A Load of Old Bulldog?

A few weeks ago I posted some photographs of coursing greyhounds depicted in Roman mosaics of the third century AD, now in the famous Bardo Museum in Tunis. Eagle-eyed observers noted that some of the dogs were clearly brindle in colour. They asked how this could be, if the old legend is true that the brindle colour comes from crossing greyhounds will bulldogs?

The central character in this well-worn myth is the third Earl of Orford, the man who revolutionised greyhound sport when he created the Swaffham Society, the first public coursing club, in 1776. Lord Orford was a man surrounded by all sorts of wacky legends, which are discussed at length in my recent article in Performance Sighthound Journal, “Coursing in Eastern England”, but the most romantic one concerns the manner of his death.

The story goes that on the day his famous bitch Czarina was to run a match on Newmarket Heath, Orford escaped from incarceration by his family due to his supposed insanity. The old man, without a topcoat on a freezing winter's day and clad only in his customary black suit and tricorn hat, watched Czarina defeat Maria, raised his hat to his bitch, and fell back off his pony stone dead. The course is said to have taken place on Chippenham field which in those days stretched from Chippenham Park across to the Limekilns gallops on the Bury Road where the noble lord expired. As Czarina is reckoned to have been whelped in 1781, she would have been ten at the time and won 47 matches without loss.

So far, so suitable for a mawkish film by Stephen Spielberg, but Czarina occupies a central position in greyhound breeding to this day. As the dam of the famous sire Claret, she is accepted as the ancestress of every greyhound running. Does this mean, therefore, that every modern greyhound has an itzy bitzy dollop of bulldog blood in it? Lord Orford was the breeder synonymous with the bulldog cross, and so surely Czarina has passed a share of it on down the centuries?

Everyone should read the excellent essay, “Czarina, Bulldog Legend or Mythology?” by James McCormick and Susan Burley. You will find it on the marvellous Greyhound Data website.The authors argue persuasively that Czarina was not bred by Lord Orford, but was acquired from a William Woodley Esquire of Eccles. Mr Woodley was a member of the Swaffham Society and a considerable person in the Norfolk of the times, serving as High Sheriff of the county. In 1792 he won the first running of the Swaffham Cup, staged to commemorate the recently deceased Lord Orford, with his Warrant, of which a popular print was made and which is often reproduced.

 McCormick and Burley, citing evidence from sporting journals of the time, conclude that Czarina was a bitch by Whelby out of Cublon, herself bred by none other than George III. Far from being descended from a bulldog, Czarina came literally from a royal bloodline. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Lord Orford was responsible for obtaining Cublon from the royal kennel for Mr Woodley, as Orford, despite his eccentric habits, was a courtier and a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George III, as he had been previously to George II. His grandfather, Sir Robert Walpole, had been the most powerful politician of his day. It may be that Lord Orford received Czarina from Woodley partly in recognition of his role in her breeding.

If Czarina escaped the taint of the bulldog, there is no doubt that breeders experimented with the cross with Lord Orford in the lead. Thomas Goodlake’s  “Courser’s Stud Book of 1828”  claimed, “The late Lord Orford, intent on obtaining as much perfection in the breed as possible, introduced every experimental cross, from the English lurcher, to the Italian greyhound. He it was that first thought of the cross with the English bull-dog, in which he persevered in opposition to every opinion, until after breeding on for seven removes, found himself in possession of the best greyhounds ever known; and he considered this cross produced, the small ear, the rat tail, the fine silky coat, together with that quiet innate courage which the high-bred greyhound should possess, preferring death to relinquishing the chase.”

This would be all very well if greyhounds had not possessed this long list of desirable characteristics for centuries before Orford had dreamt up the bulldog cross. Thomas Thacker, who published his “Courser’s Companion” six years after Goodlake, has no time for the cross, and cites two famous breeders of the day, Lord Rivers and Mr Mundy, who considered it undesirable. Interestingly, Mr Mundy blames the bulldog cross for greyhounds of a light fawn colour rather than of brindle. Thacker, the most famous coursing judge of his day, quotes the opinion of a friend who asked him, “Can you improve the speed of a racehorse by a cross with a cart stallion? Is it possible, by crossing and re-crossing, to improve the speed? Even so it must be with the bull-dog and the greyhound bitch; the idea is the most absurd nonsense imaginable.”

