Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

The genuine Celtic greyhound, such as he is represented on the Arch of Constantine, is the "Canis venaticus Graius seu Græcus"

assisted in extirpating the wolf from the sylvan fastnesses of our islands, was heretofore of far greater size than the writer's ἄῤῥην κύων τῇ ἀληθείᾳ γενναῖος - of whom he De Venatione might farther say in the words of Ovid,

non dicere posses

Laude pedum formæne bono præstantior esset.

Indeed Mr. Ray's definition of the Canis Graius Hibernicus makes him of the greatest size of the whole canine race; "Canis omnium quos hactenùs vidimus maximus, Molossum ipsum magnitudine superans-quod ad formam corporis et mores attinet, cani Græco vulgari per omnia similis. Horum usus est ad lupos capiendos."

If the reader be interested in the arcana of wolf-catching, he will find illustrations, and anecdotes thereof, in Oppian. Cyneg. iv. vs. 212.—in the Venationes Ferarum of Strada and Galle (pl. 49.)-Lupos Venandi Ratio of J. A. Lonicer-La Chasse du Loup of Jean de Clamorgan-Mayster of Game, c. vII. fo. 40.-Turbervile's Art of Venerie, p. 208.-Venationis Lupinæ Leges of Savary, &c. The latter author turns out his whole kennel and armoury for the annihilation of this "fera bellua "— even the anathematized lévrier is now admitted:

Non hanc, quæ lepori, nec quæ indulgentia cervo

Debetur, meruêre lupi: fera bellua nullo
Non sternenda modo: non illam sexus et ætas,
Nullaque tempestas violento à funere servet.

Non hîc Spartani canis interdicitur usu;

Lina placent, catapulta juvat, venabula, cippus,

Decipulæ, foveæ, atque podostraba, pardalianches,

Et concurrentis vaga vociferatio plebis.

Derived from the Irish greyhound, and not very far removed from the original stock, was the gazehound of past days:

Seest thou the gazehound, how with glance severe
From the close herd he marks the destined deer;

How every nerve the greyhound's stretch displays,
The bare preventing in her airy maze, &c.

By Dr. Caius, he is supposed to be faithfully portrayed in the following extract: "Quod visu lacessit, nare nihil agit, sed oculo: oculo vulpem leporemque persequitur, oculo seligit medio de grege feram, et eam non nisi bene saginatam et opimam : oculo insequitur: oculo perditam requirit: oculo, si quando in gregem redeat, secernit, cæteris relictis omnibus, secretamque cursu denuò fatigat ad mortem. Agasaum nostri abs re quod intento sit in feram oculo, vocant," &c. To this portrait I can assimilate no dog at present known in this country, (though, it is probable, such

C. XXXII.

Ovid. Metam.
L. x. 562.

Raii Synopsis
Animal.

Jac. Savary
Venatio
Lupina.

Tickell's Miscellanies.

De Canibus
Brit. Libel.

Synopsis Animalium.

Arrian, de Venatione.

C. XV. XVI. XVII.

of Ray;" qui aspectu feras venatur, cursu velocissimus, formå
corporis et incessu decorus ;"1-a definition strictly harmonizing with
Arrian's more copious description, in c. III. c. VIII. sub fine, and
other parts of his manual. The genuine quarry of this hound is the
little fugacious hare; of which the historian of the Celtic chase
supplies us with many illustrative anecdotes. That such was
"the

quarry" whereat "the gallant greyhounds," Hormé, Bonnas, Cirras, were wont to "strain," over the champaign fields of

2

Hor. Od. I.
L. 1. 27.

might be produced between the Irish greyhound and blood-hound,) nor do the classic ages afford any counterpart to it.

For Dacier's explanation of the "catuli fideles" of Horace-" seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus"—as des chiens qui suivent bien la bête, qui ne prennent jamais le change, so readily acceded to by the Delphin annotator, as portraying the English gazehound, is far too fanciful to establish a race of these "chasseurs à vue” in ancient Italy. Horace merely gives sagacity and steadiness to deer-hounds, or possibly the negative quality of not opening in pursuit of their game.

