60 
The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare’s Time. 
The Sheep Dog, or Ramhundt, was employed then as 
Sheep Dog> now ^ & uarc ^ fl° c k- According to Caius 
it was a dog of medium size, and exceedingly 
intelligent. 
Iceland Dogs were kept as pets by ladies, and are 
T , , ^ often mentioned. The dramatist Shirley seems 
Iceland Dog-. J 
to consider them as a necessary part oi the 
establishment of a woman of fashion :— 
“ You have a waiting-woman, 
A monkey, squirrel, and a brace of Islands, 
Which may he thought superfluous in your family 
When husbands come to rule.” 
( Hyde Park , i. 2.) 
Pistol exclaims : “ Pish for thee, Iceland dog! Thou 
prick-ear’d cur of Iceland!” (Henry V ., ii. 1,43). Drayton 
declares, in one of his minor poems, that in consequence 
of the prevalent fashion for light hair among ladies— 
“ Our water-dogs and Islands here are shorn, 
White hair of women here so much is worn.” 
(Mooncalf.) 
From the description of these little favourites by Dr. 
Caius, they would seem to have been long-haired, white, 
sharp-eared dogs, not unlike the Skye terriers of the 
present day, though of a less amiable disposition. Caius 
writes:— 
“ Use and custome hath intertained other dogges of an outlandishe 
kinde, but a few of the same beying of a pretty bygnesse; I mean 
Iseland dogges, curled and rough all over, which by reason of the 
length of their heare make showe neither of face, nor of body. And 
yet these curres, forsoothe, because they are so straunge, are greatly set 
by, esteemed, taken up, and made of, many times in the roome of the 
spaniell gentle or comforter.” 
Then follows the usual sneer of the author at the 
eagerness of the English people for foreign novelties:— 
“ A beggerly beast brought out of barbarous borders, from the utter¬ 
most countryes northward, &c., we stare at, we gase at, we muse, we 
marvaile at, like an asse of Cumanum, like Thales with the brasen 
shancks, like the man in the moone.” ( Reprint , p. 37*.) 
