Brindle - Etymology and Literature

Etymology and Literature

The word brindle comes from brindled, originally brinded, from an old Scandinavian word. See Wiktionary. The opening of Act Four, Scene One of William Shakespeare's Macbeth is often thought to refer to a brindled cat because it contains the word "brinded": "Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd." However, in this context, the word "brinded" means branded, as if with fire. The Elizabethan word for "brindled" is "streaked."

• A brindle horse was mentioned in the book Riding Lessons by Sara Gruen.

• "Jock of the Bushveld" was a brindle Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix and the companion of Percy Fitzpatrick in their travels around the South African veldt in the 1880s. Fitzpatrick later collected tales of their adventures into a popular book of the same name.

• "Jack" was a brindle bulldog featured in the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. He was the companion and household protector of the Ingalls Family in their early pioneering travels. He dies of old age at the beginning of By the Shores of Silver Lake.

• In the poem "Pied Beauty" (1918), by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the concept occurs in the opening, where he states "Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple color as a brindled cow; / For rosemoles all in stipple upon trout that swim..." .