138 



FALASHAS FALIERI. 



I'. inner is considerable. This idea of the virtue of 

 self-torment seems to have originated in the East, 

 iiiul was received by the early Cliristians, who made 

 pf nance a means of conflict with the temptations of 

 the world. See Anachorites, find Demise. 



FALASHAS ; ai Jewish tribe, tributary to Abys- 

 sinia. They formerly lived in the mountains of Samen, 

 where they seem to have formed a more or less inde- 

 pendent state, under their ownmonarchs ; but, since 

 they have become tributary to Abyssinia, they have 

 been dispersed over that country, but reside chiefly 

 on the banks of the Bahr-el-Abiad, among the 

 Shilooks. See Abyssinia. 



FALCON. See Eagle, and Hawk. 



FALCONER, WILLIAM, an English poet and 

 writer on naval affairs, was born at Edinburgh, about 

 1730. He went quite young to sea, in the merchant 

 service, in which he rose to the situation of second 

 mate, when the vessel to which he belonged was cast 

 away, and he was thus furnished with the incidents 

 of the Shipwreck, which was published in 1762. It 

 was dedicated to Edward, duke of York, by whose 

 patronage the author was appointed a midshipman, in 

 1763. In 1769, he published a Universal Marine 

 Dictionary. The same year, he sailed for Bengal, in 

 the Aurora frigate, which was never heard of after 

 she quitted the cape of Good Hope. The subject of 

 the Shipwreck is a voyage from Alexandria, in 

 Egypt, for Venice, cut short by the catastrophe, 

 which is represented as having happened near cape 

 Colonna, on the coast of Greece. The versification 

 is varied and harmonious ; the descriptions are drawn 

 from nature ; the incidents well told, and calculated 

 to excite the sympathy of the reader. His other 

 poems have little merit. 



FALCONET, STEPHEN MAURICE ; a celebrated 

 French sculptor of the eighteenth century. He was 

 born in humble life ; and, displaying a natural taste 

 tor the fine arts, he was assisted in his studies by 

 Lemoine. Catharine II. of Russia patronised him, 

 and he was employed by her to execute the colossal 

 statue of Peter the Great, erected at Petersburg, 

 which occupied him twelve years. He wrote notes 

 on the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth books of Pliny's 

 Natural History, Observations on the Statue of Mar- 

 cus Aurelius, and other works relating to the arts, 

 printed together in 6 vols. 8vo. (Paris, 1781.) Fal- 

 conet died at Paris, in 1791. 



FALCONRY. Falconry is a very old amusement 

 in Europe and Asia. In the middle ages, it was the 

 favourite sport of princes and nobles ; and, as la- 

 dies could engage in it, it became very prevalent, 

 particularly in France. In an old poem on forest 

 sports, by the chaplain Gasse de la Bigne (Roman 

 des Deduits), cited by Curne de Sainte-Palaye, in his 

 work on chivalry, in a comparison of hunting with 

 falconry, it is mentioned, as a particular advantage 

 of falconry, that queens, duchesses, and countesses, 

 are allowed, by their husbands, to carry the falcon 

 on their wrists, without offending propriety, and that 

 they can enjoy all the sport of this kind of hunting, 

 whilst, in hunting with hounds, they are only allowed 

 to follow by the wide roads, or over open fields, in 

 order to see the dogs pass. The knight was anxious 

 to pay his court to the ladies, on such occasions, by 

 his attentions to the falcons. He was obliged to be 

 careful to fly the bird at the proper moment, to fol- 

 low her immediately, never to lose sight of her, to 

 encourage her by calls, to take the prey from her, to 

 caress her, to put on the hood, and to place her 

 gracefully on the wrist of his mistress. 



In Germany, falconry was honoured as early as in 

 the times of the emperor Frederic II. He was so 

 fond of this sport that he would not even give it up 

 Curing the labour of war, and wrote a work on fal- 



conry, to which notes were added by his son, Manfred 

 of Hohenstaufen (lleliqua Librorum Fred. II. de Arte 

 venandi cum Avibus, edited by J. G. Schneider, 

 Leipsic, 1788, 2 vols. 4to). In the feudal usages, 

 we also find many proofs of the esteem in which this 

 sport was held in Germany, England, and France. 

 In Germany there were fiefs called HaLichtslehnen 

 (hawk tenures), and, as early as the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, some vassals were obliged to appear annually 

 with a well trained falcon, or hawk, and a dog trained 

 to assist in the same sport. 



In France, falconry was most practised in the reign 

 of Francis 1., though this king, called the father of 

 hunting, preferred the chase. The establishments 

 for training falcons were under the direction of a grand 

 falconer, who received an annual revenue of 4000 

 livres, and had under him fifteen noblemen and fifty 

 falconers. He had the care of more than 300 falcons, 

 and enjoyed the privilege of hawking through the 

 whole kingdom at pleasure. He received a fine for 

 every falcon which was sold, and no falconer was 

 allowed to sell a bird without his permission. The 

 whole establishment, which cost annually about 

 40,000 livres, followed the king, as did also his hunt- 

 ing establishment. One gentleman who was distin- 

 guished for his skill in hawking, was loaded with 

 favours by the king, and enabled to keep sixty horses 

 for his falconry alone. There was an old rivalry 

 between the falconers and the hunters. When the 

 hunting of the stag began, and the falcons mewed, 

 the hunters drove the falconers from the yard ; whilst, 

 in winter, when the stags are no longer worth hunt- 

 ing, the falconers retaliated on the hunters, and locked 

 up the hounds. Falconry continued in favour until 

 the seventeenth century ; but the invention of fire- 

 arms gradually superseded it. 



In England, falconry was also in great favour, and 

 there is to this day a hereditary grand falconer. The 

 duke of St Albans, in his office of grand falconer, 

 presents the king with a cast of falcons on the day of 

 his coronation. A similar service is performed by 

 the representative of the Stanley family in the isle of 

 Man. Attempts have recently been made to revive 

 this sport in that country ; but it is hardly consistent 

 with the usages of our time, particularly in England, 

 011 account of the general enclosure of the fields. 



In the East, the Persians are particularly skilful in 

 training falcons. They hawk after all kinds of birds, 

 and even after gazelles. The falcons are taught to 

 fasten themselves on the heads of these creatures, and 

 to peck at their eyes,which checks them until the hounds 

 come up. Wolves were formerly hunted in the same 

 way in Europe. The falcons intended for this sport 

 were taken young from the nest, and fed for months with 

 the raw flesh of pigeons and wild birds, before they 

 were inured to sitting on the hand, to which they were 

 accustomed by resting on posts, &c. They were 

 afterwards made tame by being deprived, for a long 

 time, of sleep, and inured to endure a leathern hood. 

 At first, they were tied with a string, about thirty 

 fathoms in length, to prevent them from flying away, 

 from which they were not released till they were 

 completely disciplined, so as to return at the proper 

 signal. When taken into the field, they were always 

 capped, or hooded, so as to see no object but their 

 game ; and, as soon as the dogs stopped, or sprung 

 it, the falcon was unhooded, and tossed into the air 

 after his prey. 



FALIERI, MARINO, doge of Venice in the middle 

 of the fourteenth century, had previously commanded 

 the troops of the republic at the siege of Zara, in 

 Dalmatia ; he there gained a brilliant victory over 

 the king of Hungary, and was afterwards ambassador 

 to Genoa and Rome. His character is delineated with 

 historical truth in Byron's tragedy of Marino Falier), 



