Dogs in Celtic Culture by Dawn O'Laoghaire

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Three glories of a gathering: a beautiful wife, a good horse, and a swift hound. (1)

Dogs possessed both mundane value and spiritual importance in Celtic culture.Hunting and herding were mainstays of early economies in the Celtic countries and these economic activities made dogs highly valued. Because of their skills in tracking, loyal natures, and their protective temperaments, dogs were closely connected both the spiritual and practical aspects of healing, hunting and death. Dogs appear frequently in Celtic artwork and in Celtic myths and legends as the companions of kings and warriors. Dogs are also the companions and representatives of the goddess Nehalennia and the god Nodens. (2)

Mundane Aspects

Celtic folklore provides many indications that dogs were highly valued as part of the hunting and pastoral economies. The wide-speed epresentations of dogs indicate that they were familiar and important animals to the Celts. Hunting and semi-nomadic herding and sedentary agriculture were important parts of Celtic economy and dogs were valued assistants in these pursuits.(3) In the stories of Finn and the Fianna, dogs were both faithful friends and fierce enemies when they served the armies of the enemy. Dogs were valued both as good workers on farms and with cattle herds, but as protectors against physical marauders and supernatural threats, such as ghosts.(4)

A story about Finn and the Fianna illustrates how highly valued dogs were among Celtic hunters: Arthur, the son of the King of Britain, and a number of his men, took service with Finn. While he was hunting deer with Finn, Arthur took notice of three hounds and decided to steal them. During the hunt, when no one would notice, he and his men stole the three dogs and took them across the sea to Britain. When Finn returned from hunting, he had all of his three hundred hounds counted and found the three hounds gone. After a search, Finn determined that the son of the King of Britain had stolen his dogs and sent nine men of the Fianna to retrieve them. The Fianna sailed to Britain, found Arthur and attacked him and his men. All of the men were killed and Arthur was taken prisoner. In addition to retrieving the dogs, the Fianna captured two fine horse with gold and silver bridles. After returning to Ireland, Arthur made bounds with Finn and served him for the rest of his days.(5) In this story, dogs are a measure of wealth and the number of dogs possessed by Finn is a matter of pride, which is remarked upon by poets.(6) As Arthur is captured and then swears to serve Finn for the rest of his life, the stealing of a dog seems to be a serious crime for which a hefty service must be given in repayment for the transgression. Nor is the value of Finn's dogs merely symbolic. Arthur steals the dogs when Finn and the Fianna take them out to hunt and their value comes precisely from their usefulness in an important economic activity.(7)

The story of how Cuchulainn received his name is a more famous illustration of the high value placed on dogs in Celtic culture. Cuchulainn's foster-father Conchobor traveled ahead of foster-son to a feast hosted by Culann. After Conchobor arrived, Culann asked Conchobor if any one was behind him and Conchobor, forgetting that Cuchulainn had yet to arrive, answered "No." Culann then released his hound to guard the cattle and stock while his master feasted. When Cuchulainn arrived, the dog attacked him and he killed it. Cuchulainn was made welcome at the feast and his foster-father and host gave a cry of triumph for he had escaped death. Culann was unhappy at the loss of his dog, however, and said:

"You are welcome, boy, for your mother's heart's sake. But for my own part I did badly to give this feast. My life is a waste, and my household like a desert, with the loss of my hound! He guarded my life and my honor... a valued servant, my hound, taken from me. He was shield and shelter for our goods and herds. He guarded all our beasts, at home or out in the fields." (8)

Cuchulainn then promises to raise a puppy for Culann from the same pack and to guard Culann during the year in which the puppy is raised, Culann's beasts and all of the Murtheimne Plain. He is then named Cuchulainn, "the Hound of Culann" because of his service. As in the story of Arthur and Finn, the price for the loss of a dog is extended service to the dog's master.

Supernatural and Spiritual Aspects

One of the most important sacred aspects of dogs in Celtic culture was its close association with healing. The Gaulish goddess Nehalennia has a relationship with dogs that is similar to the relationship of the goddess Epona with horses. Nehalennia was a mother goddess6 who was worshipped throughout Gaul as a provider of prosperity and healing. She was usually portrayed with a dog and a basket of fruit. The healing aspects of dogs are also present in the iconography associated with the British god Nodens, who may be a British representation of the Irish god Nuadu. (9). Nodens is always depicted in his canine aspect and no human representations have been found.(10) A sophisticated healing sanctuary was built and dedicated to Nodens at Lydney and seems to have been largely dedicated to healing and medical care. Dedications to Silvanus Nodens indicate that the god may have had a hunting aspect as well as a healing aspect.(11) Dogs may have become associated with healing because of their natural ability to heal themselves. Because dogs lick their wounds and speed their own healing through their saliva, humans may have come to view their power as one which could help humans as well. Even in the mid-20th century, many Scots believed that a dog lick could cure some wounds and a 1921 edition of the medical journal Lancet reported a Scottish family which insisted that they recovered from scabies after being licked by their dog. (12)

The water god Shony may also appear as a dog or have dogs closely associated with him. The "water dog" or "dobhar-chu" is a supernatural dog whose appeareance on the beaches of the Scottish Islands or the Scottish Highlands is said to herald poor weather. Traditional Scottish belief says that whenever a storm is brewing the dobhar-chu rises up from the sea and roams the beaches and the hills to warn the people that a storm is coming. (13) In Cornwall, traditional beliefs teach that the dobhar-chu who appears on the beaches of Cornwall to warn of impending storms, is named "Shony," the same name as a water god worshipped traditionally worshipped in the Hebrides. (14) Shony continued to receive offerings from Lewis islanders well into the 19th century. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, pocketfuls of malt were brought to the church of St. Mulray on Lewis. They were combined and brewed into a batch of ale. Tonight before the church service a surrogate preacher used to wade up to his waist in the sea, carrying a cup of the strange brew and saying the Gaelic equivelant of "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you'll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground for the ensuing year. Sea-ware refers to sea weed, a food stuff vital the island's economy. (15)

