Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/90

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70 Hijiory of Dome flic Manners of this ifland 3 but Sharon Turner has made a lingular millake, in fup- poling, from a pi6ture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The fcene which he has thus miftaken — or at leaft, a portion of it — is given in our cut No. 44 (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.) ; it reprefents

'^&. Mm No. 44. -Herds. fwineherds driving their fwine into the forefts to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdfmen is lliaking from the trees with his hand. The herdfmen were neceffarily armed to prote6t the herds under their charge from robbers. The Anglo-Saxons, as we have feen, were no lefs attached to hawking than hunting. The fame Colloquy already quoted contains the following dialogue relating to the fowler (fugelere). To the quellion, " How doft thou catch birds ? " he replies, " I catch them in many ways ; fometimes with nets, fometimes with fnares, fometimes with bird-lime, fometimes with whiffling, fometimes with a hawk, fometimes with a trap." "Haft thou a hawk?" "I have." " Canft thou tame them?" "Yes, I can; of what ufe would they be to me unlefs I could tame them? " "Give me a hawk." "I will give one willingly in exchange for a fwift hound. What kind of hawk will you have, the greater or the lelfer ? " . . . "How feedeft thou thy hawks?" "They feed themfelves and me in winter, and in fpring I let them fly to the wood, and I catch young ones in autumn and tame them." A party of hawkers is reprefented in our cut No. 45, taken from the manufcript laft quoted, where it illuftrates the