Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.–Robert Burns “My Heart’s in the Highlands.”
In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Scotland experienced a kind of land rush. As the clan system fell apart, many Scottish tenant farmers were driven off the land. Many moved to other parts of the empire, especially Canada. Scotland was thought of as a backward place. Then Sir Walter Scott gave it a total image makeover. It became a place of where Britain’s former wildness held on. Totally enthralled by Romanticism, various people of the upper classes sought out estates in the highlands, where they could spend their days basking in Scotland’s former glory. Never mind that the Highlands were not always such an empty, desolate place. They were now.
Scotland itself does not have a national dog in the same way that England does. It is true that most people associate the collie with the Scottish agricultural scene. If I were to ask you about a breed that came from Scotland, I bet you’d think of the rough collie.
However, the collie was a commoner’s dog. It was the animal that the tenant farmers, or crofters, kept to maintain the flocks that belonged to the clan chieftains. The height of its glory came a little later. By the end of the nineteenth century, the collie became the Scottish dog.
But during this earlier period, I’ll submit that the dog that most symbolized what Scotland represented to these moneyed Romantics was the Scottish deerhound.
After all, most of these people had come to Scotland to set up estates for outdoor sport. Shooting grouse on the moors certainly was the main activity for many estates. Remember that the golden retriever was developed to work the grouse moors.
However, the real sport of a proper Scottish noble was deer stalking. Deer stalking is to Scotland what foxhunting was to England.
Scotland is still known for its large herds of red deer. To hunt such an animal, one needed a good, stout coursing dog.
And Scotland already had one. Its “rough-haired greyhound” had been coursing deer and wolves for centuries. The legendary last wolf of Scotland was said to have been killed in 1743 by a hunter named MacQueen. MacQueen’s dogs caught the wolf. Although the one that first gripped the creature was his longdog (probably a greyhound/deerhound cross), we can imagine that some of his hounds were “pure” Scottish deerhounds.
Killing off the wolf meant that the wild country had finally been tamed for more civilized pursuits. However, it was still wilder than England or Wales (or anywhere in Ireland.)
And to purchase an estate was to bask in that former glory.
To stalk deer was to bask in the former glory of the Scottish clan chieftains.
This symbolism explains why there are so many paintings of Scottish deerhounds. One of the photos of Nous, the foundational stud dog of the Guisachan line, also includes a deerhound. There is also this painting of Robin, one of Lord Ilchester’s dogs from the Guisachan line, that also included the deerhound.
If one wants to really see the extent of the deerhound’s popularity on those estates, one merely has to go to Google images and search “deerhound paintings.”
The volume is quite high. One can find so many depictions of deerhounds, including portraits of those that are in the now defunct fawn coloration.
Because the deer on these Highland estates were hunted with firearms, one wonders what utility a coursing dog could actually have.
Stonehenge grouped the deerhound with the retrievers. The reason for this classification is that when shot, the deer stalker would send his deerhounds after their quarry, and, in a similar fashion to a retriever, they would catch it.
That is not the most efficient way to hunt deer with firearms. If one knows anything about hunting deer, the absolute worst thing one can do if you wound one is to make it run. A mortally wounded deer will literally run and run until it collapses. For proper Victorians with a strong sense of sportsmanship, I doubt that this was ever the preferred way to hunt deer.
The more expedient way to hunt them was and is to shoot them and then track them. A dog could be used in this case, and the bloodhound would have been perfect for it. The bloodhound was common enough on these Scottish estates for that very purpose.
However, it had none of the symbolism and romance of the deerhound.
The deerhound’s symbol as the dog of the clan chieftains meant that no Highland estate was complete without one. Guisachan had its share of deerhounds.
Deerhounds are pretty docile dogs, as one could expect from any British sighthound. They also like to lie around the house in very regal positions.
Such animals would have been perfect for these nobles, who were very image conscious. The dogs become fixtures of the house as much as anything else.
One never needed to use the dogs to bring down deer. One merely needed to have them.
