HOW A HUNTER SHOULD QUEST IN CLEAR SPIRES AND HIGH WOOD[198]
[198] In the text of our MS. (the Vespasian) no break occurs here, but
in the table of chapters at the beginning of the MS. the chapter as
here given is enumerated, and this corresponds also with the Shirley
and other MSS.
Also I will tell you how a hunter should go in quest among clear
spires, and among high trees, and specially when it has rained the
night before and in the morning. Eke in the time when the heads of the
harts be tender, commonly they abide among clear spires and in high
woods, for a thick country peradventure would do harm to their heads
which be tender. If he meets rain as I before have said, or when their
heads (are tender, and he meeteth[199]) anything that pleaseth him, he
should not follow it with his lymer, for they remain in such a country
as I have said in that time, that is to say in rain and when their
heads are tender, for he might make the deer void into some other
place of the quests as it is before said. And whoso meets him in the
wood in sight of his eyes, then he must set his lymer in his fues. And
if it be a deer that enter-changeth,[200] that is to say if a deer
puts his hind feet in the trace of the fore-feet without passing on,
it is no good token, but if he sets his hinder feet far from the fore
feet it is a good token, for when a hart entre-marcheth it is a token
that he is a light deer and well running and of great flight, for if
he had a side belly and great flanks he could not entre-marche, but
the contrary would he do.[201] And sometimes when the hart makes a
long stride with the hind foot, commonly they cannot fly well, and
have been little hunted. And if he has of the fumes, he should put
them in his horn with grass, or in his lap[202] with grass, for a man
should not bear them in his hand, for they would all break. And when
he should meet in the fields anything that pleaseth him, he should
draw towards his covert, for to make him draw the sooner to his
stronghold, and when he findeth where he goeth in, then he should
break a bough towards the place where the hart is gone, and take the
scantilon, and follow him no further in the wood. Then he should make
a long turn and cast round about by some ways or by-paths, and if he
sees that he hath not passed out of his turn, he may return again to
the gathering, and make them his report, and if it be so that he pass
there where he would umbicast (cast round) and make his turn, and his
lymer before him, then he should look if it is the same hart he had
umbicast (cast round), and if he cannot well see at his ease, then he
should reconnoitre the country till he can see easily and plainly, but
have a care that his lymer open not, _and if his lymer be
dislave[203]_ (be wild), _let him investigate it with his eye_. And if
he seeth that it is his first hart he should not follow him, but then
he should take another turn and umbicast. He must look that he go not
along the ways, for it is the worst sueing that is: for the lymer
commonly overshoots. But he should go a little way off the paths on
one side or the other, until he (the hart) be within his turn, for
then he is most securely harboured and the search shall be shorter.
But if he see that it be too late to run him with strength, and if he
see that the hart goes but softly pacing towards his stronghold he
need not do all these things. And I pray him where he hath met with
the hart, or harboured him in his stronghold or in coppices or in
other thickets, that he take all his blenches (tricks) and his ruses
before said, to be more secure, and to make a shorter search, if he
hath time to do as I have said. Thus I have rehearsed the readiness
that belongs to the harbouring of the hart. _And now will I devise
where men will best find them in bellowing time. It is known that they
begin to bellow fifteen days before grease time[204] ends, especially
old deer, and also if the end of August and the beginning of September
be wet and rainy._
[199] The scribe who copied the Vespasian MS. omitted the bracketed
words.
[200] See Appendix: Hart.
[201] The explanation of this sentence is that a stag which
entre-marched or sur-marched, or in other words placed the hind foot
on the track or beyond the track made by the front foot, was a thin or
light deer, and therefore not a fat stag, which latter was what the
hunter would be looking for.
[202] Lappet of his coat.
[203] Shirley MS. _Dislavee_--obsolete word meaning going beyond
bounds, immoderate.
[204] _After_ grease time. See Appendix: Grease Time.