DERBYSHIRE TAPESTRV. Ill 



forms one of our illustrations (Plate II.) The ladies are provided 

 with long sticks to strike the birds when approaching the land. 

 In the same picture, on the right, is a fragment of a hawking 

 incident. A lady is seated holding a hawk's hood on the two 

 first fingers of her right hand, whilst a young man with a fine 

 hawk's lure attached to a string is approaching her. (He probably 

 bore a hawk on iiis wrist to be hooded, but the upper part of his 

 figure is missing.) The lure is worth attention. Below these, in 

 the foreground, is a figure with a hawk feeding on the back of 

 one of the water-fowl just captured at the pond, the subject of a 

 separate illustration. (See Plate VI.) 



The lower right corner of this sheet is formed of two square 

 pieces much smaller than the rest. The upper has a delightfully 

 quaint lion " couchant" and '' laiigued," sufficiently heraldic in 

 form to satisfy the most fastidious " garter king," He, too, is 

 crouching on a bed of brilliant verdures. The lower fragment 

 has a park with a hurdle fence enclosing two fawns, and a castle 

 in the distance. In the foreground, outside the fence, is a bird 

 of prey with ears like a fox. 



Another hanging shows an otter hunt, with the raid on the 

 cygnets. The latter, detached, forms one of our illustrations 

 (Plate III.) 



In the grouping of the subjects on this sheet our modern rules 

 of perspective seem to be sorely out of place. The largest 

 figures occupy the middle distance, and the smallest the fore- 

 ground ; whilst in the background are two figures twice the 

 height of the castle in front of them, the latter being apparently 

 dwarfed to exhibit them. In this, as in the other hangings of 

 the series, the endless variety of costumes — no two figures being 

 clad exactly in the same style — form a collection of e.xamples of 

 mediaeval fashion, singularly valuable and instructive to the artist 

 and antiquary, and perhaps now unique. 



In the swan scene we have a medieval castle, with its two 

 draw-bridges lowered over a moat. Behind, and above it, the 

 masts of a large vessel are visible, and from the top of one of 

 them a watchman is conversing with a sailor below. The internal 



