On The Fairy Dog Petitcrieu, Who Cuts In Half All Sorrows

the dog lives

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, “The Little Fairy Bell,” trans. Hilaire Belloc.

“Tristan went into Wales, into the land of the great Duke Gilain, who was young, powerful, and frank in spirit, and welcomed him nobly as a God-sent guest. And he did everything to give him honor and joy; but he found that neither adventure, nor feast could soothe what Tristan suffered.

One day, as he sat by the young Duke’s side, his spirit weighed upon him, so that not knowing it he groaned, and the Duke, to soothe him, ordered into his private room a fairy thing, which pleased his eyes when he was sad and relieved his own heart; it was a dog, and the varlets brought it in to him, and they put it upon a table there. Now this dog was a fairy dog, and came from the Duke of Avalon; for a fairy had given it him as a love-gift, and no one can well describe its kind or beauty. And it bore at its neck, hung to a little chain of gold, a little bell; and that tinkled so gaily, and so clear and so soft, that as Tristan heard it, he was soothed, and his anguish melted away, and he forgot all that he had suffered for the Queen; for such was the virtue of the bell and such its property: that whosoever heard it, he lost all pain. And as Tristan stroked the little fairy thing, the dog that took away his sorrow, he saw how delicate it was and fine, and how it had soft hair like samite, and he thought how good a gift it would make for the Queen…

Then Tristan took the little fairy dog and gave it in ward to a Welsh harper, who was cunning and who bore it to Cornwall…and the Queen was so pleased that she gave ten marks of gold to the harper. Wherever she went she carried the dog with her in memory of her friend, and as she watched it sadness and anguish and regrets melted out of her heart.

At first she did not guess the marvel, but thought her consolation was because the gift was Tristan’s, till one day she found that it was fairy, and that it was the little bell that charmed her soul; then she thought: “What have I to do with comfort since he is sorrowing? He could have kept it too and have forgotten his sorrow; but with high courtesy he sent it to me to give me his joy and to take up his pain again. Friend, while you suffer, so long will I suffer also.” And she took the magic bell and shook it just a little, and then by the open window she threw it into the sea.”

It is true that the curious effect of the dog Petitcrieu was accounted different according to each who saw him. The marvel of his coat was this: Each color was blended within so skillfully that no one could say which one stood out more than the others. He was neither green as clover, nor yellow as saffron, nor red as scarlet, nor blue as lapis lazuli, and yet each of these shades was nonetheless present, and a hundred more in addition to these, as well as a deep and rich purple luster. Yet for all this variation there was no confusion in his appearance; none who saw him came away bewildered, and the sound of the little bell hung around his neck could eat sorrow. In Cornwall they could not master the length of his name, and called him Pticru.

In part because of the magical properties of the little bell he wore and in part because of the marvellous appearance of his coat, it was not possible for anyone who beheld him to hold on to grief. All who looked at him were wonderfully relieved of any suffering, and restored completely from grief and unease. They delighted in the sweet, bright ring of the bell, and the wonderful delicacy of his movement. But anyone who was comforted by the dog Pticru still retained the shape of all the sorrows they had chanced in their minds; they were not forcibly plunged into forgetting but rather relieved of the heaviness of despair, and could bear their afflictions lightly, as one who carries an easy burden.

The dog Pticru had always known himself to be useful. He was often loaned out by the Duke of Avalon as a token of friendship. Sometimes he was given to others as a pledge, sometimes borrowed in times of great need, occasionally stolen. Very often he consoled lovers. He was never sent anyplace where joy already breathed. He experienced the world as something always clouded by suffering — but the cloud was always and easily dispelled by the sharp dart of his arrival. He was the short prayer which pierced heaven.

This was not an age which understood man to contain an infinite reservoir of potential. Man was fixed, constant, and limited, like a train schedule (although there were neither trains nor schedules at the time). He required great masses of external organization, discipline, restriction and tradition in order to do even the slightest thing decently or useful, and it was for this reason that their world was populated with so many more marvels than our own. All miracles, all astonishments, all strangeness and cunning, all that was confounding and wonderful, glorious or ghostly, were extrinsic to man, and instead abounded over the rest of the earth.

The dog Pticru did not labor to dispel grief; rather it was his nature to do so, and therefore he did not regard sorrow as an enemy to be driven out any more than the rock which is thrown into a pond considers the water it has displaced there its enemy. He did not experience himself as a miracle, and was himself neither happy nor unhappy to provide consolation. Wherever the dog Pticru went, sorrow left. He could only ever see the back of it, as the day can only ever see the departure of the night.

But as we have said, there were two marvels of the fairy dog Pticru: his wonderful particolored coat, which delighted the eye and which was softer to touch than any other thing, even silk, and the subtly-wrought bell that was hung about his neck, which rang with every movement of his head, the sound of which soothed the cares of all who heard it. When Iseult took the little magic bell from around his neck and threw it into the sea, was the first loss the dog Pticru ever knew.

The bell sank beneath the surface of the sea, and came to rest on a little rock many miles away from the sun and quite out of reach. There it remains, and if the motion of the tides still sometimes causes it to ring out, the only creatures to hear and be comforted by it are fish, whose sorrows cannot be very great to begin with. And the villages in that part of the world have since then been known to lose slightly more than their fair share of children to the sea, for some of their children know little of peace unless they are on board a ship over deep waters.

So it was not the grief of Iseult, but her attachment to that grief, which confounded the fairy-dog Pticru and robbed him of his bell. Still he was delicate and fine, still he had soft hair like samite, still he was a little fairy thing and highly prized by all who saw him. But of himself he could only charm sorrow, not dispel it, and he became from that day on half the miracle he had once been. Fairies and fairy-baggage are not especially affected by loss, and Pticru rather noted the absence of his bell more than he suffered for it. He did, however, mark Iseult for having wrought the first and only change in his life, which he had only ever before experienced continuously. Through her he came to know what it means to adjust. Pticru did not remember the Duke of Avalon distinct from any other duke whose court he had passed through, and he did not remember Duke Gilain, who had been tricked by Tristan and said the loss of the fairy-dog Pticru was the same as the loss of all his joy, but he did remember Iseult standing by the open window, holding the magic bell in her hand, then shaking it a little, then with nothing in her hands at all.

In the ordinary manner of things, a man or a woman will outlive five or six generations of dogs, whether they hunt or herd sheep or sit on pillows. It was not this way with the dog Pticru, who outlived all manner of things, including the woman Iseult. He marked this loss too, with a life that had now been changed twice, and everyone who ever sees him will feel their sorrows cut in half, even now.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]