Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/329

 and Sentiments. 309 No. 205. This Icene is rather curioully illuftrated by an anecdote told by an old chronicler, Ralph de Diceto, of a man who went to the river to hunt teal with his hawk, and roufed them with "what is called by the river-hawkers a tabor."* The tending of the hawks ufed in thefe dlver- fions was no llight occupation in the mediaeval houfehold, and was the fubjeft of no little lludy ; they were cherillied with the utmoft care, and carried about familiarly on the wrill in all places and under all forts of circumllances. It was a common pradice, indeed, to go to church with the hawk on the wrill. One of the early Frencli poets, Gaces de la Buigne, who wrote a metrical treatife on hunting in the middle of the fourteenth century, advifes his readers to carry their hawks with them wherever there were affemblies of people, whether in churches or elfe- where — ha ou les gens font arnajfcs^ So'it en re'glife, ou autre part. This is explained more fully by the author of the " Menagier de Paris" (vol. ii. p. 296), who wrote efpecially for the inflruttion of the female members of his family. "At this point of falconry," he fays, "it is advilable more than ever to hold the hawk on the wrift, and to carry it to the pleadings (courts of juftice), and among people to the churches, and in other aHemblies, and in the Ib-eets, and to hold it day and night as continually as pollible, and fometimes to perch it in the ttreets, that it may fee people, horfes, carts, dogs, and become acquainted with all things And fometimes, in the houfe, let it be perched on the dogs, that the dogs may fee it, and it them." It was thus that the praftice of carrying a hawk on the wrill became a diftin6tion of people of gentle blood. The annexed engraving (No. 206), taken from the avibiis ccrli ludere, nisum suuin docuit cercellas affectare propensius. Itaqiie jiixta sonitum illius instnimenti quod a ripatoribiis vocatur tabur, siibito cercella quasdam alarum remigio pernicltur evolavit. Nisus autem illusus hipuin quendam nantem in locis sub undis crispantibus intercepit, invasit, et cepit, et super spatium sicut visum est xl. pedum se cum nova pinsda recepit. — Rad. de Diceto, ap. Decem Striptores, col. 666. lame
 * Quidam juvenis de domo domini Lundonlensis episcopi, spiritum habens in