WILD BOAR AND HIS NATURE 47 



and fierce and perilous, for many times have men 

 seen much harm that he hath done. For some 

 men have seen him slit a man from knee up to the 

 breast and slay him all stark dead at one stroke 

 so that he never spake thereafter. 



They go in their love to the brimming ^ as sows 

 do about the feast of St. Andrew,^ and are in 

 their brimming love three weeks, and when the 

 sows are cool the boar does not leave them.^ 



He stays with them till the twelfth day after 

 Christmas, and then the boar leaves the sows and 

 goeth to take his covert, and to seek his liveli- 

 hood alone, and thus he stays until the next year 

 when he goeth again to the sows. They abide 

 not in one place one night as they do in another, 

 but they find their pasture for (till) all pastures 

 fail them as hawthorns ^ and other things. Some- 

 times a great boar has another with him but this 

 happens but seldom. They farrow^ in March, 

 and once in the year they go in their love. And 



he with his courser, by a wild boar and the courser killed (" et 

 moy meismes a il porté moult de fois à terre moy et mon 

 coursier, et mort le coursier "). 



^ Brimming. From Middle English brhne^ burning heat. 

 It was also used in the sense of valiant-spirited (Stratmann). 



^ November 30. 



^ G. de F., p. 57, adds : " comme fait l'ours." 



* A badly worded phrase, the meaning of which is not quite 

 clear. G. de F. has "acorns and beachmast" instead of 

 hawthorns. 



^ Farrow. See Appendix : Wild Boar. 



