Heads and tales

by Unknown

That's the shepherd-dog, as we have heard him described from a specimen, which was the friend and follower of a valued one, who, when a boy ('tis many years ago), frisked with the dog, over one of the many ferny haughs that margin the lovely Tweed above and below Peebles. It is the collie we have seen, on one of the sheep-farms of Lanarkshire, obey its young master by a word or two, as unintelligible to us as Japanese. But to the Culter "Luath," to hear was to obey; and in a quarter of an hour a flock of sheep, which had been feeding on a hillSide half a mile off, were brought back, driven by this faithful "bit doggie." We wonder not that shepherds love their dogs. Why, even the New Smithfield cattle-drovers, who drive sheep along the streets of London on a Monday or Friday, never even require to urge their faithful partners. Well may the gifted authoress of "The Dream" address "the faithful guardian"—

"Oh, tried and trusted! thou whose love
Ne'er changes nor forsakes,
Thou proof, how perfect God hath stamp'd
The meanest thing He makes;
Thou, whom no snare entraps to serve,
No art is used to tame
(Train'd, like ourselves, thy path to know,
By words of love and blame);
Friend! who beside the cottage door,
Or in the rich man's hall,
With steadfast faith still answerest
The one familiar call;
Well by poor hearth and lordly home
Thy couchant form may rest,
And Prince and Peasant trust thee still,
To guard what they love best."
Hon. Mrs Norton, "The Dream," &c., p. 192.

No ordinary-sized volume, much less a short article, could give a tithe of the true anecdotes of members of the dog race. Mere references to their biography would take up a volume of Bibliography itself, just as their forms, and character, and "pose," give endless subject to the painter. Of modern authors, no one loved dogs more truly than Sir Walter Scott, as the reader of his writings and of his biography is well aware;[52] but it may not be generally known that, on the only occasion when the great novelist met the Ayrshire peasant,—

"Virgilium tantum vidi,"—

the poem, which had made Burns a wonder to the boy then "unknown," was that of "The Twa Dogs;" so that, even then, Scott had commenced to show his attachment to these faithful followers. It was in the house of Sir Adam Ferguson, when Scott was a mere lad; and the scene was described most vividly to the writer by the late Scottish knight, after whose battle in South Italy the author of "Marmion" named his pet staghound Maida, or, as Scott pronounced it, "Myda." It was as the author of "The Twa Dogs" that young Ferguson and Scott regarded Burns on his entrance into the room with such wistful attention. The story is told in Lockhart, and we will not quote it further; but, leaving dogs of our own days and lands to Mr Jesse, who has given an interesting volume on them, we will close with a few paragraphs on the dog of the East—a very differently treated animal to that generally prized and esteemed "friend" of man in these lands of the West.

The Holy Scriptures show us that dogs were generally despised. We select three, out of many instances. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" was the question with which Hazael, ignorant of the deceitfulness of his own heart, indignantly replied to Elisha, when the prophet told him of the evil that he would yet do unto the children of Israel (2 Kings viii. 13). He, "who spake as never man spake," knowing the faith of the Syrophœnician woman, and giving her an opportunity of manifesting it "for our example," said, in the Syriac fashion of thought, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs" (Mark vii. 27). And the apostle John, in that wondrous close of the prophetical writings, says, "For without," i.e., outside of the New Jerusalem, "are dogs" (Rev. xxii. 5). In the East up to the present day, with but few exceptions, dogs are treated with great dislike. We might quote passages in proof from almost every Eastern traveller, and may venture to extract one from the graphic page of the Rev. W. Graham, who lived five years in Syria, and who has given some noble word-pictures of men, and streets, and scenes in Damascus and other Turkish towns. Writing of Damascus,[53] he remarks, "The dogs are considered unclean, and are never domesticated in the East. They are thin, lean, fox-like animals, and always at the starving point. They live, breed, and die in the streets. They are useful as scavengers. They are neither fondled nor persecuted, but simply tolerated; and no dog has an owner, or ever follows and accompanies a man as the sheep do. I once went out in the evening at Beyrout, with my teacher to enjoy the fresh air and talk Arabic. My little English dog, the gift of a friend, followed us. We passed through a garden, where a venerable Moslem was sitting on a stone, silently and solemnly engaged in smoking his pipe. He observed the dog following us, and was astonished at it, as something new and extraordinary; and rising, and making out of the way, he cried out, 'May his father be accursed! Is that a dog or a fox?'" Again, in Damascus, should a worn-out horse, donkey, or camel die in the streets, in a few hours the dogs have devoured it; and the powerful rays of the sun dry up all corrupt matter. Mr Graham tells us that the dogs of Damascus are brown, blackish, or of an ash colour, and that he saw no white or spotted specimens. He never saw a case of hydrophobia, nor did he hear a bark. The dogs "howl, and make noise enough," he continues, "but the fine, well-defined bow-wow is entirely wanting." With a quiet humour, he hints at the bark being a mark of the civilised, domesticated dog, and as denoting, apparently, "the refinement of canine education." We have been struck with the attempts of Penny's Esquimaux dogs, deposited by the gallant Arctic mariner in the Zoological Gardens, to get up a bark somewhat like the "well-bred" dogs in the cages near them. Mr Graham tells us of the Damascus dogs having established a kind of police among themselves, and, like the rooks, driving all intruders far from their district.

Dogs were not always disregarded in the East. Herodotus informs us,[54] during the Persian occupation the number of Indian dogs kept in the province of Babylon for the use of the governor was so great, that four cities were exempted from taxes for maintaining them. In the mountain parts of India, travellers describe the great dogs of Thibet and Cashmere as being much prized.

"The domestic dog of Ladak," says Major Cunningham,[55] "is the well-known shepherd's dog, or Thibetan mastiff. They have shaggy coats, generally quite black, or black and tan; but I have seen some of a light brown colour. They are usually ill-tempered to strangers; but I have never found one that would face a stick, although they can fight well when attacked. The only peculiarity that I have noticed about them is, that the tail is nearly always curled upward on to the back, where the hair is displaced by the constant rubbing of the tail." And that the same massive variety was also prized in ancient times we know, by a singularly fine, small bas-relief in baked clay, found in 1849 in the Birs-i-Nimrud, Babylon, by Sir Henry Rawlinson, which is preserved in the British Museum, to which it was presented by the late Prince Albert, and an outline of which, reduced one-half, will convey a good idea to the reader of its form. We may add that this bas-relief was first noticed and figured, in 1851, in the third edition of a truly learned and excellent work on "Nineveh and Persepolis," by Mr Vaux of the British Museum (p. 183). These dogs, then, were nothing else than big, "low jowled" Thibetan mastiffs, such as we occasionally see brought over by some Indian officer; and the use for which they were employed by the ancient kings and their attendants is strikingly exhibited on some slabs from a chamber in the north palace of Koujunjik, a part of the great Nineveh. On some of these slabs, dogs are seen engaged in pulling down wild asses, deer, and other animals; and they were evidently kept also to assist in securing nobler game—"the king of beasts;"—the sport of which animals shows how truly the Assyrian king was named "Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord."—Adam White, in "Excelsior" (with additions).