- The Glen of Imaal Terrier – A Brief but Action-Packed History
By Bruce Sussman
The name of our
tracts of land in the largely barren moun- tains of County Wicklow. Among those tracts was but one jewel, the Glen of Imaal. The sol- diers did Elizabeth’s bidding effectively and happily accept- ed their payment since none of them were landowners and even this barren land was more than they had to begin with. Finding the one place that they deemed habitable, they proceeded to settle the Glen of
breed is good launching point for a discussion of the history of the Glen of Imaal Terrier. The breed is named after a valley in the Wicklow Mountains, which dominate the northern region of County Wicklow, Ireland. County Wicklow itself is sit- uated on Ireland’s east coast, south of Dublin. It is Ireland’s
least populated county and the
Wicklow Mountains are Ireland’s most
remote region. Smack dab in the center of this hard-to-reach place is a lovely valley, the Glen of Imaal. This bit of geogra- phy speaks to a great extent about why our breed is and has been so little known and has come down to us unrefined by fashion—geographic isolation is very much a factor in the development and history of the Glen. And while we’re on the subject of our breed’s name, let me add that we are quickly becoming the most misspelled AKC breed. There’s one ‘n’ in Glen, double ‘a’ and a single ‘l’ in Imaal. They usually get ‘of’ right. Usually…not always. Most terrier enthusiasts know that the historical trail with regard to the development of all the terrier breeds tends to evaporate in the early 19th century—about 1820 or so. We are fortunate in our breed, largely because of the specificity of its place of origin, to know quite a bit about how this unique creature came about. In the late 16th century—around 1570— England’s Queen Elizabeth I faced what most every British monarch has faced—an Irish rebellion. She had sev- eral problems in addressing it. She had no standing army and she had no funds to pay mercenary soldiers. But she was clever. She struck a deal with Flemish and Lowland mer- cenaries to go over to Ireland to deal with the rebels and for payment she offered them tracts of Irish land. Now she was no fool, and a bit stingy to boot, so the land she gave them was none too good. In fact, it was fairly lousy. They were
Imaal and its environs. We know from several sources that they brought with them their dogs, and among them was a low slung, harsh coated hound that looked not unlike today’s PBGV or Basset Fauve de Bretange. These dogs in turn min- gled with native Irish types—hounds and the emerging terrier types—and over time these settlers began to develop a race of terrier that would perform the traditional terrier tasks of rid- ding the house and larder of vermin and hunting fox and badger. Tradition holds that these dogs were also bred to per- form a most unique task. These proto-Glens were meant to be turnspit dogs. The turnspit was a large wheel hung from the ceiling and to it was connected a pully that was in turn connected to a rotisserie-like device over the hearth. The dog was put into the wheel, and when he began to paddle away, dinner was cooked over the fire. There is no question that there were turnspits and turnspit dogs in use throughout the British Isles during this period; however, there are several problems with the theory. First and foremost, meat was a rare luxury in the diet of those Irish peasants who owned these dogs. Furthermore, the device itself was too large by far to fit in the traditional Irish cottage of the day. It was indeed used in the larger manses and estates on the Emerald Isle but no such estates existed in the Glen at that time. But in every myth or legend there is usually a kernel of truth, and I sus- pect there is here as well. Further research reveals the com-
118 • S HOW S IGHT M AGAZINE • D ECEMBER 2010
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