HAWKING. 137 



certain number of houses in each parish, as due to the 

 royal falconers. They were said to hare been originally 

 taken as food for the King's Hawks*. 



No amusement seems to have been followed with so 

 much eagerness as hawking in almost every country in 

 Europe; and from the earliest times, even before Wil- 

 liam the Conqueror's days, it was the favourite pursuit 

 of the royal families and nobility of England. The 

 training and flying of Hawks formed part of the educa- 

 tion of every young man of rank. King Alfred is said 

 to have written a treatise upon the subject ; and even 

 ladies followed it as eagerly as the gentlemen. The 

 amusement was occasionally followed on foot, but gene- 

 rally, particularly on downs and in open countries, it 

 was pursued on horseback. In woods and covers, how- 

 ever, or where horses could not easily follow, the sports- 

 men were furnished with long stout poles for leaping 

 over ditches, which we learn from a story told of King 

 Henry the Eighth, who, one day, when pursuing his 

 Hawk at Hitchen, in Hertfordshire, attempted, with the 

 assistance of his pole, to jump over a wide ditch, full of 

 muddy water, but the pole unfortunately breaking, the 

 king fell, head over ears, into the thick mud, where he 

 might have been suffocated had not one of his atten- 

 dants, seeing the accident, leaped into the ditch after 

 his royal master, and pulled him out. 



No pains were spared in breaking in the Hawks, as 

 much of their value depended on their docility, derived 

 from good and careful training. The young birds, when 

 taken out of the nest, or sometimes caught by traps, as 

 soon as they began to fly, were put into linen bags, with 

 openings for the head and tail, that they might be 

 brought home without injury. A hood or cap was then 

 placed over its eyes, and for a day or two the bird was 

 loft to itself. After which it was placed quietly on the 

 fist, carried up and down the whole day, and gently 

 stroked with a feather. Having been, in some degree, 



* BAIIEY'S Orkney. 



