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INTRODUCTION.
Iceland the colour of such kine is apalgrár, dapple grey. This animal has been an object of adoration and respect from the earliest times, and we need only remind our readers of the sanctity of cows and bulls among the Indians and Egyptians, of "the Golden Calf" in the Bible; of lo and her wanderings from land to land; and, though last, not least, of Audhumla, the Mythic Cow in the Edda, who had so large a part in the creation of the first Giant in human form.[1]
The Dog, to which, with all his sagacity and faithfulness, something unclean and impure clings, as Grimm well observes, plays no very prominent part in these Tales.[2]
- ↑ Snorro's Edda, ch. vi., English trans., Stockholm, 1842.
- ↑ Thus from the earliest times "dog," "hound," has been a term of reproach. Great instances of fidelity, such as "Gellert" or the "Dog of Montargis," both of which are Eastern and primeval, have scarcely redeemed the cringing currish nature of the race in general from disgrace. M. Francisque Michel, in his Histoire des Races Maudites de la France d de l'Espagne, thinks it probable that Cagot, the nickname by which the heretical Goths who fled into Aquitaine in the time of Charles Martel, and received protection from that king and his successors, were called by the Franks, was derived from the term Canis Gothicus or Canes Gothi. In modern French the word means 'hypocrite,' and this would come from the notion of the outward conformity to the Catholic formularies imposed on the Arian Goths by their orthodox protectors. Etymologically, the derivation is good enough, according to Diez, Romanisches Worterbuch; Provençal ca, dog; Got, Gothic. Before quitting Cagot, we may observe that the derivation of bigot, our ' bigot,' another word of the same kind, is not so
