Early Spaniels and Setters 83 



body, and be of fair hue, white or tawny [Gaston de Foix did not use the 

 word for tawny, but 'tavele,' meaning speckled or, as we might say, pied 

 or mottled], for they be the fairest and of such hue they be commonly the 

 best. A good spaniel should not be too rough, but his tail should be rough. 

 The good qualities that such hounds have are these: They love well their 

 master and follow them without losing, although they be in a crowd of men, 

 and commonly they go before their master, running and wagging their tail, 

 and raise or start fowl and wild beasts. But their right craft is of the par- 

 tridge and of the quail. It is a good thing for a man that hath a noble 

 goshawk or a tiercel or a sparrow hawk for partridge, to have such hounds. 

 And also when they are taught to be couchers [Gaston de Foix says ' chien 

 couch ant'] they are good to take partridges and quail with the net. [This 

 was written nearly two hundred years before the time of the Duke of North- 

 umberland.] And also they are good when they are taught to swim and 

 are good for the river, and for fowls when they have dived, but on the other 

 hand they have many bad qualities, like the country that they come from. 

 For the country draweth to two natures of men, and of beasts and of fowls, 

 and as men call greyhounds of Scotland and of Britain [Gaston de Foix 

 wrote * Bretainhe,' which many philologists consider as meaning Brittany, 

 but the Duke of York made it Britain, and in one manuscript it is rendered 

 'England and Scotland'], so the alaunts and the hounds for the hawk 

 came out of Spain and they take after the nature of the generation of which 

 they came. Hounds for the hawk are fighters and great barkers if you 

 lead them ahunting among running hounds, whatever beasts they hunt to 

 they will make them lose the line, for they will go before now hither now 

 thither, as much when they are at fault as when they go right and lead the 

 hounds about and make them over-shoot and fail. Also if you lead grey- 

 hounds with you, and there be a hound for the hawk, that is to say, a spaniel, 

 if he sees geese or kine, or horses, or hens or oxen or other beasts, he will 

 run anon and begin to bark at them, and because of him all the greyhounds 

 will run to take the beast through his egging on, for he will make all the riot 

 and all the harm. The hounds for the hawk have so many other evil 

 habits, that unless I had a goshawk or falcon or hawks for the river or 

 sparrow hawk, or the net, I would never have any, especially there would I 

 hunt." The last five words are an addition of the Duke of York's, so that 

 the description is that of Gaston de Foix; with that exception and the 

 possible change from "Brittany." 



