THE FOWL ENMEWED.
The word “enmew,” quoted above in the passage from Measure for Measure, would seem rather to signify here, “to seize upon,” or “to disable.” It is sometimes written “enewe.” In Nash’s “Quaternio; or, a Fourefold Way to a Happie Life,” published in 1633, it occurs in a spirited description of hawking at water-fowl:—“And to hear an accipitary relate againe how he went forth in a cleare, calme, and sunshine evening, about an houre before the sunne did usually maske himselfe, unto the river, where finding of a mallard, he whistled off[51] his falcon, and how shee flew from him as if shee would never have turned head againe, yet presently upon a shoote came in; how then by degrees, by little and little, by flying about and about, shee mounted so high, until shee had lessened herselfe to the view of the beholder to the shape of a pigeon or partridge, and had made the height of the moon the place[52] of her flight; how presently, upon the landing of the fowle, shee came downe like a stone and enewed it, and suddenly got up againe, and suddenly upon a second landing came down againe, and missing of it, in the
downe course recovered it beyond expectation, to the admiration of the beholder at a long flight.”
Another method of spelling the same word may be instanced by the following quotation from Turbervile’s “Book of Falconrie,” 1575:—
“And if shee misse, to mark her how shee then gets up amaine,
For best advantage, to eneaw the springing fowle againe.”
IMPING.
In the days of falconry[53] a peculiar method of repairing a broken wing-feather was known to falconers by the term “imping.” The verb “to imp,” appears to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon “impan,” signifying to graft, or inoculate; and the mode of operation is thus described in a scarce pamphlet by Sir John Sebright, entitled “Observations on Hawking”:—
“When any of the flight or tail-feathers of a hawk are accidentally broken, the speed of the bird is so injured, that the falconer finds it necessary to repair them by an expedient called ‘imping.’
“This curious process consists in attaching to the part that remains an exact substitute for the piece lost. For this purpose the falconer is always provided with pinions (right and left) and with tail-feathers of hawks, or with the feathers separated from the pinion carefully preserved and numbered, so as to prevent mistake in taking a true match for the injured feather. He then with a sharp knife gently parts the web of the feather to be repaired at its thickest part, and cuts the shaft obliquely forward, so as not to damage the web on the opposite edge. He next cuts the substitute feather as exactly as possible at the corresponding point and with the same degree of slope.
“For the purpose of uniting them, he is provided with an iron needle with broad angular points at both ends, and after wetting the needle with salt-and-water, he thrusts it into the centre of the pith of each part, as truly straight and as nearly to the same length in each as may be.
