The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
William Robert Spencer: Llewellyn and His Dog
This poem by William Robert Spencer tells the tragic tale of a Welshman’s noble hound. The tale is much the same as the story of Saint Guinefort, a sainted French greyhound – previously reported on by yours truly in my ’sainted dogs’ phase.
Spencer’s poem was published as part of a children’s literature compilition entitled ‘Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories, originally published as a series in the 1920s — now published on-line by the Gutenberg Project.
The spearmen heard the bugle sound,
And cheer’ly smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound,
Attend Llewellyn’s horn.
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a louder cheer;
“Come, Gelert! why art thou the last
Llewellyn’s horn to hear?
“Oh, where does faithful Gelert roam,
The flower of all his race?
So true, so brave—a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase.”
Read on…
Posted 11 Jun 08
The Tale of Sun-Ka the Wise Dog
One day Old John the Indian came down the trail to the farmhouse. He was on his way to town to sell some baskets. As Uncle Mark was going to town with the team, he invited him to ride.
Since the town was several miles away, the old Indian gladly accepted the invitation, leaving Ke-ha-ga his old hound at the farmhouse.
In the afternoon little Luke was sitting on the fence when old Ke-ha-ga came over to him. Putting his front paws on top of the fence, he licked the little boy’s hand.
The story of Little Luke and his friends has been published on-line by the Gutenberg Project
“Hello, Ke-ha-ga,” said little Luke, “so you have come out to see me, have you? Can’t you tell me a story?” he added as he gently patted the old hound’s head.
“What kind of a story do you want?” asked the old dog.
“Oh, most any kind will do,” said the boy. “Tell me a story about some dog of the olden, days,—the days before the white men came to this country.”
Read on…
Posted 28 Apr 08
Hans Christian Andersen: The Three Dogs and the Tinderbox
This is a lovely story where three dogs come to the rescue, in a magical, whimsical way. The telling is adapted by little feet — but not massively so. And though it does go on for a while, there’s the saving graces of the three hounds from start to finish.
So let me recommend that you get yourself into a comfy chair so’s you can curl up snug, with a nice dish of clear rainwater (if such luxuries are in your reach) and perhaps a crunchy fresh carrot to gnaw on at your side. Enjoy! Awoof!
Once upon a time a soldier came marching down the road. The soldier had a pack on his back and a sword at his side and a knapsack on his back. The soldier had been in the war and was on his way home.
Lo and behold, somewhere along the road home he met a witch. She was a disgusting sight, with a lower lip that hung all the way down to her chest — just as my floppy ears hang, but a dang sight uglier.
“Good evening,” she said to him.
Read on…
Posted 20 Dec 07
St Hubert (National Gallery, London)
The Mass of Saint Hubert was probably painted around 1480-1485, and has been part of the National Gallery collection since it was bought in 1854. With the ‘The Conversion of Saint Hubert,’ this painting by a Cologne artist was one of the inside shutters of an altarpiece from the Benedictine abbey at Werden, near Essen. (The outside shutters, depicting various saints are also in the Collection.)
Saint Hubert (circa 656 - 727) was first Bishop of Liège. The painting shows an angel appearing with a stole for him during his consecration as bishop. Behind him is a deacon with the saint’s mitre and crozier. On the altar is a gilded altarpiece showing God the Father flanked by Saints Peter and Paul.
The National Gallery suggests that the dog in the foreground was probably included because Saint Hubert was regarded as a protector against rabies.
What the National Gallery does not comment on is the interesting incongruity of the painting. Saint Hubert was patron saint of hunting hounds. He was said to be so devoted to his dogs that he was never without them. But in this painting the dog in question is not your average hunting hound. This little dog looks just like a little companion dog. What some people call ‘lap dogs.’
Perhaps it is this that makes me think of the artist tradition embedded in the tale of Tobit. Notice that here, as in the Tobit story, the dog is not only quite explicitly a ‘companion dog’, but it is also present to humans and angels.
Read on…
Posted 14 Dec 07
Gelert the Legendary Welsh Hound
Gelert is the name of a legendary dog associated with the village of Beddgelert (Welsh: Gelert’s Grave) in North Wales.
This Welsh legend has a very strong resemblance to the tale of Saint Guinefort – a legendary French dog who achieved ’sainthood’ and veneration of the people of Brittany — awoof!
Isaac Taylor, author of Words and Places, asserted that the village of Beddgelert has taken its name from an early saint named Kilart or Celert, rather than from the dog.
The existence of the “grave” mound is ascribed to the activities of a late eighteenth-century landlord of the Goat Hotel in Beddgelert, who connected the legend to the village in order to encourage tourism and to boost his own takings.
The story of Gelert is a variation on the well-worn “Faithful Hound” folktale motif. In this case the hound is alleged to have belonged to Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd (c. 1173 – 1240), and to have been a gift from King John of England.
