But to pass by such as these, and give the World to understand that I have no other end in Publishing this ensuing Treatise, but meerly, and purely to promote the Noble and most Heroic Exercise of Cocking: And at the same time to acknowledge my self, most Worthy Sir, your Worship’s most Real, and most faithful Friend, and Fellow Cocker
R. H.
THE PREFACE.
How happy were those Sons of Men, who in times past were reputed Persons indued with that noble Gift, aut facere scribenda, aut scribere legenda, that is, either to do such things as deserved to be writ, or to write that which was worth the reading: Now that this ensuing Treatise is worth the reading, and practising too, notwithstanding the little Esteem and Value, that the present Age affords it, I shall endeavour to prove both from the great Antiquity, and Usefulness of this noble Sport of Cocking: A thing esteem’d so Sacred, and held in such high Veneration amongst the Antients, that, as Diodorus Siculus testifies, the Fighting-Cock was reckon’d one of the principal Gods worshiped by the Syrians.
Diodor. Sicul. lib. 1. 18. R. Da. non diffentit.
Athenæ. Diosco. lib. 4.
And Rabby David, a learned Hebrew Doctor, interpreting the 2 of Kings ch. 17. v. 30, 31. where Nergal is spoken, of which is (as he says) a Cock of the Field, a Champion Cock, a Cock for War, or a Fighting Cock, and by them there Worshiped as a God in Samaria. Which at once denotes the high Esteem and Value, with the great Antiquity also, of these Warlike Birds. And Athenæus and Dioscorides, both of them acknowledge the Fighting-Cock to be one of the Deities which the antient Greeks did greatly Adore. And that in their time there was an Altar found in a Vault far under Ground, whereon had been engraven’d a Cock, and inscribed thus
DEO MOUNO.
Macro. lib. 1. c. 31.