The dog was a bitch, and was with young when Cairbre carried her over to Ireland. The news that the wonderful little beast had arrived spread far and wide, and the king of Munster and the chief king, Cormac Mac Airt (227-266) both laid claim to it; the only way in which Cairbre could satisfy them was to give each a pup when his lap-dog had littered. So general was the amazement over the smallness and the beauty of the original dog, that some verses were made on it, which have been preserved to this day. "Sweet was your drink in the house of Ailil (King of Munster)! Sweet was your meat in the house of Cormac! Fair was your bread in the house of Cairbre! O doggie, Slave of the Hilt!" It was probably during the Irish domination that a large portion of North Devon and East Cornwall was colonised from the Emerald Isle. But to return to the Saxon conquest. When Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter and made the Tamar their limit, it is not to be supposed that he devastated and depopulated Devon; what he did was to destroy the tribal organisation throughout Devon, banish the princes and subjugate the people to Saxon rule. The Saxon colonists planted themselves in "Stokes" mostly in the valleys. The Celts had never been anything of a town-building people; they had lived scattered over the land in their _treffs_ and _boths_, and only the retainers of a chieftain had dwelt around his _dun_. But with the Saxons, the fact that they lived as a few surrounded by an alien population that in no way loved them, obliged them to huddle together in their "Stokes." Thus towns sprang into existence, and bear Saxon names. It is probable that the yeomen of the land at the present day represent the Saxon; and most assuredly in the great body of the agricultural labourers, the miners, and artisans, we have mainly a mixture of British and Ivernian blood. Throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed till this present century, there can have been no easy, if possible, passage out of the labouring community into that of the yeoman class--hardly into that of tenant farmer; whereas the yeomen and the tradesmen, wool merchants and the like, were incessantly feeding the class of _armigeres_, squires; and their descendants supplied the nobility with accretions. There is, perhaps, in the east of Devon a preponderating element of Saxon, but I have observed in the Seaton and Axminster district so much of the dark hair and eye, that I believe there is less than is supposed, and that there is a very large understratum of the earlier Silurian. Perhaps in North Devon there may be more of the Saxon. West of Okehampton there is really not much difference between the Devonian and the Cornishman, but of this more presently.