PRESENTED BY
THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS
The Gelli.
The Gelli (or Gelly) Hounds
were a very old strain of hound that were used for fox hunting in the Gelly
area of Pembrokeshire. There were still a few couple of the hounds extant in
the area in the late nineteenth century, and Rawdon Briggs Lee (1897)
also suggests that the black and tan Pentyrch Foxhounds “originally came
from the Gelly.” There were of course other foxhounds in Wales in the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, referred to as Welsh hounds, which were
described as markedly different from the Gelli, probably because of their
different origins, yet at other times the Welsh hound and the Glog foxhounds
(Lady Aspley,1936) get a mention as supposedly being the main recipients of the
Gelli blood. There is also a claim that what remained of the Gelli hounds were
later governed by a committee under the mastership of Mr. Jenkin Jenkins and
during the early part of the twentieth century they were interbred with other
packs; by which point, of course they would no longer be anything other than a
variety of the Welsh Foxhound; "Probably the modern Welsh foxhound owes
much of his fine nose and voice to this particular importation"
Buchanan-Jardine, 1937.
Gelli Hounds were
rough-coated and stood from 17 to 21 inches in height and they and their
descendants could single-handedly run down a fox (Chronicle, 1940). There were
two notable differences between these dogs and the English and Welsh Hounds of
the time: their heads had a high peak and long pendulous ears, something like a
Bloodhound (this hints at a link to the St Hubert or perhaps some type of
French Griffon brought over by the Normans); and they had a distinctive bay
that carried a long way in the Welsh hills, the sound of a pack in full cry
being likened to “the tones of an old church organ”, prompting seventeenth
century Welsh poet Edward Dafydd to say “llais y cwn a'u swn
yn seinio” (The Chronicle, 1940), which might translate as “the voice of the
dogs and their sounding” or perhaps “the voice of the dogs and their noise
sounding”. Their ‘music’ was essential as in times past there have been
occasions when the ‘cry’ or ‘music’ of the pack was at least as important as
hunting ability. An old hunting joke to this effect tells of a veteran
MFH who was unhappy with a hound he’d bought from draft as the dog was a
countertenor and he’d really been looking for a baritone.
Perhaps unusually for a
Welsh dog breed there is a, very fragmented, chronology of sorts available. As
a history it’s short on fact and high on conjecture and unfortunately contains
centuries-long gaps but it’s all that we have available at the moment:
- Shortly
after the Norman conquest of England a gift of a pack of St. Huberts (Chien
de Saint Hubert) were given to the Margam Abbey Monastery in what is now
Port Talbot – these hounds may have been smooth-coated black and tans.
- In
1536 on the dissolution of the monasteries King Henry VIII sold the
monastery, including the hounds, to Sir Rice Mansell.
- Sir Thomas Mansell 1st Baron Mansell of Margam
c1668 to 1723 passed the hounds on to Mr Jenkins of Gelly but in the
interim they’d acquired a rough coat and also apparently lost a few inches
in height.
Although the name of these
dogs is similar to that of the King’s Covert Hounds in Welsh (Gellgy, or Gellgi
in modern Welsh) they are not the same breed as the gift of the Saint Hubert’s
Hounds was given towards the end of the 11th century whereas the Gellgy are
mentioned in the laws of Hywell Dda dated from 920 A.D.
--- Explore further ---
A History and Description of the Modern Dogs ... Rawdon B, Lee. 1897
Bridleways Through History, Lady Apsley. 1936
Hounds of the World, Sir John Buchanan-Jardine. 1937
The Chronicle, Middleburg Va. Blue Ridge Press, Friday, May 3rd, 1940
Dogs: The Ultimate Dictionary Of Over 1,000 Dog Breeds. Dr. Desmond Morris. 2002
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