Rabbit beagles-- Giant and Ringlet.
I grew up in rural West Virginia, where archaic English phrasessometimes persist in the vernacular.
When I was a kid, I never heard anyone ever say the word “beagle” by itself. It was always “rabbit beagle.”
As I got older, I decided the name was redundant. Beagles were used to hunt only rabbits and, at higher elevations, snowshoe hares.
I saw no purpose behind calling them “rabbit beagle,” so I just dropped it.
Well, it turns out the this phrase does have a particular meaning, but the context in which it was used in late twentieth century West Virginia was not the same as it was in the nineteenth century.
In Stonhenge’s The Dogs of Great Britain, America, and Other Countries (circa 1880):
The dwarf or rabbit beagle is a very small and delicate little hound, but with an excellent nose, and much faster than he looks. Some sportsmen have carried their predilection for small dogs to such an extent, as to use a pack of these beagles which might be carried about in the shooting pockets of the men; and in this way have confined their duties to the hunting alone, so that they were not tired in trailing along the road from the kennel to the huntingfield and back again. The average hight of these may be taken at 10 mches, but their bodies are disproportionately lengthened Patience and perseverance are stil” more necessary in these hounds than in their larger brethren, and without them they soon lose their hare, as they must be content to hunt her at a pace with which a man can readily keep up on foot, horses being quite out of place with such a diminutive pack.
A pack of rabbit-beagles, the property of Mr. Crane, of Southover House, England, we believe to contain the best “patterns” we have ever known. We have seen them on a cold bad scenting day work up a rabbit and run him in the most extraordinary manner, and although the nature of the ground compelbd the pack to run almost in Indian file, and thus to carry a very narrow line of scent, if they threw it up, it was but for a moment (pg 65-66).
In nineteenth century Britain, “rabbit beagle” referred to the smallest beagles imaginable. These dogs were around 9 inches tall at the whithers.
Now, the dogs called “rabbit beagles” in West Virginia were not that small. They were the “medium-sized” beagles that Stonehenge mentions. These would be within the 13-inch and 15-inch beagle varieties that the AKC recognizes. Stonehenge also mentions a rough-coated beagle, which would be something like a griffon, and the Kerry beagle, which is much larger dog. I have known unregistered working-type beagles from West Virginia that were more or less harriers. I don’t know their exact ancestry, but these dogs were all used for hunting rabbits. I don’t know if they had foxhound in them or if they represented a distinct harrier-type hound that is endemic to West Virginia.
The tiny beagles were something of legend. I remember hearing stories about “pocket beagles” that would fit in a man’s coat, which Stonehenge mentions in his account of the “rabbit beagle.”
But “rabbit beagle” always referred to the normal beagle in West Virginia, and the pocket beagle was a creature of legend.
Not only are we two people divided by a common language, we are two people divided by a common language that evolves with the times.
