Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/469

 . 17, 1863.] jingling bells sacrilegiously intermingled with that rung out at the elevation of the Host.

In the hawking-field, the obsequious cavalier felt a pride and pleasure in waiting upon these fair dames, and by every gallant assiduity to enhance the pleasure of their flights.

A falconer Henry is when Emma hawks,

With her of tiercels and of lures he talks.

High on her wrist the tow’ring merlin stands,

Practised to rise and stoop at her commands;

And when obedient now the bird has flown,

And headlong plucked the trembling quary down,

Her Henry hastens to relieve the fair,

And with the honor’d feather decks her hair;

Yet still, as from the sportive field he goes,

His plaintive sighs reveal a lover’s woes,

And by his inward sorrow is expressed,

A nobler game pursued than bird or beast.

Amongst the English monarchs who delighted in hawking, the most enthusiastic was James I. Many warrants are extant amongst the State Papers for compelling the owners and cultivators of land around his hunting-seats, to open the fences and plough all arable fields in broad furrows, that his and prince Henry’s necks might not be endangered in their headlong career, galloping after his soaring hawks. His royal continental cousins, well knowing his dominant taste, were at times completely triumphant in the most important State business by timely gifts of a cast or two of high-bred, highly-trained falcons. “The king,” writes my lord treasurer, in an unedited State Paper now before me, “means this day to be at Newmarket, though his physicians and most about him are against the journey: but he is so desirous to see certain new hawks fly that he would not be stayed. Here is a Monsieur, come from the French king, with a present of fifteen or sixteen casts of hawks, some ten or twelve horses, and as many setting dogs. He made his entry very magnificently with all this retinue in excellent good order, and with store of torch-light, which gave the more lustre to all this long show, and to his own bravery, being indeed very rich and gallant. His hawks fly at anything, kites, crows, pies, or whatsoever comes in the way. He is to tarry until he hath instructed our men in this kind of falconry, which had not need be long, being so costly, for he and his train stand the King in five-and-twenty pounds a-day. I have forgotten his name, though he be a baron, but the best reputation he hath is to be a good falconer.”

The cost of entertaining these gallant woodsmen soon began to tell unpleasantly upon James’s at all times slender exchequer; so, thinking he paid somewhat dear for his whistle, he directs the Secretary of State, who was also Prime Minister of his wood-craft, to take measures for their dismissal. “Go,” he writes to Sir Anthony Pell, his own chief falconer, “and inform yourself of him, or receive directions how to find out the number of inferior falconers that are fit to receive gold chains, being of the train of this Frenchman, and about what value the chains have been that any of our men received, that have carried hawks and dogs to the French King.”

The baron-falconer having become quite a pet with all the court ladies who loved to bear a hawk upon their wrists, is in no hurry to re-cross the Channel, seeing which, his Majesty—whose falconers have now acquired all the art and mystery of the French mode of hawking—again addresses Mr. Secretary Conway, to move my Lord Cecil in the matter. “His Majesty hath commanded me to signify unto your lordship,” writes the Secretary, “that he thinks it high time to deliver himself from the great burden of the noble falconers; and therefore desires your lordship to make expedition with the presents and jewels specified in the note endorsed, to be furnished by Mr. Heriot, his jeweller, and therefore prays your lordship to give order for his picture, and the case garnished with diamonds, value eight hundred or a thousand pounds.”

Falconers rejoice in a language peculiarly their own—wholly incomprehensible to the uninitiated, which is what they specially desire: thus, in their dialect, a nestling, or young hawk, is an eyass (in French, nyasse), i.e., a young bird from the nest, unfledged. Mrs. Ford wittily terms her little page “my eyass-musket,” i.e., young sparrow-hawk.

Eyasses, of whatever species—whether goshawk, peregrine, hobby, launier, small and valiant merlin, or sparrow-hawk—are best for a tyro to try his hand upon, because young and manageable,—like himself, we hope. They may be procured by making friends with any gamekeeper who has a large extent of woodland in the vicinity of the trainer’s residence. In this case, the enthusiastic youngster will do best if he leave the birds with the old ones as long as possible; if procured from a distance, on the contrary, they should be taken from the nest when quite callow, and before the feathers are enough grown to be in danger of being broken on the journey, the rapidity and perfection of a falcon’s flight, be she trained or wild, depending on the preservation of her pinions.

The little birds—in this state not much larger than a house-sparrow, and covered with milk-white down, but even now looking formidable by their large, fierce, stern eyes, and sharp, aquiline beaks—should be tended with unremitting assiduity. Instead of caging them within-doors, as some do foolishly, place them on fresh clean barley-straw in a large hamper, firmly fixed on its side about breast-high, amongst the branches of some convenient tree, in a retired, sheltered situation. The hamper lid may be so supported, on a level with the straw, as to form a dining-room for your eyasses to come out upon when they are fed. This is an interesting process—interesting to the lad in charge, doubly interesting to the birds, which have, perhaps, journeyed far and are sharp-set. Expecting their arrival, he will not fail to have in readiness a freshly-killed pigeon, rook, or two or three blackbirds: the brains, heart, and entrails of which they are quite au fait in extracting, and appear to enjoy mightily. Failing of these, a nice juicy, raw cut of fresh