344 The Dog Book 



believe that the name is from the old English word "coll," meaning black 

 or dark, and that as the collies were mainly black it just meant the black 

 dog, and then came into use for the sheep dog. The objections to that are 

 many, but here are two: the word collie, or coUey, or, still older, coally, 

 came south, and there were plenty of black dogs in England to which the 

 word collie or any of its equivalents was never applied; and secondly, 

 there is a Gaelic or Celtic word for the dog, which is phonetically spelled 

 collie, and with the broad "o" of the Northerner could very well be Bewick's 

 "coally." 



Lee holds to the opinion that it came from black-faced sheep being 

 called by that name, and thus the dog that looked after the colleys was the 

 coUey dog. To accept this we must assume that this name for the variety 

 of sheep was universal, and that is not in evidence. Lee quotes the "Dic- 

 tionary of Husbandry," 1743, which gives the word coUey as being "such 

 sheep as have black faces and legs. The wool of these sheep is very harsh 

 with hairs, and not so white as other sheep." It seems somewhat strange 

 that this name for certain sheep should have died out so quickly, for it is 

 found nowhere else that we are aware of, and surely persons who wrote of 

 collies a century ago had pretty good knowledge of wh^t was common 

 fifty years before. Of course if there was not a more evidl^nt origin than 

 the Highland word — which is akin to the Irish word for colleen — ^the black- 

 faced-sheep suggestion would be a little better than any other, but it is 

 not worth considering in the face of the very plain fact that \the word is 

 Gaelic or Celtic. 



It is probable that the word travelled south with more freedom in some 

 directions. Our knowledge of Scotland is of the east side, Editiburgh to 

 Dunbar, and later at school at Jedburgh; good old Jethart, withlits relics 

 of the oldest of English in its "yow" and "mie" for you and mel and its 

 historical Jethart justice. We do not recall when we did not knowi the dog 

 as the collie, pronounced as Bewick spelled it. Undoubtedly we heard it 

 called shepherd's dog, and probably collie dog, but as long as vite have 

 known the dog we seem to have known him as the collie, and that of] course 

 from what our elders called the variety. At the same time we hi^ve no 

 recollection of the name as applied to sheep of any kind. : 



From the first drawings of the rough collie, which are those of Bewick 

 and Howitt, we find him practically the same dog that he is to-day, and 

 totally different from any other dog in the British Isles, hence he is a good 



