SPORT ANCIENT AND 



MODERN 



I 



popular diversions,' wrote 

 Hutchinson 1 of the people of 

 Eskdale, ' are hunting and cock- 

 fighting.' What was true of 

 part of the county a hundred 

 years ago has been true ever since of the 

 whole, especially of the wilder districts. The 

 natives of Cumberland are essentially sports- 

 men, keen about hunting of every kind, 

 about fishing and wrestling and hound-trail- 

 ing, even yet in places about cockfighting. 

 They have been fortunate in their oppor- 

 tunities (such as an unenclosed mountainous 

 country to roam over, and many lakes and 

 rivers not very strictly preserved to fish in), 

 and the traditions of sport have been handed 

 down to each succeeding generation by en- 

 thusiastic teachers, masters of their different 

 crafts. Long after the middle of last century, 

 to thousands of men engaged in farming, 

 hunting, in one form or another, was the 

 chief relaxation, and such sports as those 

 mentioned above were almost the only other 

 amusements. At the present time some beasts 

 of the chase are practically extinct ; game 

 is more generally preserved than it was even 

 twenty years ago ; and railways, if they have 

 not done much to interfere with hunting, have 

 tempted people away from their homes, and 

 opened out new interests to them of quite a 

 different kind. So an interesting race of men, 

 which is referred to later on, is fast dis- 

 appearing, and their place is being taken by 

 others, also of sporting instincts, but with 

 fewer opportunities of indulging them, leading 

 busier lives, and moving more about in the 

 world. 



Of the various field sports and pastimes of 

 which an account is given in this section 

 two or three date back for some hundreds 

 of years ; and the origin of the others 

 must be almost coeval with the history of 

 the human race. It is impossible to imagine 

 a period when men were so rude and un- 

 developed that they did not catch fish, and, 



1 History of Cumberland, i. 579. 



after some fashion or another, kill animals or 

 birds. The pedigree of the chase comes to us 

 in a fairly consecutive line from very remote 

 periods. Flint arrow-heads, relics of the 

 ancient hunters of the Stone Age, have been 

 found in different parts of the county ; stags' 

 horns in barrows enclosed by stone circles, 

 and in Roman graves. 2 Then, by strange 

 laws and many quaint records and accounts, 

 it is brought down to our own days. 



The welfare of the deer was an object of 

 the deepest concern to our early kings. They 

 made a science of hunting ; they kept, or 

 laid waste, immense tracts of country, so that 

 it might be carried on with the least possible 

 interference, and they defended it and fur- 

 thered its interests with an elaborate code of 

 formidable laws ; they held the life and limb 

 of a country clown to be of small account 

 compared with the life or even the distress of 

 a stag. 



In the Pipe Rolls there is frequent mention 

 of deer, or what concerns deer, ' in the forest.' 

 We read there the everyday little details of 

 small offences and punishments as they oc- 

 curred seven hundred years ago ; how in 1158 

 Gillo the forester owed 5 marks for a plea, 

 the next year 33*. 4^., and then how, in 

 1 1 60, he and William de Essebi each paid 

 that sum into the treasury, ' and are quit.' 

 Here are recorded the payments for the 

 carriage of the king's venison, fines for ani- 

 mals taken, 'pounded' in the forest, for 

 swine so taken, for ' rent of the forest,' many 

 payments for this, 'of pleas of the fores,t.' 

 We can understand something ot the anxiety 

 with which ' Robert son of Simon de Salkil 

 renders account of i oo*. that his son may be 

 quit of a certain fawn which he took in the 

 forest.' 3 



The modern owner of a partially enclosed 



* V.C.H. Cumb. i. 228, 245, 251. For all the 

 information concerning deer and hunting from 

 the various Registers and Pleas of the Forest and 

 Pipe Rolls, and for the notes upon hawking, I am 

 indebted to the Rev. James Wilson, the editor. 



Ibid. i. 340, 344-5, 361, 404. 



419 