Dogs were also closely associated with underworld. The death and underworld associations may be natural outgrowths of the association of dogs with hunting and healing, both of which frequently end with death. Celtic carvings of triple mother goddesses who have both fertility and death aspects frequently portray them with lap dogs. In these representations the dogs may be symbols of fertility or death, or like the triple goddess herself a symbol of both fertility and death.(16) Stories about phantom black dogs which persisted in folk lore and myth through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth further suggest an association between dogs and death. Numerous tales exist in which large black creatures (usually described as a dog) appear mysteriously and chase or attack lone travelers on the moors and other isolated spots are strongly suggestive of Otherworld associations.(17) In Death, War and Sacrifice, Bruce Lincoln notes that hell-hounds appear in nearly all Indo-European cultures including Celtic, Germanic, Indic and Iranian cultures and that dogs were particularly suited to acting as go-betweens between the world of the living and the world of the dead because of the liminal nature of dogs. A dog is a tamed carnivore which lives mid-way between the "civilized" world of humans and the "savage" world of nature. As liminal animals, hell-hounds also live mid-way between the world of the living and the world of the dead. (18)

Black dogs (madadh dubh) have a special place in the fairy faith of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Black ghost dogs are often said to haunt specific locations, such as a castle, and fairy dogs sometimes were seen before the arrival of their masters.(19). The most famous of these black ghost dogs is perhaps the black dog that haunts Peel Castle at Peelton on the Isle of Man. The dog was frequently seen dozing before a fire; it never harmed anyone except for a single guard who died after he kicked at it.(20) If a person could not see the ghost dog or fairy dog, mortal dogs were believed to be able to see ghosts and fairies and warn their owners of them.(21) In 19th century Ireland, invisible dogs were said to signal the family dogs that a family member was about to die and the mournful behavior of the family dog would then inform the family of the impending death. (22) In Ireland, a mortal black dog was particularly valued for the purposes of seeing and defending against ghost, fairies and other supernatural beings, because black dogs were considered to be particularly acute at perceiving supernatural creatures. (23)

The Welsh story of the encounter a lord of Dyfed had with a fairy hunting pack makes the connection between dogs and the underworld even clearer: Pwyll, the lord of Dyfed, went hunting with his men and his dogs. A mysterious fog came up, however,and Pwyll and the dogs were soon separated from his men. As they traveled through the fog, Pwyll heard a hunting horn and soon came upon a pack of dogs with white bodies and red ears which had brought down a deer. Pwyll allowed his dogs to chase the fairy dogs away from the deer, but the owner of the dogs soon arrived. The owner of the dogs identifies himself as Arawn, lord of Annwyn, the king of the Underworld.(24) He tells Pwyll that he is angry because Pwyll allowed his dogs to drive the fairy dogs away from their kill. Pwyll immediately apologizes and offers to compensate Arawn for the deer. As compensation, Arawn demands that Pwyll trade places with him for one year. After a year, each returns to his kingdom and they become close allies thereafter. In this story dogs are the means by which the Otherworld or the Land of the Dead is encountered. Pwyll is lead into the fog by his dogs and then encounters a pack of fairy dogs with white bodies and red ears. He then meets Arawn, who is a king in the Land of the Dead, and is forced to trade places with him for one year and rule over the Land of the Dead because he allowed his dogs to take the deer from the fairy dogs. Pwyll's dogs become a conduit between the land of the living and the land of the dead, traveling freely between the two worlds and enabling their master to follow.

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Sources and Endnotes:

1. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 316
2. Green, The Gods of the Celts, p. 175
3. Green, The Gods of the Celts, p. 169
4. Oh Ogain, Myth, Legend and Romance, p. 30,
5. Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men, p. 202
6. Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men, p. 202
7. Green, The Gods of the Celts, p. 86
8. Kinsella, The Tain, p. 83-84
9. Green, The Gods of the Celts, p. 16
10. Dale-Green, Dog, p. 136
11. Green, The Gods of the Celts. p. 176
12. Dale-Green, Dog, p. 137
13. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 162
14. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 162
15. Cooper and Sullivan, Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, p. 294
16. Green, The Gods of the Celts., p. 176
17. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 122, 129
18. Cooper and Sullivan, Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, p. 328
19. Lincoln, Death, War and Sacrifice, p. 96-101
20. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 153
21. Oh Ogain, Myth, Legend and Romance, p. 31
22. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 277
23. Leach, God Had a Dog, p. 153
24. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, p. 353

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Bibliography:

Cooper. Quentin and Paul Sullivan (1994) Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, Bloomsbury: London. IBSN 0 7475 1807 6

Dale-Green, Patricia. (1966) Dog Rupert Hart-Davis: London.

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1966) The Fairy-Faith of Celtic Countries University Press: Oxford.

Green, Miranda. (1986) The Gods of the Celts Barnes and Noble: Totowa, New Jersey. IBSN 0 86299 292 3

Gregory, Lady Augusta. (1904) Gods and Fighting Men Oxford: New York

Kinsella, Thomas. (1970) The Tain Oxford University Press: New York SBN: 19 2881090 1

Leach, Maria (1961) God Had a Dog Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ

Lincoln, Bruce (1991) Death, War and Sacrifice University of Chicago Press: Chicago IBSN 0-226-48199-9

Oh Ogain, Dathai. Myth, Legend and Romance (1991) Prentice Hall: New York. IBSN 0 13 275959 4