Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 183.

_Dog._ As the favorite of our domestic animals, the dog not unnaturally
possesses an extensive history, besides entering largely into those
superstitions which, more or less, are associated with every stage of
human life. It is not surprising, therefore, that Shakespeare frequently
speaks of the dog, making it the subject of many of his illustrations.
Thus he has not omitted to mention the fatal significance of its howl,
which is supposed either to foretell death or misfortune. In "2 Henry
VI." (i. 4) he makes Bolingbroke say:

"The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,[410]
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves."

[410] These dogs were kept for baiting bears, when that
amusement was in vogue, and "from their terrific howling they
are occasionally introduced to heighten the horror of the
picture." Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 50.

And, again, in "3 Henry VI." (v. 6), King Henry, speaking of Gloster,
says:

"The owl shriek'd at thy birth,--an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees."

The same superstition prevails in France and Germany,[411] and various
charms are resorted to for averting the ill-consequences supposed to
attach to this sign of ill-omen. Several of these, too, are practised in
our own country. Thus, in Staffordshire, when a dog howls, the following
advice is given: "Take off your shoe from the left foot, and spit upon
the sole, place it on the ground bottom upwards, and your foot upon the
place you sat upon, which will not only preserve you from harm, but stop
the howling of the dog."[412] A similar remedy is recommended in
Norfolk:[413] "Pull off your left shoe, and turn it, and it will quiet
him. A dog won't howl three times after." We are indebted to antiquity
for this superstition, some of the earliest writers referring to it.
Thus, Pausanias relates how, previous to the destruction of the
Messenians, the dogs pierced the air by raising a louder barking than
usual; and it is on record how, before the sedition in Rome, about the
dictatorship of Pompey, there was an extraordinary howling of dogs.
Vergil[414] ("Georgics," lib. i. l. 470), speaking of the Roman
misfortunes, says:

"Obscenaeque canes, importunaeque volucres
Signa dabant."

[411] See Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," p. 109.

[412] Henderson's "Fo