That’s particularly important, I guess, in midwinter, which is why the one that really endures is Christmas, because we need a bit of tinsel, and some turkey.” “Get together, have a knees-up, have a drink, have a feast.
“They had a social function,” says Coles. These holidays were ostensibly religious, but they gave the year texture and colour. Christians from back then might have understood why we’ve let St Guinefort’s day slide, but they’d probably be agog to learn how quickly festivals such as Ascension Day and Corpus Christi have vanished from our lives. The medieval calendar was teeming with holy days. His “lovely, touching” story, says Coles politely, “is a work of art rather than science, if I can put it that way.”Īn artist’s rendering of Saint Guinefort, the canine saint (Wikimedia) Bobby was awarded the Key to the City of Edinburgh and is immortalised by a statue. Take Greyfriars Bobby, the Victorian terrier who is said to have guarded his owner’s grave for 14 years. Perhaps because dogs take a putatively human virtue (loyalty) to greater lengths than most humans would, we enjoy hearing about them. So widespread is the “faithful hound motif” that it has its own entry in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, an academic catalogue of folk-tale types. Underlying both these stories, apparently, is The Brahmin and the Mongoose, a folk tale from India. Welsh readers might be thinking of Gelert, a noble hound whose story – the snake is swapped for a wolf – is near-identical to Guinefort’s. Nevertheless, stories like Guinefort’s are not uncommon in myth and legend. And dogs don’t do that, because they’re really just interested in food and barking and humping legs and things.” (I hope Pongo is happily humping a table-leg rather than listening to his master.) “The issue is that saints are people who live in anticipation of heaven and manifest, in their lives, the virtues of the blessed. They are devoted, Coles says, but they don’t have human morality. He’s a relentless barker.”ĭogs, for all their virtues, are probably more venal than venerable. “Pongo is not going to be canonised,” says Coles, “because even by dog standards, he is venal. It is Pongo, Coles’ 11-year-old long-haired dachshund. He is interrupted by a high-pitched bark. Lots of people anchor their faith not just to the Church, to the official religion of state and empire, but to things that are meaningful to them, and often that’s local people, local places, local greyhounds.” I’m sure those prayers were sincere, and I’m sure stories began to circulate about miraculous healings, as so often happens. “Desperate parents, then and now, will try anything to get a sick child better. Would they have taken the story entirely seriously? Might there have been a trace of light-heartedness in their pilgrimages? Probably not, says Coles, who is the author of Lives of the Improbable Saints and Legends of the Improbable Saints.
One wonders whether medieval people were quite so po-faced as we imagine them. As any scholar of theological calendars will tell you, it is untrue that “every dog has its day.” But Guinefort does, and that day is today: 22 August. Long after the knight’s death, local peasants brough offerings to the shrine, hoping to secure good health for their children. The snake had made for the baby and Guinefort had leapt at it, knocking over the cradle but saving its resident.īelatedly recognising Guinefort’s heroism, the knight built him a shrine. Thinking good Guinefort must have savaged the baby, the knight drew his sword and killed his faithful hound… only to find that the baby was unharmed and that the blood was a snake’s. There was blood on Guinefort’s muzzle, too. On their return, they found blood spattered around the floored cradle. When the couple went out for the day, they left Guinefort to guard their infant son. Guinefort, Stephen tells us, belonged to a knight who lived with his wife in a castle near Lyon. Guinefort was a 13th-century French greyhound whose tale was recorded by Stephen of Bourbon, a Dominican monk and inquisitor. Today, as the Reverend Richard Coles has pointed out, is Saint Guinefort’s day. But is your dog truly good? Is it gallant, loyal, pious? Is it saintly? Is it… a saint? But how good? Good enough, perhaps, to fetch a stick or discard a saliva-sodden chew toy. You might well consider your dog a good boy or girl. ‘They had a social function – get together, have a knees-up, have a drink, have a feast' (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
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