"A falkoner is the egge of a tame pullett, hatcht up among hawkes and spaniels. Hee hath in his minority conversed with kestrils and yong hobbies: but growing up he begins to handle the lure, and look a fawlcon in the face. All his learning makes him but a new linguist; for to have studied and practised the termes of Hawke's Dictionary, is enough to excuse his wit, manners, and humanity. He hath too many trades to thrive; and yet if hee had fewer, hee would thrive lesse. Hee need not be envied therefore, for a monopolie, though he be barber-surgeon, physitian, and apothecary, before he commences hawk-leech; for though he exercise all these, and the art of bow-strings together, his patients be compelled to pay him no further, then they be able. Hawkes be his object, that is, his knowledge, admiration, labour, and all; they be indeed his idoll, or mistresse, be they male or female: to them he consecrates his amorous ditties, which be no sooner framed then hallowed; nor should he doubt to overcome the fairest, seeing he reclaimes such haggards, and courts every one with a peculiar dialect. That he is truly affected to his sweetheart in her fether-bed, appeares by the sequele, himselfe being sensible of the same misery, for they be both mewed up together: but he still chuses the worst pennance, by chusing rather an ale-house, or a cellar, for his moulting place than the hawke's mew."[266:B]

The training of Hawks consisted principally in the manning, luring, flying, and hooding them. Of these, the first and second imply a perfect familiarity with the man, and a perfect obedience to his voice and commands, especially that of returning to the fist at the

appointed signal.[267:A] The flying includes the appropriation of peculiar hawks to peculiar game; thus the Faulcon gentle, which, according to Gervase Markham, is the principal of hawks, and adapted either for the field or river, will fly at the partridge or the mallard; the Gerfaulcon will fly at the heron; the Saker at the crane or bittern; the Lanner at the partridge, pheasant, or chooffe; the Barbary Faulcon at the partridge only; the Merlin and the Hobby at the lark, or any small bird; the Goshawk or Tercel at the partridge, pheasant, or hare; the Sparrow-hawk at the partridge or blackbird, and the Musket at the bush only.[267:B]

The hooding of hawks, as it embraces many technical terms, which have been adopted by our poets, and among the rest, by Shakspeare, will require a more extended explanation, and this we shall give in the words of Mr. Strutt. "When the hawk," he observes, "was not flying at her game, she was usually hood-winked, with a cap or hood provided for that purpose, and fitted to her head; and this hood was worn abroad, as well as at home. All hawks taken upon 'the fist,' the term used for carrying them upon the hand, had straps of leather called jesses[267:C], put about their legs; the jesses were made sufficiently

long, for the knots to appear between the middle and the little fingers of the hand that held them, so that the lunes, or small thongs of leather, might be fastened to them with two tyrrits, or rings; and the lunes were loosely wound round the little finger; lastly, their legs were adorned with bells, fastened with rings of leather, each leg having one; and the leathers, to which the bells were attached, were denominated bewits; and to the bewits was added the creance, or long thread, by which the bird in tutoring, was drawn back, after she had been permitted to fly; and this was called the reclaiming of the hawk. The bewits, we are informed, were useful to keep the hawks from winding when she bated, that is, when she fluttered her wings to fly after her game. Respecting the bells, it is particularly recommended that they should not be too heavy, to impede the flight of the bird; and that they should be of equal weight, sonorous, shrill, and musical; not both of one sound, but the one a semitone below the other[268:A]; they ought not to be broken, especially in the sounding part, because, in that case, the sound emitted would be dull and unpleasing. There is, says the Book of St. Alban's, great choice of sparrow-hawk bells, and they are cheap enough; but for gos-hawk bells, those made at Milan are called the best; and, indeed, they are excellent; for they are commonly sounded with [268:B]silver, and charged for accordingly."[268:C]

Thomas Heywood, in his play, entitled A Woman killed with Kindness, and acted before 1604, has a passage on falconry, four lines of which have been quoted by Mr. Strutt, as allusive to the toning of the Milan bells; but as the whole is highly descriptive of the diversion, and is of no great length, we shall venture to transcribe it, with the exception of a few lines, entire:

"Sir Charles. So; well cast off; aloft, aloft; well flown.

O, now she takes her at the sowse, and strikes her down

To th' earth, like a swift thunder clap.—

Now she hath seized the fowl, and 'gins to plume her,