Despite Thacker’s dismissive conclusion, the obsession with the bull-dog cross was still alive when “Stonehenge” published “The Greyhound” in 1853. “Stonehenge”, who was John Henry Walsh, editor of “The Field” magazine, gave the old controversy a new polish when he wrote, “From an examination of the facts of the case, my belief is that the bull dog cross developes (sic) the animal courage, and that it also somewhat increases the mental faculties, so that the dog is inclined to run cunning but not slack. This point should therefore be considered; but as I fancy it will be found that the increase of jealousy and courage will almost always overpower the tendency to lurch, the advantages will more than counterbalance the disadvantages to the public courser.

It should not be thought that “Stonehenge” was advising breeders to cross their own bitches with a bull-dog. He was merely recommending contemporary stud dogs like “Vraye Foy” which were rumoured to have a dash of the bull-dog in their pedigree. If Vraye Foy had bull-dog in his pedigree, it was in the twelfth generation. Stonehenge is unable to trace further back than three generations, and so the whole thing may be a fairy tale.

Everyone should have felt thoroughly relieved when in 1882 the National Coursing Club published its first Greyhound Stud Book, the original breed register. From 1882 onwards the greyhound breed was closed and the pedigrees of purebred greyhounds were established fact rather than apocryphal.

Even so I can remember a Waterloo Cup winner of the 1970’s whose head had a distinct look of the bulldog about it. But then, I have webbed feet and my forbears crawled out of the swamp a very long time ago, even before Lord Orford’s greyhounds coursed the fields of Westacre and Narborough.

Taking the rough with the smooth?

These wonderful Roman mosaics of coursing were photographed in the Bardo Museum in Tunis. They date probably from the third century AD, and confirm that the Roman dog of choice by this period was a smooth-coated greyhound. A fragment of a vase of the same period found at Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England also shows smooth-coated greyhounds coursing hares.

The origin of the greyhound has never interested me greatly, anymore than the truth about evolution. As far as the latter is concerned, the state of humanity might persuade one that scientists have been “hunting the heel line” as foxhunters would put it, following the trail in the wrong direction.

Charles Darwin and I have something in common as we both went to the same college, but, after observing some human specimens, I would have liked to have asked him whether it was not just as likely that modern apes were a higher life form descended from homo so-called sapiens rather than the other way round.

For me, an Anglo-Saxon, the history of my country begins in 871 with Alfred the Great, and the history of greyhound sport begins in 1776 with the founding of the Swaffham Society, the first public coursing club. Even so, art and literature assure us that the greyhound probably existed several thousand years BC, although supporters of pharaoh hounds, salukis, and all sorts of curious hairy creatures would maintain that the same evidence would justify their claims to have on the sofa at home the original competitive hunting dog.

It cannot be denied, however, that by the sixth century BC the author of the Book of Proverbs could write:

“There be three things that go well, yea, four are comely in going:

A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away for any;

A greyhound; an he goat also; and a king, against whom there is no rising up.”

King James I, (reigned 1603-1625), who had commissioned this translation of the Bible, was a keen coursing man, and so there may be a suspicion for some that a sycophantic translator went for “greyhound” rather than pharaoh hound, saluki, afghan, whippet, or Arabian hunting dog, but we may be pretty confident that two thousand six hundred years ago the greyhound was already considered top dog. Mind you, a greyhound being ranked only just in front of a billy goat might seem to devalue its standing somewhat, although“an he goat” probably would have given some of my dogs a run for their money, but at least both greyhound and goat outranked the king in comeliness, not difficult in the case of the rather unappealing James I.

Arrian, that famous coursing apologist from the second century AD, tells us that the devotees of the Celtic hound, as he called the greyhound, had special spiked dog clothing to ensure that the breed’s pure blood wasn’t adulterated.

Rough-coated coursing dogs were still about at the dawn of organised coursing in England. Rule XIV of the Swaffham Society in 1776 stated, "No rough haired dog to be deemed a greyhound,” showing that the Swaffham members shared my own deep-seated prejudices in this matter. One famous Scottish breeder of the early 1800’s used to have both smooth and rough-coated dogs in his kennel, but the running ground north of the border in those days was often so poor that speed was hardly at a premium. The same man was notorious for skinning his dogs if they were put down, and wearing them as waistcoats. There was much speculation whether he wore them with the hair inside or out.