16 J, E. HAETING AKIMALS WHICH HATE BECOME 



The "Wild Boar. 



The wild boar is one of the oldest forest animals in Britain, and 

 one of those of which we find the earliest mention in history. 

 Characteristic figures of it appear on ancient British coins,* and it 

 is one of the earliest animals figured in Celtic works of art.f 

 Britons, Romans, Saxons, and Normans, all hunted it here in turns. 



Figures of the wild hoar are found on Roman monuments in 

 England. Pennant has noticed one such at Ribchester, formerly a 

 famous Roman station.;]: "It is supposed," he says, "to have 

 been an honorary inscription to Severus and Caracalla by the repe- 

 tition of the address. It was done by a Vexillatio of one of the 

 Legions quartered here. A stone fixed in the wall of a small house 

 near the church gives room to suppose that it belonged to the 

 twentieth. The inscription is LEG, XX. Y.V. EEC. and on one 

 side is the sculpture of a boar, an animal I have in two other in- 

 stances observed attendant upon the inscriptions made by the 

 famous Legio vicesima valens victrixr 



Nor should we forget the Roman altar which was found at 

 "VVeardale, dedicated by a grateful Roman Prefect to the god 

 Silvanus, for the capture of an enormous boar which multi anteces- 

 sores ejus had in vain attempted to destroy. § A similar altar, also 

 dedicated to Sylvanus by the hunters of Banna, was found at 

 Birdoswald. 



Edward the Confessor (a.d. 1042) had a royal palace at Brill or 

 Brehidl, Bucks, to which he often repaired for the pleasure of 

 hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is said, was much 

 infested by a wild boar, which was at last slain by one Nigell, a 

 huntsman, who presented the boar's head to the king; and for a 

 reward the king gave him one hide of arable land called " Dcre- 

 hyde," and a wood called "Hulewood," Avith the custody of the 

 forest of Bernwood, to hold to him and his heirs by a horn, which 

 is the charter of the aforesaid forest. Upon this land Nigell built 

 a lodge, or mansion-house, called Borestall, in memory of the slain 

 boar. Eor proof of this in a large folio vellum book containing 

 transcripts of charters and evidences relating to this estate (sup- 

 posed to have been written in or before the reign of Henry the 

 Sixth) is a rude delineation of the site of Borestall House and manor, 

 and under it the figure of a man presenting on his knees to the 

 King the head of a boar on the point of a sword, and the King 

 returning to him a coat of arcis, argent, a fesse, gules, between two 

 crescents and a horn, vert. The same figure of a boar's head was 

 carved on the head of an old bedstead now remaining in the tower 



* Evans, ' British Coins,' plates vi, viii, xi, xii, and xiii. 



t 'Horn; Ferales,' p. 185, plate xiv ; Montellier, ' Menioires sur les Bronzes 

 Antiques,' Paris, 18G5 ; and Stephens' 'Literature of Kj-mry,' p. 250. 



X ' Tour to Alston Moor,' 1801, p. 93. See also Horsley, ' Britannia Eomana, 

 or the Roman Auti(iuities of Britain,' folio, 1732. 



§ See the inscription given from Camden in Wright's ' The Celt, the Roman, 

 and the Saxon,' 1852, p. 207. 



