'Murphy': A Message to Dog Lovers

by Ernest Gambier-Parry

So, in another instant, these two would be out together; the one going as far as tether would allow; the other doing what was yet another of his joys in life, and that caused such fun and merriment to lookers-on—the hunting of birds. Of that he never tired on the longest or the hottest day. Blackbirds gave the finest sport of all, as they generally flew only three feet above the ground. He knew their note at once; but probably the laugh of the green woodpecker vexed him more than most, while he certainly regarded the mocking notes of cuckoos as insults to himself. Of birds of various kinds he caught many, young and old, but was never known to hurt a single one.

The most remarkable of his exploits in this direction was when he found himself at one time by the sea. It was a lonely coast, where great crimson cliffs rose sheer out of the sand, their ledges, here and there, covered with tamarisk, gorse, and shaven thorn—right to their very summit three hundred feet above, from whence the moors stretched far away inland. A heavy surf beat there at times, setting these cliffs echoing in such a way as to make speech difficult. On these wild days it was well that this dog had learnt to work so perfectly by hand, for he had no fear of the rollers, and the wonder was that he escaped from being drowned.

At the bottom of the whole fun of this new situation lay the fact that these cliffs were inhabited by innumerable gulls. To catch one of these was Murphy’s aim, and often was he washed out on to the sands in a smother of spindrift, in his mad eagerness to attain his end. The herring-gulls were the finest sport of all, with their constant melancholy cries—“pew-il,” “pee-ole,” or their hoarser note of warning, “kak-k-kak”; their bodies two feet in length; their spread of wing no less than four feet four. For months he chased them, till at last some must possibly have known him. It was perhaps on this account that one of them was not quick enough in getting under way on one occasion. Murphy flung himself into the air and got him; and not only got him, but brought him along, with the great wings beating the air about him, so that the dog was scarcely visible for the bird. It was the old story again, of the hare in his earlier days, for the gull was not harmed, and when liberated flew out to sea, with the cry “pew-il,” “pee-ole” flung back from the waves as he went.

“I never thought to live tu zee the like o’ that,” remarked a longshoreman passing at the time: but then he was a stranger to Murphy, and also to his ways.

What happiness was to be had in life; what sport and splendid fun—sport all day long; fun without end! Did not the morning begin with a game?—the dog lying down in one corner of the hall, fixing his master with his eye as he appeared, and then, after pausing a while as if to say, “Are you ready?” launching himself full tilt, till he was brought up in a final leap against his master’s chest, full five feet from the ground. Of course the whole hall was in a smother every time, with mats and rugs all out of place upon the slippery floor. And then the noise! The only thing was to leave the house and work off some of the steam out there.

No dog with a particle of nervousness or hesitation left would do such things as that. But he only did them with his master. When with others, report had it that he was a different dog, with no taste for hunting or for chasing birds—a dog, in fact, that invariably got into one room and lay there alone, unless he changed his place for the mat by the front door.

Of course He would come back. Folk always did. There could be no break in this friendship: it would last for ever. He had heard his master count the years: “Four”—that was his own age—he knew that much; and from four his master would count up to ten; then hesitate; then say “eleven”; then hesitate again, and remark, “twelve—perhaps: yes, little man; you’ll see me out—easy!”

And those who watched and looked on added this to what they had said before, “What will happen, if anything happens to that dog?”

It was a funny way of putting it, but the remark was always met, in reply, with, “Don’t let us meet trouble half-way, or make a circuit of the hills to look for it;

“‘Fortis cadere, cedere non potest.’”