Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/89

 and Sentiments. 69 valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great land- owner had his huiid-wealh, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut (No. 43), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, reprelents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds — they feem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was ren-hund, a dog of chafe, which is interpreted by greyhound ; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon fore- fathers. It appears by an allufion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales : yet the "^ '""'Ar ^ 7 c< n '=' i^ ^ J No. 43. ^nglo-baxcn Dugs. antiquary will be at once ftruck with the total diffimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manu- fcripts, from the Britilli dogs reprefented on the Romano-Britilli pottery. The dogs were ufed to find the game, and follow it by the fcent ; the hunters killed it with fpears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter {hunta) of one of the royal forefts gives a curious account of his profeliion. Vhen alked how he pradifes his " craft," he replies, " I braid nets, and fet them in a con- venient place, and fet on my hounds, that they may purfue the beails of chafe, until they come unexpededly to the nets, and lb become intangled in them, and I Hay them in the nets." He is then alked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, " Yes, I purfue the wild animals with fwift hounds." He next enumerates the diflerent kinds of game which the Saxon hunter ufually hunted — " I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and fometimcs hares." "Yefterday," he continues, " I took two harts and a boar,. . . the harts with nets, and [ Hew the boar with my weapon." "How were you lb hardy as to llay a boar?" " My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, fuddenly ftruck him down." "You were very bold then." "A hunter mull: not be timid, for various wild beafts dwell in the v.oods." It would feem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extenfive lorefts of