INTRODUCTORY 15 



Celtic language, exquisitely redone in 

 English by no less a personage than 

 the younger Disraeli, afterwards Lord 

 Beaconsfield. Taylor, " the Water Poet," 

 who was born in 1580 ; Scott, in the 

 opening stanzas of The Lady of the 

 Lake, and in many other passages of his 

 inimitable works; and many other authors, 

 have sung of the pleasures of sport in 

 the uncultured but charming situations 

 where it is still mainly followed. 



The unjust and cruel laws by which 

 Norman kind's of England and Scottish 

 monarchs arrogated to themselves exclu- 

 sive privileges of sport, were, as we have 

 seen, greatly ameliorated by the monarchs 

 of the thirteenth century. Yet these laws, 

 and such of them as survive in our own 

 day, retain some remarkable features of 

 their feudal origin. Monopoly of gaming 

 and all higher classes of field sports, which 

 were in very early periods vested in 

 the sovereign simply by arbitrary rule, 

 were at later dates conferred by him on 

 his barons and landed gentry, or were in 



