time formed the introduction to an extended work corresponding
to that of Oppian.
That the Romans had borrowed some things in the art of hunting from the Gauls may be inferred from the name canis gallicus (Spanish galgo) for a greyhound, which is to be met with both in Ovid and Martial; also in the words (canis) vertragus and segusius, both of Celtic origin.[1] According to Strabo (p. 200) the Britons also bred dogs well adapted for hunting purposes. The addiction of the Franks in later centuries to the chase is evidenced by the frequency with which not only the laity but also the clergy were warned by provincial councils against expending so much of their time and money on hounds, hawks and falcons; and we have similar proof with regard to the habits of other Teutonic nations subsequent to the introduction of Christianity.[2] Originally among the northern nations sport was open to every one[3] except to slaves, who were not permitted to bear arms; the growth of the idea of game-preserving kept pace with the development of feudalism. For its ultimate development in Britain see Forest Law, where also the distinction between beasts of forest or venery, beasts of chase and beasts and fowls of warren is explained. See also Game Laws.
Modern Hunting.—The term “hunting” has come to be applied specially to the pursuit of such quarries as the stag or fox, or to following an artificially laid scent, with horse and hound. It thus corresponds to the Fr. chasse au courre, as distinguished from chasse au tir, à l’oiseau, &c., and to the Ger. hetzjagd as distinguished from birsch. In the following article the English practice is mainly considered.
Doubtless the early inhabitants of Britain shared to a large extent in the habits of the other Celtic peoples; the fact that they kept good hunting dogs is vouched for by Strabo; and an interesting illustration of the manner in which these were used is given in the inscription quoted by Orelli (n. 1603)—“Silvano Invicto Sacrum—ob aprum eximiae formae captum, quem multi antecessores praedari non potuerunt.” Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, states that before the prince was twelve years of age he “was a most expert and active hunter, and excelled in all the branches of that noble art, to which he applied with incessant labour and amazing success.”[4] Of his grandson Athelstan it is related by William of Malmesbury that after the victory of Brunanburgh he imposed upon the vanquished king of Wales a yearly tribute, which included a certain number of “hawks and sharp-scented dogs fit for hunting wild beasts.” According to the same authority, one of the greatest delights of Edward the Confessor was “to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with his voice.” It was under the Anglo-Saxon kings that the distinction between the higher and lower chase first came to be made—the former being expressly for the king or those on whom he had bestowed the pleasure of sharing in it, while only the latter was allowed to the proprietors of the land. To the reign of Cnut belong the “Constitutiones de Foresta,” according to which four thanes were appointed in every province for the administration of justice in all matters connected with the forests; under them were four inferior thanes to whom was committed immediate care of the vert and venison.[5] The severity of the forest laws which prevailed during the Norman period is sufficient evidence of the sporting ardour of William and his successors. The Conqueror himself “loved the high game as if he were their father”; and the penalty for the unauthorized slaughter of a hart or hind was loss of both eyes. At an early period stag hunting was a favourite recreation with English royalty. It seems probable that in the reign of Henry VIII. the royal pack of buckhounds was kennelled Stag hunting. at Swinley, where, in the reign of Charles II. (1684), a deer was found that went away to Lord Petre’s seat in Essex; only five got to the end of this 70 m. run, one being the king’s brother, the duke of York. George III. was a great stag hunter, and met the royal pack as often as possible.
In The Chase of the Wild Red Deer, Mr Collyns says that the earliest record of a pack of staghounds in the Exmoor district is in 1598, when Hugh Polland, Queen Elizabeth’s ranger, kept one at Simonsbath. The succeeding rangers of Exmoor forest kept up the pack until some 200 years ago, the hounds subsequently passing into the possession of Mr Walter of Stevenstone, an ancestor of the Rolle family. Successive masters continued the sport until 1825, when the fine pack, descended probably from the bloodhound crossed with the old southern hound, was sold in London. It is difficult to imagine how the dispersion of such a pack could have come about in such a sporting country, but in 1827 Sir Arthur Chichester got a pack together again. Stag hunting begins on the 12th of August, and ends on the 8th of October; there is then a cessation until the end of the month, when the hounds are unkennelled for hind hunting, which continues up to Christmas; it begins again about Ladyday, and lasts till the 10th of May. The mode of hunting with the Devon and Somerset hounds is briefly this: the whereabouts of a warrantable stag is communicated to the master by that important functionary the harbourer; two couple of steady hounds called tufters are then thrown into cover, and, having singled out a warrantable deer, follow him until he is forced to make for the open, when the body of the pack are laid on. Very often two or three hours elapse before the stag breaks, but a run over the wild country fully atones for the delay.
It is only within comparatively recent times that the fox has come to be considered as an animal of the higher chase. William Twici, indeed, who was huntsman-in-chief to Edward II., and who wrote in Norman French a treatise on hunting,[6] mentions the fox as a beast of venery, but obviously as an altogether inferior object of sport. Strutt also Fox hunting. gives an engraving, assigned by him to the 14th century, in which three hunters, one of whom blows a horn, are represented as unearthing a fox, which is pursued by a single hound. The precise date of the establishment of the first English pack of hounds kept entirely for fox hunting cannot be accurately fixed. In the work of “Nimrod” (C. J. Apperley), entitled The Chase, there is (p. 4) an extract from a letter from Lord Arundel, dated February 1833, in which the writer says that his ancestor, Lord Arundel, kept a pack of foxhounds between 1690 and 1700, and that they remained in the family till 1782, when they were sold to the celebrated Hugh Meynell, of Quorndon Hall, Leicestershire. Lord Wilton again, in his Sports and Pursuits of the English, says that “about the year 1750 hounds began to be entered solely to fox.” The Field of November 6, 1875, p. 512, contains an engraving of a hunting-horn then in the possession of the late master of the Cheshire hounds, and upon the horn is the inscription:—“Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley Park, Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in England fifty-five years. Born 1677. Died 1752. Now the property of Thomas d’Avenant, Esq., county Salop, his grandson.” These extracts do not finally decide the point, because both Mr Boothby’s and Lord Arundel’s hounds may have hunted other game besides fox, just as in Edward IV.’s time there were “fox dogs” though not kept exclusively for fox. On the whole, it is probable that Lord Wilton’s surmise is not far from correct. Since fox hunting first commenced, however, the system of the sport has been much changed. In our great-grandfathers’ time the hounds met early, and found the fox by the drag, that is, by the line he took to his kennel on his return from a foraging expedition. Hunting the
- ↑ Hehn, Kulturpflanzen u. Hausthiere, p. 327.
- ↑ References will be found in Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities—art. on “Hunting.”
- ↑ “Vita omnis in venationibus ... consistit,” Caes. B.G., vi. 21. “Quoties bella non ineunt, multum venatibus, plus per otium transigunt,” Tacitus, Germ. 15.
- ↑ See Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, who also gives an illustration, “taken from a manuscriptal painting of the 9th century in the Cotton Library,” representing “a Saxon chieftain, attended by his huntsman and a couple of hounds, pursuing the wild swine in a forest.”
- ↑ See Lappenberg, Hist. of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (ii. 361, Thorpe’s trans.).
- ↑ Le Art de venerie, translated with preface and notes by Sir Henry Dryden (1893), new edition by Miss A. Dryden (1909), including The Craft of Venerie from a 15th-century MS. and a 13th-century poem La Chasse d’on cerf.
