"Hey trola! trola! hey trola! trola! there, there boyes, there! hoicka! hoick! hoicka! whoope! Crye, there they goe! With yeeble, yable; gible, gabble; Hey with yeeble, yable, gible, gabble ! The hounds doe knock it lustily, With open mouth, and lusty crye !" "A Hawkes-up for a Hunts-up. By Thomas Ravenscroft, Bacheler of Music. "Awake! awake! the day doth break; our spanyels couple them: แ Hawking for the Partridge. By Thomas Ravenscroft. "Sith sickles and the sheering sythe, Hath shorne the fields of late, Now shall our hawkes and we be blythe: In all their flights, Will sild or neuer misse; Seld or neuer To truss you euer And make your bale our blisse. . Whur ret Duty; whur ret Beauty; whur ret Love; whur ret, hey dogs, hey! Whur ret Cater; whur ret Trea; whur ret Quando: whur ret Nimble ; ret hey dogs, hey! Whur ret Trauell; ret, whur ret Trover; ret, hey, dogs, hey! Ret Faver, ret Minx, ret Dido, ret Ciuill, ret Lemmon, ret: O well flowne, + eager Kite! Marke! marke! O marke below the Ley; "Trussing is when a hawke raseth a fowle aloft, and so descendeth downe with it to the ground." Latham. The similarity to Lear, O well-flown bird, is noticed by Mr. Douce, Vol. II. P. 166. This was a fayre and kingly flight. And sport with them in those delights, "For the Hearne and Ducke. By John Bennett. "Lver falkners, lver; giue warning to the field; Dye fearefull duckes, and climbe no more so high, But when our soare haukes + flye, and stiffe windes blow, J. H. "Eyes or nias is a term borrowed from the French niais, which means any young bird in the nest, avis in nido. It is the first of five several names by which a falcon is called during its first year." Ib. Vol. I. p. 74. "Thirdlie (says Turbervile) they are called sore hawkes, from the ende of August to the laste of September, October, and Nouember." Latham has a more enlarged description. "The passenger soare faulcon is a more choice and tender hawke, by reason of her youth and tendernesse of age, and therefore she must be more carefullie kept and better fed then the other mewed hawkes, because they are more hard of ward; yet she will be as soone reclaimd and made a certaine hawke, and rather sooner than the other, if she be well vsed, and respectiuely handled, And in those places where flying may be had, she may be found longer by a moneth than anie of the other." ART. DCCCXX. Hawking. "HAWKING was a sport vtterly vnknowne to the ancients, as Blondius and P. Iovius, in the second booke of his History, where he entreateth of the Mucovitish affaires, witnesseth; but was invented and first practised by Frederick Barbarossa, when he beseiged Rome: yet it appeareth by Firmicus, that it was knowne twelve hundred yeeres since, where he speaketh of falconers, and teachers of other birds: and indeed beyond him, I thinke it can no where be found that falconry was knowne. There have beene many who have written of falconry: Frederick the second Emperour of Germany. wrote hereof two excellent bookes, which Ioachim Camerarius (having by him the first copie in a manuscript) published together with a treatise of Albertus Magnus, of the nature of hawkes, and printed it at Norimberge. Budæus hath also written a large discourse of hunting and hawking, part whereof is annexed to the latter end of Henry Estienne's French and Latine Dictionary: in English, Master Blundevile's booke is the best that I know. By the canon law hawking was forbidden vnto clergie." This brief account is given by Henry Peacham who considered it one of the recreations very befitting "the compleat gentleman; fashioning him absolute in the most necessary and commendable qualities concerning mind or body that may be required in a noble gentleman." It may be inferred from an Act So it is in the editions of Peacham, 1622 and 1634; but certainly a mistake for Turberville. of Parliament of 34 Edw. IV. that the possession of a hawk could not be kept by a simple man, or of less bearing than a gentleman with estate to have a hawk. In other instances the tenacious support of this pastime may be traced through the statute law, and swelling the pains and penalties of criminal jurisprudence is therefore again mentioned in the Institutes. "A knowledge of hunting and falconry,” Warton describes as "an essential requisite in accomplishing the character of a Knight;" and for near four centuries it was the favourite amusement of the English nobility. An inquiry of how it became neglected, can, I believe, only be answered with conjecture. Peacham says "it can bee no more disgrace to a great lord to draw a faire picture, then to cut his hawke's meat," and this nauseating curtesy established between the owner and the hawk, and apparently in part a necessity to make the bird answer to the lure, might first occasion its falling into neglect and almost total disuse. Only a partial yet. "Master Stephen. How does my coussin Edward uncle? Knowell, O, well cousse, goe in and see: I doubt he be scarce stirring Ste. Uncle, afore I goe in, can you tell me, an' he have ere a booke of the sciences of hawking, and hunting? I would faine borrow it. Kno. Why, I hope you will not a hawking now, will you? Ste. No cousse; but I'll practise against next yere uncle, I have bought me a hawke, and a hood, and bells, and all; I lack nothing but a booke to keepe it by. Kno. O, most ridiculous. Ste. Nay, looke you now, you are angrie, uncle: why you know, an' a man have not skill in the hawking, and hunting-languages now-a-dayes, I'll not give a rush for him. They are more studied than the Greeke, or the Latine. He is for no gallant's company without 'hem.-A fine jest ifaith! Slid a gentleman mun show himselfe like a gentleman!" |