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    A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon
    A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon
    A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon

    By Anon Anon

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    About this ebook

    This vintage book contains a comprehensive guide to falconry, with information on breeding, selection, training, general care and management, and much more. Containing a wealth of invaluable information and useful tips, this volume will be of utility to modern enthusiasts, and would make for a worthy addition to collections of related literature. Contents include: “Hawking as Taught by the Book of St. Albans”, “Taking Passage Hawks in Holland”, “How to Train a Passage Hawk”, “Training the Eyass – Game Hawking and Room Falconry”, “Language of Hawking”, “The Short Winged Hawks”, “Hunting the Gyr in Lapland”, et cetera. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. We are republishing this vintage book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on pigeons.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateMay 6, 2015
    ISBN9781473395329
    A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon

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      A Guide to Hawking and Raising Falcons - With Chapters on the Language of Hawking, Short Winged Hawks and Hunting with the Gyrfalcon - Anon Anon

      HAWKING AS TAUGHT BY THE BOOK OF ST. ALBANS.

      IT is a common mistake with writers who know nothing of the subject, and who perhaps have never seen the work, to suppose that the Book of St. Alban’s is the falconer’s Bible, the text-book par excellence on hawking, the sine quâ non with all who would acquire a practical knowledge of the art of taming and training either eyess or passage hawk.

      The treatise to which this fictitious value has been assigned is one of three contained in the said book, the other two being on hunting and on coat-armour. It occupies fifty-three quarto pages, and may be characterised as a compilation without method, embodying here and there some useful directions for training short-winged hawks, interspersed with a variety of extraordinary recipes for curing numberless ailments, real or imaginary, to which hawks were supposed to be subject, but few, if any, of which would be tried at the present day with any hope or chance of success.

      Setting aside the question of authorship, already discussed in the last chapter, and which does not affect the question of merit, it is not uninteresting to examine the nature and contents of this treatise from the practical falconer’s point of view, in order to test its real value, and ascertain how far it is deserving of the encomiums which, through so many ages, have been bestowed upon it.

      The opening paragraph runs as follows:

      In so moch that gentill men and honest persones have greete delite in haukyng and desire to have the maner to take haukys: and also how and in what wyse they shulde gyde theym ordynateli: and to know the gentill termys in communyng of theyr haukys: and to understonde theyr sekeneses and enfirmitees; and also to knowe medicines for theym accordyng, and many notabull termys that ben used in haukyng both of their haukys and of the fowles that their haukys shall fley. Therfore thys book fowlowyng in a dew forme shewys veri knowledge of suche plesure to gentill men and psonys disposed to se itt.

      So methodical an introduction, it might be supposed, would be followed by an equally methodical treatise; but this, unfortunately, is not the case, for the medical recipes are so dispersed throughout the work as to entirely interrupt and destroy the continuity of the remarks upon taking and training hawks, which if only brought together would be far more intelligible. We are inclined to suspect that the history of this confusion probably lies in the fact that the manuscript from which the unknown printer of St. Albans set up the work was unpaged, and portions of it must have got misplaced. In no other way does it seem possible to account for the singular jumble which is presented to the reader.

      Before it is possible, therefore, to form any opinion on the practical value of this treatise, it becomes necessary temporarily to re-arrange the subject-matter, by eliminating all which relates to the cure of diseases from that which concerns the method of capturing and training hawks, reserving some brief remarks on the former subject until the latter has been disposed of.

      How, then, did the falconers of yore proceed, according to The Book of St. Albans?

      About St. Margaret’s Day (June 10) they took the nestling hawks, the names for which varied according to their age, those which had just left the nest being called bowesses or boughesses, and those which could fly from tree to tree being termed branchers. After seeling them in the old way, by passing a thread through the eyelids and tying it (a method long superseded by the more humane use of the hood), they carried them home on the fist, and set them on a perch for a night and a day, and on the second day towards evening they cut the threads and fed the hawk gently with warm meat, watching her all night and all the next day to keep her awake. She was then ready to be reclaimed if hard penned; but if the quills were still soft, the falconer would have to wait.

