When I was young, I enjoyed reading adventure stories.  In the dog genre, my favorite author was Albert Payson Terhune, best know for Lad a Dog, first published in 1918, making the novel over 100 years old in 2023.  In fact, each chapter was initially serialized as a short story beginning in 1915.  Upon revisiting his works recently, I discovered that almost all of Lad's fictional exploits were based on real events in the life of Terhune and his beloved collie, Sunnybank Lad.  This makes Lad stories all the more compelling.  Further, the language and style of Terhune's prose is so clear, descriptive and absorbing that it could have been written in 2015 rather than a century prior.

From the same youthful age, my mother's bookshelf contained another dog book, Alfred Ollivant's Bob Son of Battle, dated a couple of decades earlier, in 1898.  At the time it was published it was well received as a children's story.  That reputation, much diluted by time and neglect, has followed it since.

I tried to read this book as a youngster and gave up before finishing the first chapter -- the language was simply too difficult to follow.  Once again, recently I decided to revisit this story, accessing the text as a download from Project Gutenberg.  Readability had not improved with time, and so again it was set aside.  Not surprising given, as I soon discovered, that the author wrote the entire book in 1890s rural Cumbrian dialect -- Cumbria being a county in the northwest of England, bordering Scotland and best know for its Lake District.

During the search for more Bob Son of Battle information, the fact surfaced that a linguist named Lydia Davis had rewritten the novel in modern language.  Buoyed by the possibility of finally reading this classic, I went to the local library in search of the book.  Sure enough, there it was -- in the children's section right next to fantasy wonderland classics such as Mother Goose, Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte's Web.  Home it came and reading began.

Quickly, a disturbing trend emerged.  Bob, the working sheep dog of a respected local property owner, is heralded as the greatest sheep dog in generations.  But, although his prowess is frequently asserted by the author it is rarely illustrated by an elaboration of illustrative events; it is simply proclaimed as fact.  This differs drastically from the exploits of Lad, whose real life based accomplishments are narrated in vivid and action-packed prose.

Perhaps the real problem with Bob Son of Battle is that while Lad's adventures are frequently related from the collie's perspective, the presumptive central character in Bob Son of Battle is merely a prop for the human actors.

And, of course every story has to have a villain.  In this case, he is a hermitic Scottish sheep man who is despised throughout the region for his sour personality, boastfulness and jealousy of Bob and his owner.  (The isolated, embittered Scotsman as antagonist among insular English country folk is so clichéd that it raises questions about the author's personal viewpoint.)  The villain constantly denigrates his son, whom he beats with a belt when inebriated -- which is most of the time.  As might be expected, he soon obtains a cur of a dog, upon whom he lavishes great affection. The cur, named Red Wull, becomes a competitor to Bob for title of best sheep dog in the area.

By this time, I was beginning to tire of the beatings and the heavy-handed portrait of drunken rages.  I began looking online for reviews, eventually finding one that confirmed my suspicions.  This is a dark and horrid story of brutality, abuse and warped personality, certainly not one to recommend itself to children.  The reviewer, author Rachel Brown (Aug 13, 2012, 3 star) includes an excerpt from the final chapter, describing what she characterizes as a sort of "Valentine's Day Doggie Massacre."

Paging to the back of the book, I found the description all too apt -- in fact, so much so that I could only scan rather than read the gory details line for line.  The novel ends with Red Wull, found out as a sheep killer, being mobbed and mauled to death by a numberless pack of local dogs.  There is no solitary knightly mortal combat between Bob and Red Wull, only the lone anti-hero fighting for his life against impossible odds, slaying attacker after attacker until he is overwhelmed by sheer numbers. One could almost feel sympathy, surely not an outcome the author intended.  (Contrast this with the epic final chapter of Lad a Dog, "In the Day of Battle," chronicling Lad's desperate fight for survival against treachery and near impossible odds.)

Red Wull's distraught owner, wracked with grief over the loss of the one thing of value in his life, then joins the moribund dog, thus ending the interminable narrative on an even darker note.  Not a children's story by any standard -- and certainly not in the same league as Lad A Dog.  But, perhaps an unintended reflection of English attitudes in centuries past.

© 2023 Michael W. Masters