1. To this definition Ray subjoins, "nonnullis Scoticus," as if he considered the Scotch greyhound of the same type-that there was, in short, only one variety—the English and Scotch being identical. The additional words would of course include the supplementary hound of Gesner's Appendix, and probably were added with that intent.

Arrian's work was unknown to the great German naturalist—not having been discovered in the Vatican library, when he compiled his celebrated Historia Animalium, nor indeed till a century later. That Ray, too, was unacquainted with the Greek Manual, seems equally clear. Thence the strong points of resemblance in the ancient and modern descriptions of a dog, hypothetically the same, impart the more interest, and obtain the more credence, from the impossibility of a collusive adaptation of the one to the other, and from both portraits corresponding with the images of the Celtic hound, which have come down to us on ancient monuments, the Arch of Constantine, gems, numismata, &c. &c.

2. See Arrian. de Venatione, c. XVIII. ebye ☎ Kißßà, eʊye û Bóvva, nalŵs ye & 'Opuh. These we may suppose to have been some of the names of the favourite archetypes of the Celtic kennel; but of the particular scene of their exertions we have no evidence to adduce. Born at Nicomedia, and occupied for the most part with civil and military engagements in the East, at a distance from Celtica, properly so called, (within the boundaries of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Ocean,) we know not when or where Arrian became acquainted with the Vertragus. Was the hound existing in Asia Minor in the second century, seeing that he is noticed at a later period by the Greek poet of Cilicia, and the Platonic philosopher of Paphlagonia? The Celts themselves are found there, as colonists, at an early dateeven in the very district of which Nicomedia was the metropolis. Stephanus of

Cisalpine or Transalpine Gaul, or wherever the father of the leash
slipped the "
proavorum atavi" of the courser's hound,1 can admit,
I think, of no doubt. Indeed, the field-instructions of the Cynege-
ticus refer almost exclusively to hare-coursing: nor does it appear
that the author himself, sensible, as he confessedly was, of the pecu-
liar physical adaptation of the greyhound to the hare-course, was
ever guilty of misapplying the dog to inappropriate quarry. The
red-deer, however, is noticed by him, in his 23rd chapter, as a chase
of the Vertragus, fraught with imminent danger, and needing high-
mettled hounds. And, subsequently, the same animal is pursued
with Scythian and Illyrian galloways on the open plains of Moesia,
Dacia, Scythia, and Illyria: 3-and, in the following chapter, we
find the like diversions practised in Africa with barbs;

whereby

Byzantium mentions the Tolistoboii—ἔθνος Γαλατῶν ἑσπερίων μετοικησάντων ἐκ τῆς KeλToyaλarías és Biluvíav. (See also Strabo Geogr. L. IV.) And other colonies are recorded by Strabo among the Thracians and Illyrians, Κελτοὺς τοὺς ἀναμεμιγμέ νους τοῖς τε Θραξὶ καὶ τοῖς Ἰλλυριοίς—the descendants of whom are perhaps the deercoursers of Arrian's 23rd chapter, whom I have there called Celto-Scythians: note 4. sub fine.

De Venat.
C. XXIV.

1. Although it is clear, almost to demonstration, that the greyhound was utterly unknown to ancient Greece in the days of the elder Xenophon, I readily allow that Greece may have been Arrian's coursing-field, with the hound of Celtica, at a later period-an opinion supported by Janus Vlitius ;-for into the south of Europe the dog had been introduced as a prodigy of speed-" ocyor affectu mentis pinnâque"-pro- Gratii Cyneg. bably direct from the country of which he was indigenous, viz. Transalpine Gaul, TĤs KeλTIKĤs гaλarías of Stephanus, (the Gallia Celtica of my annotations, without reference to Cæsar's more limited appropriation of the term Celtica,) about the commencement of the Christian æra.