Posted 12 Dec 07
Cu Sith: the Scottish Green Faerie Dog
Cu Sith is the name of the legendary green dog of faerie purported to inhabit the highlands of Scotland.
It is said that Cu Sith was larger than a bull, with a long, braided tail, and was intent upon driving fertile women into faerie mounds in order to provide milk for those within.
Read on…
Posted 28 Nov 07
The Season of the Black Dog
‘Tis the season of the black dog. Well, when is it not, dare I ask? In any case, for those of you who are not (like me) by nature and essence a ‘black dog’ – which, in solipsistic moments makes my every day a black dog day, and my every season the season of the black dog – now comes the time of the black phantom dog. (Of which category, admittedly, I do not belong — being a flesh and blood and flapping ears kind of dog, who also happens to bark quite a bit. Nothing phantom about me!)
Yours truly has reported on this phenomenon previously. A bit of a habit, some might say. But then isn’t that what seasons are all about? Annually marking a time in a cycle that is called a year…
Which makes it fitting to each year go back to the same theme – black phantom dog – to investigate one more time, wouldn’t you say?
Read on…
Posted 22 Oct 07
The Tale of How the Dog’s Tongue Became Long
It was hot. Little Luke sat on the doorstep in the shade. Over in the pasture Old Boze the Hound gave tongue. He was at his favourite sport of trailing rabbits all by himself. He really didn’t have any spite against the rabbits, but when he struck a fresh trail, he felt that he just must follow it. And when he had puzzled out a balk or break in the trait, he couldn’t for the life of him keep still.
This tales is published on-line by the Gutenberg Project.
But it was really too hot for trailing. The old hound would have stuck to it longer if Sam the hired man had been around somewhere, hiding behind the bushes with his thundering fire-stick. Old Boze wasn’t afraid of the fire-stick. He liked to hear it roar, and see the poor rabbits fall before its deadly breath.
Read on…
Posted 28 Sep 07
An Irish Tale: Turrean, the most magnificent hound on hearth
Turrean, the most beautiful of Goddesses, was meant to have been turned into a scruffy Irish wolfhound by a jealous faery queen, Uchtdealbh. But somehow the spell was flawed.
Instead of turning Turrean into something scruffy, she was the most magnificent hound on earth.
Read on…
Posted 14 Sep 07
Inugami: a mythical Japanese dog
In Japanese mythology an inugami (犬神; lit. “dog god”) is a shikigami (familiar spirit) resembling — and usually originating from — a dog.
Inugami or dog gods commonly carry out acts of vengeance on behalf of the “inugami owner” or companions of the doggish. Inugami are extremely powerful and capable of existing independently, as well as turning on their “owners” and even sometimes possessing humans.
As in most cultures, the dog is viewed in Japan as a kind, bold, and nimble companion, who is ferocious toward its master’s enemies. In Japanese folklore, dogs themselves are regarded as magical beings; one legend states that the dog could once talk, but lost the ability. The indingenous Ainu people of Hokkaidō consider the dog a wily, dangerous and somewhat human animal.
Read on…
Posted 29 Aug 07
St Roch
Saint Roch is also known as St Rock, St Rocco, St Rollox, St. Roque, St. Rochus.
His saint day is the 16th of August - so today it is right and proper that we celebrate the memory of St Roch and his saintly hound. Awoof!
It is thought that St Roch took to the forest to hide away and die from leprosy that he had caught as a result of his charitable work. But a local dog refused to let him die and brought him bread every day, and also licked Roch’s wounds clean.
In the legend of Saint Roch as in the Book of Tobit, the dog signifies the presence of angels and divine compassion.
Read on…
Posted 16 Aug 07
Huysman’s Diana and Dog
The Flemish-born Huysmans was a favourite painter of Catherine of Braganza, Queen of Charles II. He presents this unknown lady in the guise of Diana, virgin Goddess of the hunt.
Diana is a favourite Goddess amongst hounds. She is typically represented with a bow and arrow, carrying a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. In Huysmans’ painting she also carries a spear. The dogs beside her suggest her hunting pack.
Her semi-classical dress with headdress of plumed feathers is similar to the costumes worn at court theatrical entertainments. These were lavish affairs for which no expense was spared, exemplifying the flamboyance and opulence of the monarchy.
Read on…
Posted 13 Aug 07
Diana Goddess of the Hunt
The Greek Goddess Artemis — known often by her Roman title ‘Diana’ — is goddess of light and of the hunt. She is a twin with Apollo, the God of Light, and indeed, legend has it that she was born first and just after birth helped her mother Leto in delivering her twin brother.
