26 THE MASTER OF GAME 



of corn, of apples, of vines, of tender growing 

 trees, of peas, of beans, and other fruits and 

 grasses whereby they live. And sometimes a 

 great hart hath another fellow that is called his 

 squire, for he is with him and doth as he will. 

 And so they will abide all that season if they be 

 not hindered until the last end of August. And 

 then they begin to look, and to think and to bolne 

 and to bellow and to stir from the haunt in which 

 they have (been) all the season, for to go seek 

 the hinds. They recover their horns and are 

 summed of their tines as many as they shall have 

 all the year between March when they mewed 

 them to the middle of June ; and then be they 

 recovered of their new hair that men call polished 

 and their horns be recovered with a soft hair that 

 hunters call velvet at the beginning, and under 

 that skin and that hair the horn waxes hard and 

 sharp, and about Mary Magdalene day (July 22) 

 they fray their horns against the trees, and have 

 (rubbed) away that skin from their horns and then 

 wax they hard and strong, and then they go to 

 burnish and make them sharp in the colliers 

 places (charcoal pits) that men make sometimes 

 in the great groves. And if they can find none 

 they go against the corners of rocks or to crabbe 

 tree or to hawthorn or other trees. 1 



1 G. de F., p. 14, says the harts go to gravel-pits and bogs 

 to fray. 