The images of Scotland and its deerhounds that were so popularized by Sir Walter Scott were very potent symbols. Those symbols meant that people would buy land in Scotland and own a dog whose job had essentially been ended with the advent of accurate firearms.
Of course, deerhounds proved to be excellent coursing dogs. They proved to be excellent hunting dogs on the American frontier, in the Australian outback, and in the wilds of Africa.
But as deer stalkers in the Scottish Highlands, their original utility shifted. They became symbolic of the Scotland that lived in the imaginations of certain wealthy people.
The deerhound became mythic.
And when those symbols no longer sustained it, the population of deerhounds crashed. The dogs still exist, and some still hunt quarry today.
But these animals are very rare.
It is actually quite a shame for the deerhound breed is known for its docile nature and its high adaptability to urban life.
But most people have never even heard of them.
The dog no longer has symbolism.
Scotland has had moments of nationalism in recent years. There have been swells of support for the Scottish nation to have its independence from the United Kingdom (and thus make what I would call the “Untied Kingdom.”)
I have seen no moves by those advocates of Scottish independence to use the deerhound as symbol. I would have thought they would have, simply because of the breed’s connection with Scottish history and culture.
Maybe the similarities between this breed and the Irish wolfhound, which is erroneously called the national dog of Ireland, prevent them from using this breed as a symbol. Maybe its connection with the nobility prevent the animal from being used as a popular symbol. Or perhaps because it was used to dispatch deer and wolves that an animal rights-conscious polity cannot use them in this fashion. (I seriously doubt that England could ever use the foxhound as a national symbol for this very purpose.)
The deerhound looms so large in Scotland’s history that I cannot think of a single breed that represents that nation so well. It is the dog that coursed the Scottish red deer that Robert Burns wrote about stalking in his poems. It is the dog that the clan chieftains kept and celebrated through the centuries. It is truly the dog of Caledonia.
Our species organizes the world through symbols. This has affected the evolution of so many dogs, for even without consciously thinking it, we allow allow dogs to represent things.
The fate of the deerhound shows that we still have to be careful about how we choose those symbols. At some point, the symbols may no longer sustain the breed or type.
And that’s when breeds become stagnant, then rare, and then extinct.
The dogs that will last through the ages are those that can be redefined through different symbols. That is the trick for preventing breed and type extinction.
The taking of game on the Guisachan estate (and most other large estates) was not just for “sport”. The game taken was all used, and a great deal of it was distributed among workers and their families on the estate. There is a game book from Guisachan (not the dog record book) that has long and very detailed lists of to whom the game was given, numbers, etc. Nothing went to waste.
The Guisachan kennel had a large kitchen with a huge cauldron for cooking the dogs’ food– oatmeal cooked with trimmings and “leftovers” from preparing game, which was deer, hare, rabbits, and various feathered game.
Many of the original Guisachan cottages are still in use, including most of the village of Tomich. The Old Kennel is now a private home, and the huge stonebuilt cattle barn converted to private apartments.
while very rare, it does appear that the fawn color still exists in scottish deerhounds — photo (you have to page down) has one here
http://hubpages.com/hub/Large-Dog-Breed-Information
It’s interesting that it would become so rare, since the color is still listed in the conformation standard. A friend of mine once took an open coated tricolor English Springer Spaniel into the show ring and caused quite a sensation as amongst all the others, she was the only one with that coloring. While clearly rare, the deerhound is 142nd in registration in AKC, ahead of 20 other breeds. They are more at risk because of the bad economy and their relatively short lifespan than anything else — feeding a giant dog just costs more than for a small one. I expect this may be more of a reason why the dogs haven’t been adopted as a “national symbol” — these days, a rich man’s dog isn’t considered politically correct as a national symbol.
Peggy Richter
That’s why the Irish get a little ticked if you say that the wolfhound is their national dog.
They have no official national dog, but Mick Collins almost made the Irish blue terrier or Kerry Blue terrier the official national dog.
