[341] Oooh, a doggie.

[Yin]

Hmm.

One's Welsh and the other's one of those Black Dogs/Grims/Black Shucks (Wiki'ed it- the name's Manx). Who called it?

EDIT:
From Wikipedia:

the Mallt-y-Nos (Matilda of the Night), is a crone who rides with Arawn and the hounds of the Wild Hunt, chasing sorrowful, lost souls to Annwn. The Mallt-y-Nos drives the hounds onward with shrieks and wails, which some say are evil and malicious in nature.

Others say that she was once a beautiful but impious Norman noblewoman who loved hunting so much that she said, "If there is no hunting in heaven, I would rather not go!" She is said to have regretted making this wish, and now cries out in misery rather than joy as she hunts forever in the night sky.

To be honest, I hadn't realised it was a woman at first :#

[popo]

Man, you just beat me, I even had the wikipedia article and everything.

I didnt even realize that there was a face under the hood at first.

[Mezzaphor]

So, do the two Guides have conflicting claims on a soul, and they just need someone to mediate between them? Are these two even guides?

There is something beautiful and sad about those last three panels.

[Ed130]

So, do the two Guides have conflicting claims on a soul, and they just need someone to mediate between them?

Maybe its a soul of someone of mixed parentage or could it be a good and evil thing?

[todd]

I'm looking forward to finding out just how a small child (I believe Annie's supposed to be around 5 or 6 at the time) can arbitrate a dispute between two mythical beings.

Thanks for the information on Mallt-y-Nos, Yin. I knew about the Moddey Dhoo (there's an entry on it in my copy of Katharine Briggs' "An Encyclopedia of Fairies"), but not her.

Annie's comment "Oooh, a doggie", is delightful. Not the slightest trace of fear towards the black dog with fiery eyes. (And this is hardly surprising, since she's growing up with mythological beings for friends - if you live alongside the abnormal at such an early age, it seems normal to you. No wonder she'll respond to the Minotaur at age 11 by politely introducing herself.)

I noticed the absent of any comment from Tom below the comic, and think it might be just as well. Too often, the comments tend towards a flippancy which punctures the mood of the instalment or distracts the readers from the story development and characterization to focus on Tom's remark (the joke about the two student extras not being Alistair, Anthony in disguise, etc., while being a good take-off on some readers' tendency to pay more attention to the background details than the foreground, probably had the disadvantage of distracting even more people from Kat seeing Ketrak than if it had not been there at all).

[popo]

(Blatantly stolen from wikipedia's article)

* In the Isle of Man it is styled Mauthe Doog, or Moddey Dhoo (black dog in Manx). It is said to haunt the environs of Peel Castle. People believe that anyone who sees the dog clearly will die soon after the encounter. It is mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in The Lay of the Last Minstrel--

Since Surma sees it clearly, and Annie is obviously still half-asleep, I wonder if it was the dog that killed Surma.
Then again, she did die 5-6 years later, and Tom probably isn't following the same story on it.
Still, I thought it was interesting.

EDIT: I wonder if Tom not having a comment was a comment on Surma not saying anything in the last panel. Or something like that.

[cenit]

Uhmm, does she really has to stop a dispute? didn't the guides said they just need to have annie around and "everything will sort out" [or something like that]

[venndiagram]

Look at the third and fourth panels of the latest page, cenit. www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=341