La douce, amy, la est il venuz (pur lue segere sohow): "Softly, friend, here he has come to seat himself" (Mid. Eng., sege—a seat. Latin, sedere).
La douce, amy, la il est venuz (pur meyndir): "Here he has been to feed" (meyndir, from Latin manducare, mandere).
The bracketed part of the last two cries are given in the MS. of Twety and Gyff., and the following are only in the "Master of Game":—
Le valliant oyez, oyez who bo bowe, and then, Avaunt, assemble, assemble, war war, a ha war, for running riot. How assamy assamy so arere so howe bloues acoupler. On seeing the pricking or footing of the hare: Le voye, le voye ("The view, the view").
In France, Tallyho, or a very similar sounding word, was employed in the early days when the huntsman was sure that the right stag had gone away, whether he only knew it by his slot, &c., or whether he had viewed him.
It was also a call to bring up the hounds when the stag had gone away, and at the end of the curée, when the huntsman held part of the entrails of the deer on a large wooden fork, and the hounds bayed it (which was called the forhu), the huntsman called out Tallyho.
We only find Tallyho in comparatively recent English hunting literature and songs—never, so far as I am aware, before the late seventeenth century, and it does not occur at all constantly until the eighteenth century. Neither Turbervile nor Blome nor Cox, in their books on the various chases, mention such a word, though we find instruction to the huntsman to say "Hark to him," "Hark forward," "Hark back," and "To him, to him"; besides the inevitable "So how sohow." Neither in Twici, "Master of Game," "Boke of St. Albans," Chaucer, or Shakespeare can we find an invigorating Tallyho. It would almost appear as if it were a seventeenth century importation from across the Channel, which is quite possible, for Henry IV. of France sent in that century three of his best huntsmen, Desprez, de Beaumont, and de Saint-Ravy, to the Court of King James I. to teach the royal huntsmen how to hunt the stag in the French way, English Court hunting having degenerated into coursing of stags within the park palings.
Taïaut in France was used solely in the chase of red, fallow, or roe deer.
In the "Master of Game," as in all the earliest hunting literature, much importance is placed on the huntsman's sounding his horn in the proper manner in order, as Twici says, that "Each man who is around you, who understands Hunting, can know in which point you are in your sport by your blowing." The author of "Master of Game" (p. 170) says he will give us "a chapter which is all of blowing," but he omitted to fulfil this promise, so that we have only such information as we can gather in his chapters on stag and hare-hunting. The differences in the signals were occasioned by the length of the sound or note, and the intervals between each. Twici expresses these notes in syllables, such as trout, trout, trourourout. The first of these would be single notes, with an interval between them, blown probably with a separate breath or wind for each; the latter would be three notes blown without interval and with a single breath or wind. The principal sounds on the hunting horn were named as follows:—
A Moot or Mote, a single note, which might be sounded long or short.