While, however, these especial officers superintended the general interests of lord and tenant, there were those also whose peculiar function it was to guard the particular quarry his master loved to chase; to see them unmolested and undisturbed during such time as the hunt itself was in abeyance, and then, when the chase came on, to overlook and conduct its course. These, too, are not without descendants. Such names as ‘Stagman’ and ‘Buckmaster,’[[229]] ‘Hindman’ and ‘Hartman,’ ‘Deerman’ and its more amatory ‘Dearman,’ by their comparative frequency, remind us how important would be their office in the eye of their lord.
Nor are those who assisted in the lordly hunt itself left unrepresented in our nomenclature. The old ‘Elyas le Hunderd,’ or ‘hund-herd,’ has left in our ‘Hunnards’ an abiding memorial of the ‘houndsman.’ Similarly the ‘vaultrier’ was he who unleashed them. It has been a matter of doubt whether or no the more modern ‘feuterer’ owes his origin to this term, but the gradations found in such registrations as ‘John le Veutrer,’ ‘Geoffrey le Veuterer,’ and ‘Walter le Feuterer,’ to be met with in the rolls of this period, set all question, I should imagine, at rest. An old poem, describing the various duties of these officers and their charges, says—
A halpeny the hunte takes on the day
For every hounde the sothe to say;
The vewtrer, two cast of brede he tase,
Two lesshe of greyhounds if that he has.
‘Fewter’ and ‘Futter,’[[230]] however, seem to be the only relics we now possess of this once important care. Such names as ‘John le Berner’ or ‘Thomas le Berner,’ common enough in old rolls, must be distinguished from our more aristocratic ‘Berners.’ The berner was a special houndsman who stood with fresh relays of dogs ready to unleash them if the chase grew heated and long. In the Parliamentary Rolls he is termed a ‘yeoman-berner.’ Our ‘Hornblows,’ curtailed from ‘Hornblower,’ and simpler ‘Blowers,’ would seem to be closely related to the last, for the horn figured as no mean addition by its jubilant sounds to the excitement of the chase. He who used it held an office that required all the attention he could bring to bear upon it. The dogs were not unleashed until he had sounded the blast, and if at any time from his elevated station he caught sight of the quarry, he was by the manner of winding his instrument to certify to the huntsman the peculiar class to which it belonged. In the Hundred Rolls we find him inscribed as ‘Blowhorn,’ a mere reversal of syllables. Of a more general and professional character probably would be our ‘Hunters,’ ‘Huntsmans,’ and ‘Hunts,’ not to mention the more Norman ‘John le Venner’ or ‘Richard Fenner.’ It may not be known to all our ‘Hunts’ that theirs, the shorter form, was the most familiar term in use at that time; hence the number that at present exist. We are told in the ‘Knight’s Tale’ of the—
Hunte and horne, and houndes him beside;
while but a little further on he speaks of—
The hunte ystrangled with the wilde beres.