HOW AN HUNTER SHOULD GO IN QUEST IN GREAT COVERTS AND STRENGTHS
Also a hunter may go in quest and put himself and his lymer in the
great thickets by high time of day, as I have said, for it befalleth
sometimes that harts are so malicious, that they pasture within
themselves, that is to say within their covert, and go not out to the
fields nor to the coppices nor to the young wood, especially when they
have heard the hounds run before in the forest once or twice. He must
have affeeted (trained) his lymer in such a manner that he neither
opens nor quests[197] when he hunts in the morning, for he would make
the hart void, and that must be by high noon, as I have said, when all
beasts are in their lairs. And if his lymer find anything he should
hold him short and lead him behind him, and look what deer it is, and
if it be anything that pleases him, then he shall sue with his lymer
till the time that he has brought it into some thicket, and then he
shall break his boughs _and take the scantilon and cast round as is
before said, and then return home again to the assembly that in
England is called a meeting or gathering_.
[197] Should not give tongue.