In this chase, as well as when they were used to protect their master's flocks against wolves, huge iron spiked collars were fastened round the dog's neck. These spiked collars were very formidable affairs; one of very ancient make which I have measures inside nearly eight inches in diameter, and the forty-eight spikes are an inch long, the whole weighing without the padlock that fastened it together about two pounds.

In England the name Mastiff was not in general use till a much later date, even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, Osbaldiston in his Dictionary ignoring the term mastiff, and using, like a true Saxon, the old term bandog (Wynn, p. 72). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the terms were generally synonymous, and it seems quite possible that the mastiff of the ancient forest laws was not our bandog, but denoted, as in France, any large house-dog capable of defending his master and his master's goods, watching his cattle, and, as frequently necessary, powerful enough to attack the depredatory wolf or the wild boar. These would in all likelihood be a very mixed breed, and thoroughly justify the name mestif or mongrel.

Cotgrave in his French-English Dictionary gives the following:—

"Mastin, a mastiue or bandog; a great country curre; also a rude, filthie, currish or cruell fellow."

We find the word matin in France used as a term of opprobrium, or a name of contempt for any ugly or distorted body or a coarse person: "C'es un matin, un vilain matin." Many interesting facts about the mastiff have been collected by Jesse in his "History of the British Dog," but he also makes the mistake of considering that the "Master of Game" and Turbervile give us the description of the dogs then existing in England, whereas these descriptions really relate only to French breeds, although the characteristics may in many cases have tallied sufficiently; but in others a dire confusion has resulted from blindly copying from one another.

from Latin minare, something which is led, a following. This word frequently occurs in the mediæval romances, and usually denoted pursuit, either in battle or in the hunting field (Borman, p. 37).

There are various meanings attached to menée:—

  1. The line of flight the stag or other game has taken, and Chacier la menée seems to have meant hunting with horn and hound by scent on the line of flight, in contradiction to the chase with the bow or cross-bow, which was called berser (Le Roman des Loherains, 106, c. 30). In G. de F. (p. 157) it is used in the same sense. The meaning in which Gaston de Foix uses the word menée is explained by him: Et puis se metre après, et chevauchier menée: c'est à dire par où les chiens et le cerf vont (G. de F., pp. 43, 44, 171, 179). See also Chace dou Cerf and Hard. de Font. Guer. Edit. Pichon).
  2. The challenge of the hound when on the line. Page 171, we read that a hunter should know whether the hounds have retrieved their stag by the doubling of their menée, i.e. the hounds would make more noise as soon as they found the scent or line of flight of the stag they were chasing. Menée evidently meant the sound made by the hound when actually following the scent, not when baying the game. Later the sense seems to have been widened, and a musical hound was said to have la menée belle (Salnove, p. 246).
  3. A note sounded on a horn (see Appendix: Hunting Music). It was the signal that the deer was in full flight. It appears to be used in Twici to signify the horn-signal blown when the hounds are on the scent of hart, boar or wolf, to press the hounds onwards (Twici, p. 23). This author says one cannot blow the menée for the hare, because it is at one time female and another male, and to this Dryden in his notes remarks that Twici is perfectly right in saying a man ought not to blow the menée for a hare; for as every one knows, it is but a rare occurrence for a hare to go straight on end like a fox, for they commonly double and run rings, in which case if the hounds were pressed, they would over-run the scent and probably lose the hare. But he does not explain why Twici says if it were always male the menée could be blown at it as at other beasts, such as the hart, the boar, and the wolf. Is it that a male hare will occasionally run a long, straight course of several miles, but that the female runs smaller rings and more constantly retraces her steps, and therefore the menée could never be blown at her?
  4. Menée was also used in the sense of a signal on a horn.
  5. The "Master of Game" says the menées should be sounded on the return of the huntsman at the hall or cellar door (p. 179). There was a curious old custom which occasioned the blowing of the horn in Westminster Abbey. Two menées were blown at the high altar of the Abbey on the delivery there of eight fallow deer which Henry III. had by charter granted as a yearly gift to the Abbot of Westminster and his successors.

here evidently means meating or feeding. As the "Master of Game" says: "or pasturing" as if the two words were synonymous, as metinge also was Mid. Eng. for measure, it might have been a deer of "high measure and pasturing." But anyhow the two were practically identical, for as Twici says: "Harts which are of good pasture. For the head grows according to the pasture; good or otherwise." See below: Meute.

had several meanings in Old French venery.