The Russet Dog

Oh, he’s a rare clever fellow, the Russet Dog, the fox, as I suppose you call him. Have you heard the tale of how he gets rid of his fleas? He hunts and hunts until he finds a tuft of sheep’s wool, takes it in his mouth, goes down to the river, turns his tail to the current and backs into the water. As the water rises up his haunches, the little fleas move forward, and the deeper he goes, the farther forward they move, until there is nothing left above water but his snout and the tuft of wool. Then the fleas all rush into his snout and the wool. Down goes his nose, and as soon as he feels it is clear of them, he lets go of the wool, and there he is, rid of his fleas.

But that is nothing to the way he catches ducks for his dinner. He gathers some heather, pokes his head into the middle of it and drifts down the stream to where the ducks are swimming, for all the world like a bit of floating heather. Then he lets go, and it’s snap, snap, snap, until there isn’t a duck left.

And he is as brave as he is clever. They say he once found a set of bagpipes lying all alone, and being very hungry, he started to chew them, but the moment he made a hole in the bag, out came a squeal. Was the Russet Dog afraid? Not a bit. All he said was, “Here’s music with my dinner.”

For some days a Russet Dog had had his eye on a family of wrens he wanted for his dinner. One would not satisfy him; he wanted the whole lot, father and eighteen sons. But they were all so alike that he could not tell one from another, or the father from the children. “It’s no use killing one son,” he said to himself, “because the old cock will take warning and fly off with the other seventeen. I wish I knew which was the old gentleman.”

He set his wits to work, and one day, seeing them all threshing in a barn, he sat down to watch. Still he could not be sure. “Now I have it,” he said. “Well done the old man’s stroke! He hits true!”

“Oh,” said the one he suspected of being the head of the family, “if you had seen my grandfather’s strokes, you might say that.”

The sly fox pounced on the old cock and swallowed him in a trice, and soon he had caught and eaten the eighteen sons, all flying about the barn in terror.

For a long time a fox-hunter had been very anxious to catch our friend, and he had blocked up all the fox holes in the cold weather. One evening the hunter fell asleep in his hut, and when he opened his eyes, there was the fox sitting very primly by the fire. He had come in by the hole under the door that was there for the dog, the cat, the pig and the hen.

“Oho!” said the hunter. “Now I have you!” And he went and sat down over the hole so the fox could not escape.

“Oho!” said the fox. “I’ll soon make that stupid fellow get up.” He found the man’s shoes and put them in the fire, to see whether that would make his enemy move.

“I shan’t get up for that, my fine gentleman,” cried the hunter.

The stockings went after the shoes, and the coat and trousers went the same way, but still the man sat over the hole. At last the fox set the bed and bedding alight and then put a light to the straw the man was sitting on, and it blazed up to the ceiling.

“No! That I can’t stand!” shouted the man, jumping up, and in all the smoke and confusion the fox slipped out.

But Master Rory, as they call the fox, did not always have things his own way. One day he met a cock, and they got talking.

“How many tricks can you do?” asked the fox.

“Well, I can do three,” said the cock. “How many can you do yourself?”

“I can do seventy-three.”

“What tricks can you do?”

“Well,” said the fox, “my grandfather used to shut one eye and give a great shout.”

“I can do that myself.”

“Do it, then.”

So the cock shut one eye and crowed as loud as he could, but he shut the eye on the fox’s side, and the fox grabbed him by the neck and ran off with him. But the woman who owned the cock saw it and shouted, “Let go of that cock! He’s mine!”

“Why don’t you say to her, ‘Oh, sweet-tongued singer, it’s my own cock’?” said the cock to the fox. The fox opened his mouth to say it, and down fell the cock, who flew up onto a rooftop, shut one eye and gave a loud crow.

Still, it was thanks to that very fox that the wolf lost his tail. Haven’t you heard about that? One day the wolf and the fox were out together, and they stole a dish of crowdie. In those days the wolf was the bigger beast of the two, with a long tail like a greyhound’s and great teeth. The fox was afraid of him and did not dare say a word when the wolf ate most of the crowdie and left only a scrap at the bottom of the dish for him. But he made up his mind to pay him back. The next night, when they were out together, the fox pointed to the reflection of the moon in a pool in the ice.

“I smell a very nice cheese,” he said, “and there it is.”

“And how will you get it?” asked the wolf.

“Wait here while I see if the farmer is asleep. If you keep your tail on it, nobody will see it or know it’s there. Keep it steady. I may be a while.”

So the wolf lay down with his tail on the moonshine in the ice and kept it there for an hour, until it was frozen fast. Then the fox, who had been watching, ran to the farmer and cried, “The wolf is out there! He’ll eat the children! The wolf! The wolf!” Out came the farmer and his wife with sticks to kill the wolf, but the wolf ran off and left his tail behind him, and the storyteller offers this as a fanciful explanation of the wolf’s short tail and the fox’s long brush.

Soon after that Master Rory spotted a fine cock and a fat hen he fancied for his dinner, but when he came near, they both flew up into a tree. He did not lose heart but started chatting to them, and at last invited them to come a little way with him. There was no danger, he said, and no fear of his hurting them, because peace had been declared between men and beasts and among all the animals.

After a lot of talk the cock said to the hen, “My dear, don’t you see a couple of hounds coming across the field?”

“Yes,” said the hen, “and they’ll soon be here.”

“In that case it’s time I was off,” said the sly fox, “for I’m afraid those stupid hounds may not have heard about the peace.” And he took to his heels and did not stop for breath until he reached his den.

Now Master Rory had not finished with his friend the wolf. When the wolf’s stump had healed, he went round to see him. “You’re a lucky fellow,” he told him. “How much faster you’ll run now that you haven’t all that to carry behind you!”