      When ready, washed meat was given, and hot, with a casting every third day, the casting for a Goshawk being composed of five pellets of blanket cloth, each an inch long, imbedded in five morsels of meat, given at feeding time after half a crop full taken.*

      A Sparrowhawk was always fed with unwashed meat and had plumage given for castings. A bath was given every third day in summer and once a week in winter, if fine, after giving a morsel of hot meat unwashed, even though she be a Goshawk. Until a hawk was ready to reclaim, she was given only two meals in the time that she would otherwise have three, Ye must deporte one meele in thre meeles unto the tyme that she will come to reclayme.

      The various steps in the process of training or reclaiming are not detailed, although later on some indication is afforded of the use of a long line for the purpose, when the creance is described; and after numerous recipes and explanation of terms employed by falconers, the reader comes abruptly to a paragraph headed, How ye shall gyde you when your hawk is ready to flie.

      A covey of partridges is found, flushed with the aid of spaniels, and the scattered birds marked down. The hawk (a Goshawk or Sparrowhawk), having first killed a bagged partridge in a string, is taken to where one of the covey has been marked in, and on its being again flushed, is flown at it, and, if successful in killing it, is rewarded with the head and neck, and considered made. Some good advice is given with regard to not approaching the hawk too suddenly when she has killed, and the mode described of taking a hawk up is that practised at the present day.

      Then follow more recipes for diseases, which may be here passed over, and we come to a description of the jesses, leash, and swivel, which one would have expected to find described long before the hawk was redy to flie. This chapter is headed "The lengthe of the gesse, lewnes, tyrettis, and how they ben fastined; and bewettis;" and it will be seen from the following description that, while the use of the term jesses is still retained by modern falconers, the lewnes or lunes answered to our leash, and the tyrett (from the French tourette) to our swivel.*

      Hawkys have aboute ther legges Gesses, made of leder most commynly, som of silke wich shulde be no longer bot that the knottis of theym shulde appere in myddys of the lefte honde betwene the longe fyngre and the leche fyngre, because the lewnes shulde be fastened to theym with a payre of tyrettis which tyrettis shuld rest uppon the lewnes, and not uppon the gesses, for hyngyng and fastynyng uppon trees when she flyeth. And the same lewnes you shall fastyn them abowte your lyttyll fyngre slackely in compassyng the same in iiii or iv folde as a bow stryng unocupyede. And the terettys serve to kepe her from wyndyng when she bates.

      Also the same letheris that be putt in her bellis to be fastyned aboute her leggys ye shall call bewettis [the modern bewits].

      Also ye shall calle the long lyne that ye doo call youre hawke to reclaym with, yowre creaunce whatsoever it be [a term still in use].

      After some more medecynes we are told how a man shall take an hawke fro the eyrer (eyrie). This, inserted as it is amongst various medicines, is evidently misplaced.

      The mewing, or moulting, of hawks is next considered, and the reader is advised not to put his hawk too late in the mew.

      Who so puttyth his hawke in mewe in the begynnynge of Lente; if she be kepte as she ought to be she shall be mewyd in the begynnynge of Auguste.

      Modern falconers have not proved this to be true. Hawks are very uncertain and irregular in their moulting, and we have never known a hawk to be clean moulted anything like so early as August.

      The mew, we are told, should be warm, and so arranged as to admit the sun. A sick hawk should never be put in the mewe till she is well, nor should she be too fat or too lean, but lyke as she shoulde flie beste. Bathing will not hynder her mewynge, and she should bathe every third day. While in the mew she should be well fed, with plenty of birds (for castings), the meat most recommended, however, being kid, young swan, chicken, or young rat.

      More medecynes are then described, and further termys explained. Then follows an argument upon the derivation of the name Sparrowhawk,

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