HAWKING. 125 



the ship's rolling. The catchers receive a written testimony 

 of their respective good qualities, hy virtue of which they are 

 paid by the king's receiver-general, about three pounds for 

 the best, which are white ; about two pounds for the second 

 best, and from eight to ten shillings for the remainder : lat- 

 terly, the prices have been raised, but in former days, when 

 they received rather more, and money was not so plentiful, 

 this price may be considered as very great. But this price 

 is nothing in comparison with the sums quoted by historians, 

 as given about two hundred years ago in England, when a 

 Goshawk, a bird far inferior to these Iceland Hawks, was sold 

 for one hundred marks, or nearly seventy pounds sterling. 

 It is further said, that a certain Sir Thomas Monson, about 

 that period, gave no less than a thousand pounds for a cast of 

 Hawks, consisting of two birds. 



In the Orkney Islands, a little to the north of Scotland, 

 where excellent Hawks are bred, there was an act of parliament 

 claiming them " to be reserved to his Majesty, with the fal- 

 coners' salaries, according to ancient custom ;" and in some 

 parts there is still an old custom observed of claiming a hen 

 from each house or from a certain number of houses in each 

 parish, as due to the royal falconers. They were said to have 

 been originally taken as food for the King's Hawks.* 



No amusement seems to have been followed with so much 

 eagerness as hawking in almost every country in Europe ; 

 and from the earliest times, even before William the Con- 

 queror's days, it was the favourite pursuit of the royal families 

 and nobility of England. The training and flying of Hawks 

 formed part of the education of every young man of rank. 

 King Alfred is said to have written a treatise upon the sub- 

 ject ; and even ladies followed it as eagerly as the gentlemen. 

 The amusement was occasionally followed on foot, but gene- 

 rally, particularly on downs and in open countries, it was pur- 

 sued on horseback. In woods and covers, however, or where 

 horses could not easily follow, the sportsmen were furnished 

 with long stout poles for leaping over ditches, which we learn 

 from a story told of King Henry the Eighth, who, one day, 



* BARRY'S Orkney. 



