 

 of the monastic house. The old records of the 

 abbey tell us that for suspected cases of hydro- 

 phobia St Hubert's was a great centre for pilgrim- 

 ages in the Middle Ages, the sufferers being re- 



