CHAPTER VI
OF THE WILD BOAR AND OF HIS NATURE
A wild boar is a common beast enough and therefore it needeth not to tell of his making, for there be few gentlemen that have not seen some of them. It is the beast of this world that is strongest armed, and can sooner slay a man than any other. Neither is there any beast that he could not slay if they were alone sooner than that other beast could slay him,[66] be they lion or leopard, unless they should leap upon his back, so that he could not turn on them with his teeth. And there is neither lion nor leopard that slayeth a man at one stroke as a boar doth, for they mostly kill with the raising of their claws and through biting, but the wild boar slayeth a man with one stroke as with a knife, and therefore he can slay any other beast sooner than they could slay him. It is a proud[67] beast and fierce and perilous, for many times have men seen much harm that he hath done. For some men have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead at one stroke so that he never spake thereafter.
[66] In spite of the boar being such a dangerous animal a wound from his tusk was not considered so fatal as one from the antlers of a stag. An old fourteenth-century saying was: "Pour le sanglier faut le mire, mais pour le cerf convient la bière."
[67] Proud. G. de F., p. 56, orguilleuse. G. de F., p. 57, says after this that he has often himself been thrown to the ground, he with his courser, by a wild boar and the courser killed ("et moy meismes a il porté moult des à terre moy et mon coursier, et mort le coursier").
They go in their love to the brimming[68] as sows do about the feast of St. Andrew[69], and are in their brimming love three weeks, and when the sows are cool the boar does not leave them[70].
[68] Brimming. From Middle English brime, burning heat. It was also used in the sense of valiant-spirited (Stratmann).
[69] November 30.
[70] G. de F., p. 57, adds: "comme fait l'ours."
He stays with them till the twelfth day after Christmas, and then the boar leaves the sows and goeth to take his covert, and to seek his livelihood alone, and thus he stays unthe next year when he goeth again to the sows. They abide not in one place one night as they do in another, but tfind their pasture for (till) all pastures fail them as hawthorns[71] and other things. Sometimes a great boar has another with him but this happens but seldom. They farrow[72] in March, and once in the year they go in their love. And there are few wild sows that farrow more than once in the year, nevertheless men have seen them farrow twice in the year.