204 APPENDIX 



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

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

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

 tollerable 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. berscret^ a hunting dog, dim. of hersicr^ a 

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

 hunt especially with the bow. Bercel^ b'lercel^ meant a 

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

 bersagliere^ 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 [^ee MastifiF) become ^^ berslctt'is^ and 

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

 translate tiiis sentence: "There are ne\'ertheless some 

 (mastiffs) that become shooting dogs, and retrieve well 

 and put up the game quickly " \se€ Appendix : Wanlace). 



Jesse conceives bracelettas and bercelettus to come from 



