[Sidenote: Dryden’s Ovid’s Metam. B. +i.+]
As when th’ impatient greyhound, slipp’d from far, Bounds o’er the glebe to course the fearful hare, She in her speed does all her safety lay, And be with double speed pursues the prey; O’erruns her at the sitting turn, and licks His chaps in vain, and blows upon the flix: She ’scapes, and for the neighbouring covert strives, And gaining shelter, doubts if yet she lives.
[Sidenote: Pausanias in Bœoticis. c. +xix.+]
And again, in the fable of Lælaps, the far-famed “grewnd” of Bœotia;
[Sidenote: Ovid. Metam. L. +vii.+ vs. 781.]
Tollor eo capioque novi spectacula cursûs: Quà modò deprendi, modò se subducere ab ipso Vulnere visa fera est: nec limite callida recto, In spatiumque fugit; sed decipit ora sequentis, Et redit in gyrum, ne sit suus impetus hosti. Imminet hic, sequiturque parem: similisque tenenti Non tenet, et vacuos exercet in aëra morsus.
[Sidenote: Golding’s Ovid’s Metam. Seventh booke.]
I gat me to the knap Of this same hill, and there beheld of this strange course the hap, In which the beaste seemes one while caught, and ere a man would thinke, Doth quickely give the grewnd the slip, and from his biting shrinke, And like a wilie foxe he runs not forth directly out, Nor makes a winlas over all the champion fields about, But doubling and indenting still avoydes his enmies lips, And turning short, as swift about as spinning wheele he wips, To disappoint the snatch. The grewnd pursuing at a inch Doth cote him, never loosing ground; but likely still to pinch, Is at the sudden shifted off: continually he snatches In vaine: for nothing in his mouth save onely aire he catches.
Nor will the reader of modern Cynegetica forget the vivid sketch of Pterelas’s course by the Latin poet of Venusium:
[Sidenote: J. Darcii Venusini Canes.]
Ocyùs insequitur Pterelas, cursuque citato Intervalla facit lati decrescere campi. Jam propior propiorque micat, jam captat hianti Summa pedum rostro, jam terga fugacia stringit. Ille pavet, flexoque obliquat tramite cursus, Et dubiâ trepidans formidine, jamque teneri Se putat, et rursùm tangentis ab ore recedit, Fataque momento sibi prorogat, æmula donec Rostra levis mergat miserando in corpore victor, Fulmineus victor, gemino cui tramite lumbos Spina subit graciles, &c.
The many portraits of these classical and semi-classical Cynegetica will be fitly closed with the following elegiac verses on a Canis Venatrix, whose characteristic attributes, pathetically written on a monumental stone by an unknown hand, but at once applied by us to the Celtic type, exemplify in the entombed a few of the anecdotes of Arrian’s Hormé:
_Epitaphium Canis Venatricis._
[Sidenote: Poetæ Latini Minores. Wernsdorf. Tom. +i.+ p. 121.]
Gallia me genuit, nomen mihi divitis undæ Concha dedit, formæ nominis aptus honos. Docta per incertas audax discurrere silvas, Collibus hirsutas atque agitare feras. Non gravibus vinclis unquam consueta teneri, Verbera nec niveo corpore sæva pati. Molli namque sinu domini dominæque jacebam, Et noram in strato lassa cubare toro. Et plus, quam licuit muto, canis ore loquebar, Nulli latratus pertimuere meos. Et jam fata subî, partu jactata sinistro, Quam nunc sub parvo marmore terra teget.
The early history of the greyhound is confounded with the Epirote, as if they had a common lineage—a mistake which has arisen from their being considered equally of Grecian origin—whereas the greyhound has no connexion with ancient Greece. Fable, however, assigns them a common descent from the Lælaps of Bœotia,[413]—from whom also sprung other dogs of classic fame. The history of this celebrated hound, and the lineage and geographical distribution of his descendants, are particularized in the Cynegeticon of Bargæus:
[Sidenote: P. A. Bargæi Cyneget. L. +v.+]
Illum autem specie, præstantem animisque superbum Cynthia dilectæ dederat pro munere Nymphæ: Ipsaque mox juveni Æolidæ: genialia postquam Fulcra tori, et dulceis iterùm conjunxit amores, Jucundumque sinu fovit complexa maritum. Cujus ope innumeras sylvis prædatus, et agris Ille feras, ne tanta olim sublata periret Aut morte, aut sterili mox accedente senectâ, Et caderet simul extincto cum Lælape virtus: Subjecitque canem, sobolemque è matre recepit Optatam, Cretæque ultro concessit habendam. Inde autem vobis auctâ jam prole nepotes Allatos Graiæ primùm accepistis Amyclæ, Tempore quo gemini fidissima pectora fratres Nunc lepores canibus, cursu nunc dorcadas acreis, Et nunc Tænario cervas in littore agebant; Æripedes cervas, quibus haud velocior unquam Evolat Æoliis aquilo dimissus ab antris. Nec fuit ipsa diu tam magni muneris expers Epirus. Miscere genus monstravit: at ollis Ingentes animi, solersque industria crevit.
