with anecdotes of the
little dogs that frisked about Frederick the Great, and Charles II, the
Merry Monarch, and tell how Edward VII's last pet, Caesar, a fox
terrier, trotted mournfully in the funeral procession behind Kildare,
the royal charger; or she would "unmuzzle her wisdom" to the point of
declaring that the kings of Babylon and Nineveh had their favorite
hunting hounds with tails curled up over the back and collars wrought
in the form of leafy wreaths. She would inform Sigurd, who took it
flippantly, that solemn burial honors had been paid to dogs in ancient
times, that the Egyptians held them sacred and religiously embalmed
their bodies, and that many a Celtic chief and Norland viking lies more
quiet beneath his cairn because his noblest deerhound slumbers at his
feet. Or perhaps she would relate, for our collie's ethical guidance,
celebrated deeds of hero dogs. Sigurd would grunt and grumble in
sympathy with her deep tones as she chanted the famous ballad of Beth
Gelert, that "peerless hound" whose fidelity cost him his life, or of
the twice-sung terrier, haunter of Helvellyn, who for three months kept
watch beside her master's body at the foot of the fatal precipice.
Sigurd did not care for Wordsworth as much as Wordsworth would have
cared for him, but he loved Little Music, striving in vain to save her
fellow Dart under whose speed the river-ice had broken.

On one of those fortunate evenings when we had the Dryad with us,
Sigurd would listen with waxing incredulity to legends of King Arthur's
hound Cavall, whose paw left its print on British rock; of Merlin's
demon dog, black with red ears, akin to the little black dog that
danced about Faustus, sending out flying flames from its feet; of
Fingal's Bran and his last chase after the enchanted snow-white hart;
and of Tristram's faithful Hodain, who licked the dregs from the cup of
love which the knight and Queen Iseult had quaffed together. Sigurd was
frankly skeptical about those

"Half a hundred good ban-dogs"

of Fountains Abbey, who, whistled to his help by the fighting friar,
gave Robin Hood and his archers not a little trouble.

"Two dogs at once to Robin Hood did go,
T'one behind, the other before;
Robin Hood's mantle of Lincoln green
Off from his back they tore.

"And whether his men shot east or west,
Or they shot north or south,
The curtal dogs, so taught they were,
They caught the arrows in their