Although not strictly in connection with the subject of this article, I will here relate a story told to me, on the same occasion, by that old farmer, because it struck me as being rather a good one, and is not particularly long.
Seeing that I took notice of a smock-frocked rustic employed in foddering the cattle,—a rustic whose legs and accent were to me exclusively reminiscent of the pleasant roads and lanes of cheery Somersetshire,—Farmer informed me that he was a newish importation, having made his appearance about there early in the previous winter. While snow, of such quality and in such quantity as they have it in that region, was yet a novelty to the bumpkin, he was dispatched on horseback, one day, to the neighboring village, strict instructions being given him to ride carefully in the middle of the track, as, treading in the deep snow, the horse might "ball,"—an expression applied to taking up snow in the hollow of the hoof, which causes the animal to stumble. An unusually long time elapsed before the messenger made his appearance from his mission, and then he was seen making his way painfully through the snow, leading the horse after him by the bridle.
"What's wrong now?" inquired Farmer, as he glanced at the animal's knees; "been down, I guess; did Old Horse ball?"
"Noa," replied Bumpkin, "a didn't joost bawl, but a groonted consoomedly every toime a coom down. Oi thowt a wur a-gwoan to bawl the last toime we coom down together, and zo oi joost stayed down and walked 'im whoam."
When doggy men beyond ocean talk about a terrier, they usually pronounce it tarrier, and not terrier, as we mostly call him on this bank of the Atlantic. There is no authority for the former pronunciation, that I know of, beyond usage, which, however, is much taken as a standard in England. Thus, an English merchant will talk to you about his clarks, an American about his clurks. The French word terrier—derived, of course, from terre—signifies not only the dog, but a burrow in the earth; a kind of retreat in which such dogs are supposed to pass a portion of their existence, occupied in the subterrene branches of the chase. It means, also, a land-roll or register. In Lower Canada, which is essentially France, I recollect the label, "Papier Terrier," upon the door of a public-land-office. A friend of mine, clandestinely and under cover of darkness, removed the label, substituting for it a scurrilous one setting forth "Pasteboard Poodle," an announcement which did not appear to convey any particular idea whatever to the unsettled mind of the haggard provincial chef du bureau, as it flashed upon him next morning in the light of the glad young autumn day. But, reverting to pronunciation, tare-ier would, of course, more correctly reverberate the sound of the French original than either of the other usages, while it would possess the advantage of conveying a suggestion of that proclivity for tearing, so characteristic of the animal designated by the term. On this important question the learned philologists wrangle. For my part, I stick to tarrier, which comes "oncommon handy," as the horse-dealer hinted, when reproved by the Cambridge student for reducing a noble animal nearly to the level of a donkey by calling him "an 'oss."
And of all the terrier tribe, there is no quainter little fellow than he of the Island of Skye,—known to his friends and admirers as the "Skye dog." This little animal, which, in length of spine, shortness of legs, wildness of hair, and litheness of movement, resembles one of those long, hirsute caterpillars oft-times to be observed by the happy rambler in the country, as it promenades across his path, possesses many distinctive traits, which separate him, in a manner, from Dog in general, assimilating him somewhat, indeed, to the ferce, which find in rapine and carnage the subsistence which Nature evidently has not intended that they should realize in communion with man. The peculiar odor of the fox is his, though in a mitigated degree. He loves to make a lair under the bushes by tearing up the turf with his teeth and paws, and to lie in it. He is of a shy and reserved disposition, and usually more lively at night than by day. These are attributes of beasts of prey. Unlike all other members of the terrier family, he cares nothing about rats. He will sit down and bark in a tone of contempt at one turned out before him in a close passage or room, declining, in fact, to recognize rats as game, unless entered at them while very young. I speak only of the pure, unmixed Isle-of-Skye dog, or "tassel terrier," as he is sometimes called by rabbit-hunters,—a breed difficult to obtain in perfection, and one which is particularly scarce in this country. The proper game or quarry of this animal is the otter, which he does not hesitate to follow into his very burrow in the river-banks; nor is he afraid to attack one nearly double his size.
Having, time after time, possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents—who understood no language but Gaelic—were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine type of his kind.
This animal was one of the smallest of his family, and of a color uncommon among them; for they are mostly either of a yellowish dun, or of that slaty mouse-color known among dog-fanciers as "blue,"—a tint, by the way, particularly appropriate for a dog of Skye. Sometimes they are black; but Sambo, better known to his familiars as Sam, was of a sooty brindle, with a very dark muzzle, and eyes burning out like black stars from the cloud of shaggy hair that mantled upon his brow. Next to the shortness of his legs, the length of his body was one of the most remarkable physical freaks I remember to have observed; neither of these attributes, however, having a chance of notice in comparison with the quantity and denseness of his long, soft hair,—for the coat of a true Skye dog is fleecy, rather than wiry. It was the joint result of the shortness of his legs and the length of his beard that the fatter appendage continually swept the ground,—an inconvenience which I once undertook to remedy by trimming it off short with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a chest of drawers.
When quite a pup, hardly half-grown, he played a trick unaccountable to me at this day as it was then. Sam had the run of the house, and he availed himself of it. On going into the breakfast-room, one morning early, I observed a singular phenomenon in connection with a large, cold round of beef, which was the pièce de résistance on the table. It was curious to behold a round of cold beef with a tail, which it wagged, and feathered, and beckoned with, as if to say, "Come, eat me." The tail was the tail of Sam, whose body was concealed far down in the interior of the tower of beef, into which he had cut his way with great perseverance and success. But the puzzle was, how he got there; for there was no chair within reach of the table, and he was much too small to have jumped up on it; while the theory of the servant, who propounded that he must have climbed up by the table-cloth, tooth over claw, was wild, and simply entitled to the contempt of any person aware of the difference between dog and cat. There is but one acceptable theory on the subject,—that he was down in the caverns of the beef, tail and all, before it was brought up-stairs, and so escaped notice.
Early in life, he contracted—from evil association, perhaps—a vulgar trick of running after carriages and barking at the horses' heels, a trick of which I in vain tried to break him. Once, when he was about a year old, I took him up beside me into a high calèche, in which we were going some distance. The moment the horse started, Sam jumped out to have a bark at his heels, when, to my horror, the wheel of the vehicle, in which there were three of us, went right over the middle of his body, cutting him, apparently, in two; but he was up in a second, and barking at heels and wheels for half a mile before we could pull up and get him in again. This accident appeared to decide him in the choice of a profession, for he devoted himself energetically, from that hour, to the pursuit and baying-at of all manner of wheeled things propelled by horse-power.