204 APPENDIX 



when you speake of a harts homes, you must terme them 

 the Head and not the Homes of a hart. And likewise 

 of a bucke ; but a Rowes homes and a Gotes homes are 

 toUerable termes in Venery " (1611, p. 239). 



Up to the end of the seventeenth century it was cus- 

 tomary when speaking of a stag's head to refer only to 

 the tines " on top," or the " croches " or " troches," leav- 

 ing unconsidered the brow, bez and trez tines, which 

 were called the stag's " rights," and which every warrant- 

 able hart was supposed as a matter of course to possess. 

 When referring to the number of tines a head bore, it 

 was invariably the rule to use only even numbers, and 

 to double the number of tines borne by the antler which 

 had most. Thus, a stag with three on each top was a 

 head of " twelve of the less " (or " lasse ") ; " twelve of 

 the greater" when he had three and four on top, or, 

 counting the rights, six and seven tines, or, as a modern 

 Scotch stalker would call it, a thirteen-pointer. The 

 extreme number of tines a hart was supposed to bear 

 was thirty-two. 



BERCELET, barcelette, bercelette, is a corruption of 

 the O. Fr. berseret^ a hunting dog, dim. of bersiery a 

 huntsman ; in Latin, bersarius^ French, berser^ bercer^ to 

 hunt especially with the bow. Bercel^ biercel^ meant a 

 butt or target. Italian, bersagUo^ an archer's butt, whence 

 bersagUerCy archer or sharpshooter (Oxford, and Godefroy 

 Diet.). 



Given the above derivation, it may be fairly accepted 

 that bercelet was a dog fitted to accompany a hunter who 

 was going to shoot his game — a shooting dog. The 

 " Master of Game's " allusion also points to this. He 

 says some mastiffs {see Mastiff) become '-^ berslettisy and 

 also to bring well and fast a wanlace about." We might 

 translate this sentence : " There are nevertheless some 

 (mastiffs) that become shooting dogs, and retrieve well 

 and put up the game quickly " [see Appendix : Wanlace). 



Jesse conceives bracelettas and bercelettus to come from 



