No. 41. Games of the Amphitheatre.
Not the least curious part of this picture is the town in the background, with its entrance gateway, and public buildings. The Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen were imperfectly acquainted with perspective, and paid little attention to proportion in their representations of towns and houses, a circumstance which is fully illustrated in this picture. As the artist was unable from this circumstance to represent the buildings and streets of a town in their relative position, he put in a house to represent a multitude of houses, and here he has similarly given one building within the walls to represent all the public buildings of the town. An exactly similar characteristic will be observed in our cut [No. 42], taken from the same manuscript, where one temple represents the town. Here again we have a party of citizens outside the walls, amusing themselves as well as they can; some, for want of other employment, are laying themselves down listlessly on the ground.
No. 42. A Town.
The national sentiments and customs of the Anglo-Saxons would, however, lead to the selection of other places for the scenes of their games, and thus the Roman amphitheatres became neglected. Each village had its arena—its play-place—where persons of all ages and sexes assembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been usually chosen near a fountain, or some object hallowed by the popular creed, for customs of this kind were generally associated with religious feelings which tended to consecrate and protect them. These holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minstrels, like those represented in our cut [No. 41], repaired to them to exhibit their skill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themselves in running, or leaping, or wrestling. These games attracted merchants, and gradually became the centres of extensive fairs. Such was the case with one of the most celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled there, and, “after the manners of the English, practised wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded one another with songs and musical instruments; whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and buyers to assemble there on the same day for the purpose of commerce.”[15] This is a curious and a rather rare allusion to an Anglo-Saxon wake.
One of the great recreations of the Anglo-Saxons was hunting, for which the immense forests, which then covered a great portion of this island, gave a wide scope. The most austere and pious, as well as the most warlike, of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, were passionately attached to the pleasures of the chase. According to the writer who has assumed the name of Asser, the great Alfred was so attached to this amusement, that he condescended to teach his “falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers” himself. His grandson, king Ethelstan, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, exacted from the Welsh princes, among other articles of tribute, “as many dogs as he might choose, which, from their sagacious scent, could discover the retreats and hiding-places of wild beasts; and birds trained to make prey of others in the air.” The same writer tells us of the sainted Edward the Confessor, that “there was one earthly enjoyment in which he chiefly delighted, which was, hunting with fleet hounds, whose opening in the woods he used with pleasure to encourage; and again, with the pouncing of birds, whose nature it is to prey on their kindred species. In these exercises, after hearing divine service in the morning, he employed himself whole days.” It is evident from the ecclesiastical laws, that it was difficult to restrain even the clergy from this diversion. One of the ecclesiastical canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, enjoins “that no priest be a hunter, or fowler, or player at tables, but let him play on his books, as becometh his calling.” When the king hunted, it appears that men were employed to beat up the game, while others were placed at different avenues of the forest to hinder the deer from taking a direction contrary to the wishes of the hunter. Several provisions relating to the employment of men in this way, occur in the Domesday survey. A contemporary writer of the Life of Dunstan gives the following description of the hunting of king Edmund the Elder, at Ceoddri (Chedder). “When they reached the forest,” he says, “they took various directions along the woody avenues, and the varied noise of the horns, and the barking of the dogs, aroused many stags. From these, the king with his pack of hounds chose one for his own hunting, and pursued it long, through devious ways with great agility on his horse, with the hounds following. In the vicinity of Ceoddri were several steep and lofty precipices hanging over deep declivities. To one of these the stag came in his flight, and dashed headlong to his destruction down the immense depth, all the dogs following and perishing with him.” The king with difficulty held in his horse.
No. 43. Anglo-Saxon Dogs.
The dogs (hundas), used for the chase among the Anglo-Saxons, were valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great landowner had his hund-wealh, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut ([No. 43]), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, represents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds—they seem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was ren-hund, a dog of chase, which is interpreted by greyhound; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon forefathers. It appears by an allusion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales; yet the antiquary will be at once struck with the total dissimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, from the British dogs represented on the Romano-British pottery. The dogs were used to find the game, and follow it by the scent; the hunters killed it with spears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter (hunta) of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his “craft,” he replies, “I braid nets, and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become intangled in them, and I slay them in the nets.” He is then asked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, “Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted—“I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “I took two harts and a boar, ... the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” “How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down.” “You were very bold then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods.” It would seem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extensive forests of this island; but Sharon Turner has made a singular mistake, in supposing, from a picture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The scene which he has thus mistaken—or at least, a portion of it—is given in our cut [No. 44] (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.); it represents swineherds driving their swine into the forests to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdsmen is shaking from the trees with his hand. The herdsmen were necessarily armed to protect the herds under their charge from robbers.