Dogs and All about Them

It may be interesting to give a few particulars concerning the traceable ancestors of the modern Dandie. In Mr. Charles Cook's book on this breed, we are given particulars of one William Allan, of Holystone, born in 1704, and known as Piper Allan, and celebrated as a hunter of otters and foxes, and for his strain of rough-haired terriers who so ably assisted him in the chase. William Allan's terriers descended to his son James, also known as the "Piper," and born in the year 1734. James Allan died in 1810, and was survived by a son who sold to Mr. Francis Somner at Yetholm a terrier dog named Old Pepper, descended from his grandfather's famous dog Hitchem. Old Pepper was the great-grandsire of Mr. Somner's well-known dog Shem. These terriers belonging to the Allans and others in the district are considered by Mr. Cook to be the earliest known ancestors of the modern Dandie Dinmont. Sir Walter Scott himself informs us that he did not draw the character of Dandie Dinmont from any one individual in particular, but that the character would well fit a dozen or more of the Lidderdale yeomen of his acquaintance. However, owing to the circumstance of his calling all his terriers Mustard and Pepper, without any other distinction except "auld" and "young" and "little," the name came to be fixed by his associates upon one James Davidson, of Hindlee, a wild farm in the Teviotdale mountains. James Davidson died in the year 1820, by which time the Dandie Dinmont Terrier was being bred in considerable numbers by the Border farmers and others to meet the demand for it which had sprung up since the appearance of Guy Mannering.