Bloodhound History

IV   The 16th Century

We now have to move forward in time to the two major and richest sources of our knowledge of the historical Bloodhound, Turbervile, just mentioned, and Caius.

Caius' Of English Dogges 

The chapter from Fleming's translation of 1576, from the Latin, of John Caius' Of English Dogges is printed on the next page.  It is probably fair to say that it is the most important single influence on the way Bloodhounds have been thought about to this day.

It establishes their appearance: Bloodhounds are:

It explains the reason for their name, showing the name came from their ability to follow a blood-trail. 
Above all, it wonderfully describes their use and importance as man-trailers, suggesting that some were kept only for this specialised use.
Finally it says they are much used in the border areas for tracking cattle thieves, and so establishes the link between the Bloodhound and the “sleuth-hound” referred to in some Scottish writing (eg Barbour's Bruce), and the “slough-dogs” kept by law in some Northern towns and villages to track invaders.

Though a translation, it comes out as a wonderful but typical piece of flowing Elizabethan rhetorical prose, to be treasured like a valuable antique, except that we can't buy or sell it; it belongs to everyone. How many other breeds can boast such a marvellous early description of them and their abilities?  (And one which is at times comic, in its over-the-top use of alliteration.) It can hardly be overemphasised how much this passage has set the terms for the way the Bloodhound has been regarded in succeeding times.

 Notes:

1. In the book, Caius is moving on from Terriers to Hounds.

The first hound he talks about is the Bloodhound.  What he then has to say about raches, and hounds hunting the otter, does not imply that these were Bloodhounds; nevertheless we should not assume such sharp distinctions between them as there are between, say, the Bloodhound, foxhound and otterhound of the present day.  All hounds were carefully bred, but for practical purposes, to suit the needs of the hunters, and sometimes the parts of the country where the hounds worked.

2. The use of the Latin sanguinarii, does not imply that the Bloodhound was known to the ancient Romans.

Latin was still the language of educated communication in Europe — which is why Caius chose to write in Latin in the first place.  It was quite normal for a 16th century writer to have to find a way of referring in Latin to something in his own time which was never written about in classical Latin.