Note 417 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

The term greyhound has confounded English etymologists as much as that of Vertragus has puzzled Latin commentators. It is variously spelt by our old English writers:Book of St. Alban’s. as grehounde by Juliana Berners, “a grehounde sholde be heeded lyke a snake”—greihounde by Chaucer, “greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight.”The Prologue. vs. 190. Lord Berners writes “grayhounde;” Junius, “graihound;” Gesner, “grewhownd;” Harrington, “grewnd;” and the latter contraction is of frequent occurrence in Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,

Booke i.

Dr. Caius’s derivation of the term, as spelt by R. Brunne, and the Sopewell Prioress, is fanciful enough:—De Canibus Britannicis Libellus.“à gre quoque grehound apud nostros invenit nomen, quòd præcipui gradûs inter canes sit, et primæ generositatis. Gre enim apud nostros gradum denotat.” Whence also grebyche of the Chronicon Vilodunense. §. 222.⁠[418] “Hym thought that his grebyche lay hym besyde.” The gre-hound andM. S. Cotton. Faustina, B. iii. fol. 194. gre-hound bitch being first in degree, or rank, among dogs; and no one under the dignity of a gentleman being allowed by the forest laws of Canute to keep such titled hounds. In support of the Doctor’s notion, it may be stated that Gawin Douglas uses gre for degree in his translation of the Æneid, and so also the prophet of Ercildoun, and the author of the metrical romance of Morte Arthur. In the complaynt of Bagsche by Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, a satirical poem of the ‘Lion King,’ on court favouritism, we have a farther example peculiarly apposite;—for the hounds, specified by name asLyndsay’s Poems, by Chalmers. “doggis of the hyest gre,” were probably highland deer greyhounds. Whimsical therefore as Caius’s tracing of the term may be, we cannot view it as utterly untenable.

Etymolog. Anglican.

By Skinner, ‘greyhound’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon grighund; and he farther remarks “Minsevus dictum putat quasi Græcus canis, quia sc. Græci omnium primi hoc genus canum ad venatum adhibebant, quod facilè crediderim si authorem laudâsset.” I know of no authority for so bold an assertion, except the doubtful tales of Hector Boethius, Fordun, and Holinshed, and therefore discredit the fact. Dr. Hickes says:Dictionar. Island. “Grey canis, extat in nostro greyhund. Comp. ex grey et hunta, venator.” q. d. a hunting dog. And Junius notes “quòd Islandis grey est canis.” Skinner, on the contrary, hints that the dog may be aEtymolog. Anglican. badger-hunter, “à grey taxus et hund canis, q. d. taxi insectator.” Thus Hickes and Junius bestow on him double dogship, and Skinner degrades him to a badger-hound. Well may we exclaim with Brodæus,Brodæus in Oppian. p. 123. “Vide quò procedat etymologiarum licentia!—ô joculares ineptias!”

The terms grewhound, grewnd, graihound, grayhound, Canis Græcus, and Graius, all indicate a supposed connexion with Greece. Grew is often used for Greek by Douglas and Lyndsay—(see the Bishop’s Preface to his Virgil, and the Knight’s apology for “The Maternal Language.”)The Monarchie. Still I cannot believe the genuine Celtic hound to have been known to ancient Greece. I would, therefore, rather seek the origin of the English name in the predominant colour of the dog;—Grey, gray, grai, grei, cæsius, leucophæus, canus, A. S. græg; which last, says Junius, might be referredF. Junii Etymolog. Anglican. “ad colorem Græcis γεράνειον gruinum dictum; proptereà quod Threiciam gruem simulet vel imitetur, ut loquitur Ovidius,” &c.—“Quid si deflecterem gray,” says Skinner,Etymolog. Anglican. “à nom. Græcus, q. d. color Græcus, ut color Bæticus ab Hispaniâ Bæticâ, &c. Teut. Graw.”—The varieties of the grey colour, of which Werner’s nomenclature of colours gives us between twenty and thirty shades suited to our purpose, predominate in the greyhound tribe, and more especially the bluish-grey and blackish-grey, (almost peculiar to this race and the great Danish dog of Buffon,) and all the dingy tints which under the epithet dun are found to prevail. Indeed it has been suggested that the line of Gratius, “Et pictam maculâ Vertraham delige falsâ,” may allude to the doubtful tint of colour, denominated grey, (compounded of two colours variously commixed in the Vertraha).—Venatio Novantiqua.“Videntur Angli canes hos grayhounds vocare,” says Vlitius, “id est subfuscos, vel nigro et albo mixtos quod nos graw dicimus.”