204 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



1906, but the best account of limiting the " wyhl 

 bore/^ as practised in England in the fourteenth 

 century, is to be found in the ^ Booke of Hunting/ 

 1575, by George Turberville, a squire of Dorset- 

 shire. Fitzstephen, in his ' Description of London/ 

 written in the reign of Henry II, about 1174, speaks 

 of the wild boar as an inhabitant of the great forest 

 around London, and describing the sports and 

 pastimes of the citizens he says"^ : 



'^ In the holydays all the summer the youths are 

 exercised in leaping, dancing, shooting, wrestling, 

 casting the stone, and practising their shields. The 

 maidens trip with their timbrels and dance as long 

 as they can well see. In winter, every liolyday 

 before dinner, the boars prepared for brawn are set 

 to fio'ht, or else bulls or bears are baited. ^^ 

 In " Elizabethan England "t we are told : 

 "^ As for swine, there is no place that hath 

 greater store, nor more wholesome in eating, than 

 are these here in England, which nevertheless do 

 never any good till they come to the table. Of our 

 tame boars we make brawn, which is a kind of 

 meat not nsually known to strangers (as I take it), 

 otherwise would not the swart Rutters and French 

 cooks, at the loss of Calais (where they found great 

 store of this provision almost in every house), have 

 attempted with ridiculous success to roast, bake, 

 broil, and fry the same for their masters till they 

 were better informed. I have heard, moveover, 



* Stowe's ' Survey of London/ Bk. I, p. 247. 



t " Elizabethan England/' from a description of England by 

 William Harrison (in Holinshead's 'Chronicles/ 1586, Camelot 

 Series, pp. 157-8). 