The wolfhound was the dog the nobility.
What the link shows as a fawn Deerhound appears to me to be an Irish Wolfhound. And I dunno what the second picture under Irish Wofhound is — it has a very unusual coat for a Wolfhound, I’d think.
And when did German Shepherd Dogs qualify as giant dogs, to be classed with mastiffs, Great Danes, etc.?
Maybe those huge overdone Labradors should be there as well!
as an owner of scottish deerhounds for 41 years, i want to say thanks for the story. they are far from extinct, though no one i know has seen anything but shades of grey for many years. the hubpages.com reference has an incorrect photo, the second one: it is clearly a wheaten irish wolfhound, not a deerhound. as for lifespan, i have had them range from young to very old – my last two girls lived to 12 and 13.
I actually can’t find a depiction of a deerhound of that color.
I was going to use a depiction of one of Custer’s dogs, but I think they were more like American staghounds or some form of longdog.
As you know, the modern Irish wolfhound is a recreation of an ancient type. The deerhound played a vital role in saving it. I have looked at a few pedigrees, and I have found deerhounds and wolfhounds share several ancestors– kind of like golden and flat-coated retrievers.
Custer had Staghounds and Greyhounds. Stags would actually qualify as longdogs, I think.
@ peggy richter: dog nr. 2 at your link is never ever an irish wolfhound! but i think, that the “fawn deerhound” is an irish wolfhound. the person holding the hound is someone, i connect with wolfhounds, but – sorry – i can’t remember the name at the moment.
@ all: maybe my english is not good enough to understand it right, but my information is, that hunting with deerhounds/wolfhounds was that way, that the hounds hunted the deer/wolf and when the got it, humans come to kill the deer/wolf if the hounds had not done it before. i can’t remember to read somewhere else that hounds where used to hunt hurted deers/wolfes! that was the job of bloodhounds, as far as i know. and good hunters try to kill the deer with the first shot. not to kill the deer with first shot should be an accident, not the rule.
When you read the way Stonehenge describes deer stalking, the stalkers shoot the deer and then loose the deerhounds.
I don’t think that’s what they did.
i know the description from freiherr b. laska, sorry, german language:
http://www.windhund.eu/news/archives/185
he writes, that the hunting men where looking for the deers. when they found them, they let the deerhounds run free to hunt the deer(s) and when the hounds catched the deer, hunting men where following. it could be, that the hounds killed the deer, or the hunting men had to kill him.
later it was hard to hunt this way because areas become smaler and deer become less. so they created “deerstalking”, first hurting the deer and than setting the hounds free …
I have always loved Scottish Deerhounds, though I have yet to have one of my own(yet…)–although I once had a neighbor that owned one that used to come over to my house and visit all the time, and which I “borrowed” to use in a scene on a T. V. show I was involved with filming–she was such a super dog! I also had an acquaintance who was Scottish and who had worked as a gamekeeper in Scotland, and I asked him how deer were hunted with Scottish Deerhounds, and if these dogs really could bring down adult Red Deer. He verified that they most certainly were capable of taking out the largest stag(they were usually hunted in pairs), and they did this normally by seizing the deer while running full tilt, causing the deer to fall heavily and break it’s neck–in which case no guns or shooting is necessary! He also emphasized that modern conformation show Scottish Deerhounds tend to be oversized and “klunky”(no suprise to most of us on this blog!), and that good functional Deerhounds are never over 80 to 90 lbs, and not as heavily built as the show dogs. This sounds a lot like the American functional version of the breed, the “American Staghound”, and were I ever to set out to acquire such a dog, I would seek such unexagerrated working stock dogs out, for health and functionability(and much cheaper purchase price!)–like so many other breeds, the Scottish Deerhounds in this country have a very narrow gene pool, and most have been bred just for show, sadly. They do have the most wonderful temperments–at least the few that I’ve met, and are certainly WAY healthier and long-lived compared to the wretched, lethargic, walking-vetinary-bills that the poor Irish Wolfhounds have become…….