Full early, ere daylight, the folk rose up; the guests who would depart
called their grooms, and they made them ready, and saddled the steeds,
tightened up the girths, and trussed up their mails. The knights, all
arrayed for riding, leapt up lightly, and took their bridles, and each
rode his way as pleased him best.
The lord of the land was not the last. Ready for the chase, with many of
his men, he ate a sop hastily when he had heard Mass, and then with
blast of the bugle fared forth to the field.[8] He and his nobles were
to horse ere daylight glimmered upon the earth.
Then the huntsmen coupled their hounds, unclosed the kennel door, and
called them out. They blew three blasts gaily on the bugles, the hounds
bayed fiercely, and they that would go a-hunting checked and chastised
them. A hundred hunters there were of the best, so I have heard tell.
Then the trackers gat them to the trysting-place and uncoupled the
hounds, and the forest rang again with their gay blasts.
At the first sound of the hunt the game quaked for fear, and fled,
trembling, along the vale. They betook them to the heights, but the
liers in wait turned them back with loud cries; the harts they let pass
them, and the stags with their spreading antlers, for the lord had
forbidden that they should be slain, but the hinds and the does they
turned back, and drave down into the valleys. Then might ye see much
shooting of arrows. As the deer fled under the boughs a broad whistling
shaft smote and wounded each sorely, so that, wounded and bleeding, they
fell dying on the banks. The hounds followed swiftly on their tracks,
and hunters, blowing the horn, sped after them with ringing shouts that
well-nigh burst the cliffs asunder. What game escaped those that shot
was run down at the outer ring. Thus were they driven on the hills, and
harassed at the waters, so well did the men know their work, and the
greyhounds were so great and swift that they ran them down as fast as
the hunters could slay them. Thus the lord passed the day in mirth and
joyfulness, even to nightfall.