2. Τὰς κύνας τὰς γενναίας,-possibly the coarser and fiercer varieties of the Celtic hound-for Arrian seems to distinguish these noble-spirited dogs from the kúva ayathu, who, he says, may be destroyed by a stag.

3. The Celta with their colonies overran almost all Europe. We trace them from the pillars of Hercules to the extreme wilds of Scythia; the colonists of the latter territory alone being, correctly speaking, Celto-Scythæ;—but in consequence of the ignorance of the ancient Greek geographers as to the exact limits of either Celtica or Scythia, (as already remarked in my annotations on the second chapter of the Cynegeticus,) the term Celto-Scythians has been indefinitely applied to all the inhabitants of mid-Europe, from Celtica to Scythia.

4. It was Xenophon's want of acquaintance with these African barbs, along with the Scythian galloways, and Celtic greyhounds, which led to the omission of them all, in his Cynegeticus: and to the lacunæ, thereby occasioned, in the older hunting.

2 Q

vs. 204. De Venatione

C. XXIII.

Arrian. de Venat.

C. I.

[blocks in formation]

red and roe deer, and wild asses of extraordinary agility and endurance, are captured by mere boys-a style of chase resembling the Arabian onager-hunting of the elder Xenophon's Anabasis. But whatever innovations upon the established field-sport of the mother country may have been effected in remote Celtic colonies, by the substitution of other larger quarry in lieu of the hare, the latter is alone to be viewed as the legitimate prey of the Vertragus.

Oppian. Cyneg.

L. IV. 51.

treatise, is to be attributed the supplementary one, written by the younger Athenian. But it is quite problematical whether hounds were employed at all in the CeltoScythian and Libyan chases-indeed, it is my opinion, they were not :-for, though it be true, that Arrian recommends picked dogs, of high courage, for the stag-course, at the commencement of chapter 23, we hear nothing of hounds in the stag-chase, immediately following, on the redía evýλara of Mœsia, Dacia, Scythia, &c. ; where long-winded, and scrubby nags supply their place. And again, in the onager-chase of the Nomadic tribes of Libya, barbs alone are the pursuers, with boys upon their naked backs, continuing at full speed till the game be run down. So that our TOL θηρῶσιν, ὅσοις κύνες τε ἀγαθαὶ καὶ ἵπποι, κ.τ.λ. with which the author commences the period immediately following the description of the vanquished onager, must in part have a more remote reference than to the hunters spoken of in the same and preceding chapters-ὅσοις κύνες τε ἀγαθαὶ referring to the Celts of Western Europe, perhaps, and no to the equestrians just before mentioned-the former class of sportsmen using swift-footed hounds, the latter horses alone. This interpretation harmonizes with Oppian's description of the horses and hunters of Libya and Mauritania, and their chases, as already cited c. xxiv. note 8.

τούνεκεν ἱππελάται κείνων ἐπιβήτορες ἵππων
ἠδὲ κύνας λείπουσι φίλους, πίσυνοί τ ̓ ἐλόωσιν
ἵπποις, ἠελίου σε βολῇ, καὶ νόσφιν ἀρωγῶν.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

Frontispiece.

THE Emperor Trajan with hunters and a Celtic greyhound: Medallion
from the Arch of Constantine. L'Antiquité Expliquée par Mont-
faucon. Tom. III. Liv. Iv. Tab. 175.
Apollo and Diana-Twin-deities of the Chace: Silver coin of Delos.
Goltzii Numism. Græc. Ins. T. xvIII. fol. 111.

. Title-page.

The Author's greyhound-pin kówv tỷ àλŋbelą yevvaîos. Arrian. de
Venat. c. XXXII.

[ocr errors]

Dedication page.

Procris presenting Lælaps and the fatal dart to Cephalus. Metamorphos.
Ovid. L. xv. Eneis formis ab Antonio Tempesta Florentino incisi. Back of do.
Ancient implements of writing;-picture from Herculaneum. Antiquités
d'Herculanum gravées par F. A. David. Pl. xxxiv. p. 50... Page 1

« IndietroContinua »