[Sidenote: De Venatione. c. +iii.+]
[Sidenote: J. Vlitii Venat. Novant.]
[Sidenote: Encyc. Méthod. Les chasses. p. 290.]
Arrian, from whose Manual of Coursing I purposely abstain to quote at length, because the reader can refer to my translation with little trouble, calls the greyhound by the barbarous title of οὐέρτραγος κύων,[414] expressly stating that he is so denominated in the Celtic tongue, not from any particular people, like the Cretan, Carian, and Spartan hounds, but from his quality of speed, as some of the Cretans are distinguished by certain peculiarities of character. Here, however, our author’s ignorance of the Celtic language has led him into an error. Being unable, probably, to explain a term which had reached him in a corrupt form, he falsely derived it from the dog’s most characteristic property, ἀπὸ τῆς ὠκύτητος: whereas in truth it is compounded of _Velt_, a plain or open country,[415] the “arvum vacuum” of Ovid, and _racha_, a hound of chase;[416] and consequently signifies a champaign-dog, _un lévrier de plaine_, a hound adapted for coursing over an open country.
The Vertagus, or Tumbler, (“quòd se, dum prædatur, vertat,” &c.) I scarce need observe, has no affinity whatever with the οὐέρτραγος κύων of Arrian. By Dr. Caius, in his Libellus de Canibus Britannicis, he is fully described; nor are his tricks forgotten by the Latin poet of Caen;
[Sidenote: Jac. Savary Alb. Dianæ Leporicidæ. p. 5.]
Seque volutantes, ludisque cuniculum amicis Fallentes, prædæ colludentesque futuræ, Informat catulos Angli solertia nanos.
The files of classical antiquity afford no counterpart to the British Tumbler, unless it be in the Vertagus of Martial—a dog already allotted to the Celtic family, as, in some copies of the epigrammatist, written Vertragus.
[Sidenote: Gloss. Arch. p. 113.]
[Sidenote: De bello Gallico. L. +iv.+ 12.]
[Sidenote: Symmachi Epist. L. +ii.+ Ep. 77.]
It remains for me to mention the distinctions which have been made by naturalists in the greyhound type of our own islands,[417] and to endeavour to trace its connexion with Gallia Celtica. The modern sub-varieties of our systematic writers on natural history are named from the countries in which the respective sorts most abound, English, Scotch, and Irish greyhounds. Spelman, whose authority is entitled to weight, in his remarks “De Canibus Veterum,” speaking of the “Leporarius levipes, qui ex visu prædam appetit arripitque, a greyhound, Ovidio Canis Gallicus,” subjoins, “sed propriè magìs _Britannicus_;” as if he deemed him of British origin,[419] a native of our isle, like the inhabitants of the interior mentioned by Cæsar, “quos natos in insulâ ipsâ, memoriâ proditum dicunt;”—but he cites no testimony in support of his opinion. I do not believe either of the three sub-varieties of the dog in question indigenous of Great Britain; but rather that all our insular sorts originally sprang from the Celtic Vertragus:—the probability of which is supported by the history of the distribution of the Celts themselves, and the name under which the dogs were sent by Flavian to his brother Symmachus at Rome. The Scots, a Celtic tribe, previously inhabiting some part of Western Europe, emigrated into Ireland during the third century, and gave to that, isle, _pro tempore_, the name of Scotland. Thence they spread over the Western islands, and took possession of the neighbouring district of Argyle, the land of the _Gael_ or _Gaul_—giving eventually their name to the Northern part of Britain generally. May we not suppose the Irish and Scotch greyhounds to have been primevally derived from the same Celtic stock, accompanying these emigrants of Celtic Europe to Ireland, and thence to Scotland; in one or other of which territories they received the name of Canes Scotici, from the Scotish emigrants of Celtica, who accompanied them?[420] and may not the English greyhound, improved in speed by careful management and judicious breeding, as his master increased in civilization and became more reclaimed, be derived, through such intermediate links, from the same parent source? The coarser varieties of the North, and of the sister Isle, are rarely seen in South Britain; and though at first closely connected with the Celt, and amongst his earliest descendants, are now considered farther removed from the genuine type of Celtica, the οὐέρτραγος κύων of the Greek manual, in consequence of commixture with the _canes bellicosi_ and _sagaces_.