Even as a small child the Greek goddess Artemis was decisive. When Zeus asked Artemis what presents she wanted for her third birthday she responded without hesitation that she wanted six things:
1) to be allowed to live without having to be distracted by love and marriage,
2) a bow and arrow just like her brother’s,
3) a hunting costume and freedom from having to dress up like a lady,
4) the job of bringing light into the world,
5) sixty young nymphs to be her companions and to help care for her hunting dogs (she must have had many many packs of hounds if it took 60 young nymphs to look after them!)
and finally 6) all the mountains on the earth to live on.
Read on…
Posted 12 Aug 07
Dogs in Myth and Legend: Tobit and Archangel Raphael
A Landscape with Tobias and the Angel (1640/44), by Jan Lievens (1607 - 1674) was bequeathed to the National Gallery by the Holwell Carr Bequest, 1831.
The painting represents the story told in the Old Testament Book of Tobit – the only book of the Old Testament to mention the divine presence of a dog.
Read on…
Posted 03 Aug 07
A Buddhist Dog Tale: Asanga and the Dog
Buddhism grew out of a response to the Hindu notion of reincarnation, so it is not altogether suprising that they believed that the Buddha spirit is continuously reincarnated in different avatars.
The buddhist monk Asanga yearned to have direct experience of the future Buddha, Maitreya. He slowly learned patience through guidance, practice and extraordinary experience. Once, after he had been meditating for 12 years, he left the cave and encountered a poor dog lying ill by the wayside. The poor dog was near death, its lower body covered with sores.
Asanga (circa 300- 370 CE) was a brahmin from Peshawar, and ritual purity was a matter of great importance to him. He is considered the founder of the Buddhist approach called Yogachara, especially the branch known as Chittamatra or Consciousness-Only.
His meditations had helped him to develop great compassion, and so Asanga was moved to ease the animal’s suffering. Some of the sores had maggots in them.
Read on…
Posted 11 Jun 07
Dog Art: Catrin Howell’s ‘Dog’ (2002)
Catrin Howell was brought up on a farm in Cardiganshire (Wales). She studied at Wolverhampton (1989-1992).
Since then Catrin has won a number of prizes for her work including a Fletcher Challenge Merit Award, New Zealand (1994) and the craft gold medal at the National Eisteddfod in 1999. In 2001 Ruthin Craft Centre produced a major touring exhibition of her work.
Howell’s primordial dogs, a major theme in her work, derive from her evocation of Cantre’r Gwaelod, the Welsh legend of drowned villages under Cardigan Bay.
Read on…
Posted 07 May 07
An Italian Folktale: The Boy Who Talked with the Animals
Italo Calvino’s collection of Italian Folktales is simply delicious — you just want to consume the book a chunk at a time! I felt, reading, as if I couldn’t read fast enough. Oh! The tales! The whimsy, wonder, as well as the insightful introduction into the process of collection and editorial selection of the material.
In the end Calvino comes to the rather extraordinary conclusion that “Now that the book is finished, I know that this was not a hallucination, a sort of professional malady, but the confirmation of something I already suspected — folktales are real.”
But of course they are… Here’s a whole book of them, of an Italian flavour, which indeed was commissioned to complement a wider international series of books of folktales and myth. It is sad, in a way, that Calvino takes the negative view that there is no Italian equivalent, as he says, of the Brothers Grimm. What I think he misses is that by not having a ‘master’ unifying stroke and tone to collect a previously existing body of lore, what one finds here is likely unremitting regional variation, along with differences of tone, temper and topic. The very same that provides the mesmerising interplay of “infinite variety and infinite repetition.”
I hope it does’t annoy the bookmakers that I reproduce for you here one of the tales, that demonstrates clearly the advantage of being able to talk to the animals. A tale, perhaps, of the true meaning of piety. A story, in my eyes, worthy of a little contemplation. It is called Animal Speech.
Yes. Mesmerising. Wonderful little fables, mixing fact and fanciful, the real and supernatural, human and animal worlds. I hugely recommed that you get your paws on Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales and enjoy each story individually. A tale a day. A little moment of delight and respite. Awoooooo… Wonderful.
Enjoy the tale! Awoof! Archibaldino
Read on…
Posted 23 Apr 07
A Japanese Fairy Tale: The Peach Boy
Dogs feature in folklore of all peoples of the world, from Native Americans to Northern Europeans such as the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson.
So it stands to reason that Japanese fairy tales also involve the essential presence of dogs. One such tale is the story of the Peach Boy by Chizuru Shiraga.
The Peach Boy
Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman. One day, the old man went to the mountain and the woman went to the river to wash clothes. Just then, she saw a peach running with the current in the river.
The old woman brought the peach home. She cut the peach in half when — Suddenly! — a boy jumped out of the peach! His name was “Momotaro” or, the Peach Boy.
Read on…
Posted 16 Feb 07
©2008 Roleta Archibald, Awoof!™