No. 203. Ladies Hawking.
Hawking was a favourite recreation with the ladies, and in the illuminated manuscripts they often figure in scenes of this kind. Sometimes they are on foot, as in the group represented in our cut [No. 203], taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.). One lady has let go her hawk, which is in the act of striking a heron; the other retains her hawk on her hand. The latter, as will be seen, is hooded. Each of the ladies who possess hawks has one glove only—the hawk’s glove; the other hand is without gloves. They took with them, as shown here, dogs in couples to start the game. The dogs used for this purpose were spaniels, and the old treatise on domestic affairs entitled “Le Ménagier de Paris,” gives particular directions for choosing them. In the illuminations, hawking parties are more frequently represented on horseback than on foot; and often there is a mixture of riders and pedestrians. The treatise just referred to directs that the horse for hawking should be a low one, easy to mount and dismount, and very quiet, that he may go slowly, and show no restiveness. Hawking appears to have commenced at the beginning of August; and until the middle of that month it was confined almost entirely to partridges. Quails, we are told, came in in the middle of August, and from that time forward everything seems to have been considered game that came to hand, for when other birds fail, the ladies are told that they may hunt fieldfares, and even jays and magpies. September and October were the busiest hawking months.
No. 204. Rousing Game.
No. 205. Following the Hawk.
Hawking was, indeed, a favourite diversion with the ladies, and they not only accompanied the gentlemen to this sport, but frequently engaged in it alone. The hawking of the ladies, however, appears to have been especially that of herons and water-fowl; and this was called going to the river (aller en rivière), and was very commonly pursued on foot. It may be mentioned that the fondness of the ladies for the diversion of hawking is alluded to in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury. The hawking on the river, indeed, seems to have been that particular branch of the sport which gave most pleasure to all classes, and it is that which is especially represented in the drawings in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Dogs were commonly used in hawking to rouse the game in the same manner as at the present day, but in hawking on the river, where dogs were of course less effective, other means were adopted. In a manuscript already quoted in the present chapter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), of the beginning of the fourteenth century, a group of ladies hawking on the banks of a river are accompanied by a man, perhaps the falconer, who makes a noise to rouse the water-fowl. Our cut [No. 204] is taken from a very interesting manuscript of the fourteenth century, made for the monastery of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, and now preserved in the library of the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.); it is part of a scene in which ladies are hawking on a river, and a female is rousing the water-fowl with a tabor. The fountain is one of those conventional objects by which the mediæval artist indicated a spring, or running stream. This seems to have been a very common method of rousing the game; and it is represented in one of the carved seats, or misereres (as they have been termed technically), in Gloucester cathedral, which is copied in our cut No. 205. This scene is rather curiously illustrated by an anecdote told by an old chronicler, Ralph de Diceto, of a man who went to the river to hunt teal with his hawk, and roused them with “what is called by the river-hawkers a tabor.”[49] The tending of the hawks used in these diversions was no slight occupation in the mediæval household, and was the subject of no little study; they were cherished with the utmost care, and carried about familiarly on the wrist in all places and under all sorts of circumstances. It was a common practice, indeed, to go to church with the hawk on the wrist. One of the early French poets, Gaces de la Buigne, who wrote a metrical treatise on hunting in the middle of the fourteenth century, advises his readers to carry their hawks with them wherever there were assemblies of people, whether in churches or elsewhere— Là où les gens sont amassés,
Soit en l’église, ou autre part.
This is explained more fully by the author of the “Ménagier de Paris” (vol. ii. p. 296), who wrote especially for the instruction of the female members of his family. “At this point of falconry,” he says, “it is advisable more than ever to hold the hawk on the wrist, and to carry it to the pleadings (courts of justice), and among people to the churches, and in other assemblies, and in the streets, and to hold it day and night as continually as possible, and sometimes to perch it in the streets, that it may see people, horses, carts, dogs, and become acquainted with all things.... And sometimes, in the house, let it be perched on the dogs, that the dogs may see it, and it them.” It was thus that the practice of carrying a hawk on the wrist became a distinction of people of gentle blood. The annexed engraving ([No. 206]), taken from the same manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents a lady tending her hawks, which are seated on their “perche.”
No. 206. A Lady and her Hawks.