The Art and Practice of Hawking. E. B. Michell

      CHAPTER I

      History and Literature

      IT would be easy to fill a large volume with dissertations on the antiquity of the art which is now called Falconry, and with records of its history in different countries during the many centuries that have elapsed since it was first practised. In a treatise on practical hawking, such as the present, there is no room for such matter; and the omission will be the more readily excused when it is explained that only a short time ago the antiquities of the art, and the literature in which its records are embodied, were most carefully and ably explored by Mr. J. E. Harting, the erudite Secretary of the Linnean Society, whose catalogue of books on hawking contains a reference to every known publication on the subject (Bibliotheca Accipitraria, London, 1891). The actual origin of hawking, as of other old sports, is naturally hidden in the obscurity of the far-away past. No one would suppose that it was practised as early in the world’s history as the sister sports of hunting and fishing. But Mr. Harting’s researches have resulted in convincing him that it was known at least as early as 400 B.C., although its introduction into Europe must clearly be placed at a much later date. It is remarkable enough that the Greeks, whose country abounds in wild hawks, should have known nothing of their use in the service of man. Homer, indeed, speaks of the mountain falcon as “the most nimble of birds,” ( ἡὑτε κἱρχος ὁρεσφιν, ἑλαφρὁτατος πετεηνὡν Il. xxii. 139); but Sophocles, in alluding to the triumphs of man in taming and using wild creatures, omits all mention of the training of hawks, which is certainly more worthy of notice than mere bird-catching or the breaking-in of oxen (Soph. Antig. 343). Even the later Roman authors refer to the use of trained hawks as an unfamiliar practice, in vogue only amongst some of the barbarian tribes.

      Until at least some centuries after the Christian era, China and other countries in the Far East seem to have been the chief if not the only homes of falconry. But the Lombards, when they settled in North Italy, in the latter half of the sixth century, were acquainted with the art; and before the end of the ninth century it was familiar to the Saxons in England and throughout the West of Europe. Henry the Fowler, who became Emperor in 919, seems to have been so nicknamed on account of his devotion to this form of sport, which was already a favourite with princes and magnates. The Saxon King Ethelbert wrote to the Archbishop of Mayence for hawks able to take cranes. King Harold habitually carried a trained hawk on his fist; and from the time of the Norman Conquest hawking was a sport as highly honoured in the civilised world as hunting. The greatest impulse that was ever given to the sport in Western Europe was derived from the returning Crusaders, many of whom, in the course of their travels to the East, had become acquainted with the Oriental falconers and the Asiatic modes of training and flying hawks. Conspicuous amongst such Crusaders was the Emperor Frederick II., who brought back with him some Asiatic hawks and their trainers, and who not only was himself an enthusiastic and accomplished falconer, but even declared that falconry was the noblest of all arts. From that time—early in the thirteenth century—for more than four hundred years falconry flourished in Europe, as well as in the East, as a fashionable sport amongst almost all classes. As in the case of hunting and fishing, its attractions as a sport were supplemented by the very material merits it possessed as a means of procuring food. While the prince and the baron valued their falcon-gentle for its high pitch and lordly stoop, the yeoman and the burgher set almost equal store on the less aristocratic goshawk and the plebeian sparrow-hawk as purveyors of wholesome delicacies for the table. Even the serf or villein was not forgotten in the field, and was expected, or at least allowed, to train and carry on his fist the humble but well-bred and graceful kestrel.

      During this long period the example of Henry the Fowler was followed freely by many of the most celebrated and powerful rulers in European countries. Hardly a prominent personage amongst the great conquerors and lawgivers in mediæval times was unacquainted with the art. Most of them were as enthusiastic in their devotion to it as they were to the more serious objects of their ambition. It would be wearisome to recount the long list of royal falconers; and it will suffice to merely mention a few of the most notable examples. Thus Edward III. was accompanied on his warlike expedition with a whole train of falconers. His father had been indulged in his imprisonment with liberty to go hawking. Shakespeare has familiarised his readers with the hawking parties of Henry VI. and his Queen (2 Hen. VI. ii. I); and few people have failed to read the story of the broken leaping-pole which precipitated Henry VIII. into a ditch as he was following a hawk. Louis XI. and a host of French kings, including Francis I., were ardent falconers, as were many of the kings of Castile and Arragon, Sardinia, and Hungary. Henry of Navarre was excelled by few men in his passion for this sport. James IV. of Scotland gave a jewelled hood to one of the Flemings, because the latter had won a match in which his hawk flew against the King’s. And James I. of England enjoyed nothing more keenly than a day’s hawking, declaring that if a man had only patience and good-temper enough to contend with the disappointments inseparable from it, the sport would be preferable to hunting. Catherine II. of Russia was as great at falconry as at most other things, and specially delighted in the flight with merlins. Ecclesiastics, both great and small, were not a whit behind the laity in their devotion to the sport of the air. It was thought no scorn for a holy-water clerk to carry a “musket” or male sparrow-hawk. Not only did Cardinal Beaufort fly his falcons with those of the great Duke of Gloucester, but no less a potentate than Pope Leo X. was constantly in the field at Ravenna, and even incurs the blame of the great D’Arcussia for being in the habit of too soundly rating his comrades during a flight. The hawking establishments of all the earlier Bourbons were kept up in more than royal style, and were supplied annually with rare falcons from many parts of the world.

      It was the invention of shot-guns that struck the first and most deadly blow at the popularity of hawking. It was soon discovered that wild-fowl, rabbits, and most kinds of game could be captured much more easily and cheaply by the aid of “vile saltpetre” than by the laborious and costly processes involved in the reclaiming and moulting and conditioning of hawks. Economy, as well as novelty, pleaded in favour of the new sport of shooting. At the same time, the common use of fowling-pieces added a fresh and formidable danger for the owners of hawks, already exposed to a thousand unfair risks of losing their favourites. In the unsettled state to which Europe was reduced by the innumerable wars consequent on the Reformation, it was impossible for falconers to identify or punish those who recklessly or deliberately slaughtered a neighbour’s lost hawks; and although the offenders were still liable to serve penalties, they could snap their fingers at the protective laws. Finally, the more rapid subdivision of the land, and its enclosure with fences for agricultural purposes, spoilt, for the falconer’s purposes, large tracts of country which had formerly been the most suitable, and was especially hurtful to the flying of the long-winged hawks, for which an expanse of open ground is indispensable. On the Continent these various causes operated surely but slowly to displace falconry in the public estimation. But in England a special circumstance almost ruined it at one blow. The outbreak of the Great Civil War interrupted rudely all peaceful sports, and its disasters destroyed a vast number of those who were the best patrons of hawking. From the blow then struck English falconry never rallied in any general sense. Certainly it did revive, or rather