The word “souse,” above quoted, is likewise borrowed from the language of falconry, and, as a substantive, is equivalent to “swoop.” It would seem to be derived from the German “sausen,” which signifies to rush with a whistling sound like the wind; and this is certainly expressive of the “whish” made by the wings of a falcon when swooping on her prey.
There is a good illustration of this passage in Drayton’s
“Polyolbion,” Song xx., where a description of hawking at wild-fowl is given. After the falconers have put up the fowl from the sedge, the hawk, in the words of the author, having previously “towered,” “gives it a souse.” Beaumont and Fletcher also make use of this word as a hawking term in The Chances, iv. 1; and it occurs in Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” Book iv. Canto v. 30.
A notice of the various hawks made use of by falconers, and mentioned by Shakespeare, might be here properly introduced, but it will be more convenient to reserve this notice for a separate chapter, and confine our attention for the present to the larger diurnal birds of prey which, like the eagles, are seldom, if ever, reclaimed by man.
Of these, excluding the eagle, Shakespeare makes mention of four—the Vulture, the Osprey, the Kite, and the Buzzard.
THE VULTURE:
Those who are acquainted with the repulsive habits of the Vulture, led as he is by instinct to gorge on carrion, will best understand the allusions to this bird which are to be met with in the works of Shakespeare.
What more forcible expression can be found to indicate a guilty conscience than “the gnawing vulture of the mind”? (Titus Andronicus, Act v. Sc. 2.)
“There cannot be
That vulture in you, to devour so many.”