“Get away from me, traitor!” said the wolf.

“Is it a traitor I am,” said Master Rory, “when I’ve only come to tell you about a keg of butter I’ve found?”

After a great deal of grumbling the wolf agreed to go with him. So the Russet Dog and the wild dog, the fox and the wolf, went off together along the seashore, found the keg of butter and buried it.

The next day the fox went out, and when he came in, he said a man had come to invite him to a christening. He dressed himself up in his best and went off, and where should he go but to the butter keg. When he came home, the wolf asked him the child’s name, and he said it was Head Off.

The next day he said another man had asked him to a christening, and he went to the keg and took out about half. When he came home, the wolf asked the child’s name. “Well,” he said, “it’s a strange name I wouldn’t give a child of mine: Half and Half.”

The day after, he said someone had asked him to yet another christening, and off he went to the keg and ate the rest. When the wolf asked the child’s name, he said it was All Gone.

The next morning he told the wolf they ought to bring the keg home. They went, and when they got to the keg, there was not a trace of butter in it.

“Well, you must have been coming here to get at this, though I wasn’t,” said the fox. The wolf swore he had never been near it.

“You needn’t swear you didn’t come here. I know you did, and that you took it, but I’ll find out from you when we get home whether it was you who ate the butter.”

When they got home, he hung the wolf up by his hind legs with his head dangling, and he took a dab of butter and put it under the wolf’s mouth, as if it had come out of the wolf’s belly. “You red thief!” he said. “I told you it was you who ate the butter.”

They slept that night, and in the morning the fox said, “It’s silly of us to be starving like this out of pure laziness. Let’s go to a farm and rent a piece of land.” They went to a farm, and the owner gave them a piece of land worth seven English pounds. That year they planted oats, and when they had harvested them and came to divide the crop, the fox said, “Would you rather have the root or the top? You can have your choice.”

“I’d rather have the root,” said the wolf. So the fox had fine oatcakes all year, and the wolf had straw.

The next year they planted potatoes, and they grew well. “Which would you like this year, the root or the top?” asked the fox.

“You won’t trick me again,” said the wolf. “I’ll have the top this year.”

“Fair enough, my hero,” said the fox. So the wolf got the potato tops and the fox the potatoes. But the wolf kept stealing the fox’s potatoes.

“You had better go over there and read the name I’ve written in the grey mare’s hoofs,” said the fox. Off went the wolf and began to read the name, and in the middle of it the mare lifted her leg and broke the wolf’s head.

“Oh,” said the fox, “it’s a long time since I heard my name. Better to catch geese than to read books.” He went home, and the wolf did not trouble him any more.

But the Russet Dog met his match at last, as I’ll tell you. One day, as the fox was going over a loch, he met a little bonnach and asked where he was going. The little bonnach told him.

“And where have you come from?” asked the fox.

“I came from Geeogan, and I came from Cooaigean, and I came from the slab of the bonnach stone, and I came from the eye of the quern, and I’ll come from you if I can,” said the little bonnach.

“Well, I’ll carry you over on my back,” said the fox.

“You’ll eat me, you’ll eat me,” said the little bonnach.

“Then come on the tip of my tail.”

“Oh no, I won’t. You’ll eat me.”

“Come into my ear.”

“I won’t. You’ll eat me.”

“Come into my mouth.”

“You’ll eat me that way for certain.”

“Oh no, I won’t eat you,” said the fox. “When I’m swimming, I can’t eat anything at all.”

So the bonnach went into the fox’s mouth. “Oho!” said the fox. “Now I can do as I please with you. It was said long ago that a hard morsel is no good in the mouth.” And he ate the little bonnach.

Then he went to a loch, caught a duck and ate that. He climbed a hillside and began stroking his sides against the hill. “Oh, king, how nicely a bullet would smack against my ribs just now!”

But who was listening but a hunter. “I’ll try that on you straight away,” said the hunter.

“Bad luck to this place,” said the fox, “where a creature can’t say a word in fun without its being taken in earnest.”

The hunter loaded his gun, fired at him and killed him, and so the Russet Dog came to his end.

Where this tale comes from

Joseph Jacobs says he made up this “Celtic Reynard” himself for More Celtic Fairy Tales, stitching it together from several fables in Campbell’s West Highland Tales, along with Campbell’s “The Keg of Butter” and “The Fox and the Little Bonnach.”

Jacobs traces the pieces: the fox’s story about a truce among the animals is a well-known Aesop fable; the cock’s escape from the fox’s mouth belongs to the Reynard stories and is the plot of Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”; and the wolf losing his tail in the ice is told all over Europe. He adds that in older versions the wolf in that story was the bear.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #34453, The Russet Dog)

Best for ages 9–12 — a string of sly Highland fox fables, with a sudden ending that will surprise young readers.

Talking opens the trap

The old wren identifies himself by answering a compliment. The cock escapes when the fox opens his mouth to answer the woman. At the end the fox’s own joke gives the hunter an invitation. Across otherwise separate episodes, speech can expose the speaker, while the christening names also let the fox tell the truth about the stolen butter without the wolf understanding.

Pair a boast with its consequence

Choose two speeches that change an episode’s outcome. Explain who understands more than the speaker expects. Which scene reverses the fox’s usual advantage? Treat the opening animal tricks as folklore, not observed wildlife behaviour.

Think about it

• How did the fox trick the wolf over the keg of butter?
• Which animals managed to outwit the fox, and how?
• What was the fox’s last mistake?

More stories like this

• The Farmer of Liddesdale — another short tale from More Celtic Fairy Tales
• The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener — a tale with a very different, helpful fox
• The Ridere of Riddles — another tale from Campbell’s Highland collection