Beasts of Chase. 2 1 1 



Another illustration of the prodigious importance attached 

 to such a feat is afforded by the legend of Boarstall, the 

 seat of the Aubreys. " It is situated within the limits of 

 the ancient forest of Bernwood, which was very extensive 

 and thickly wooded. This forest, in the neighbourhood 

 of Brill, where Edward the Confessor had a palace, was 

 infested with a ferocious wild boar, which had not only 

 become a terror to the rustics, but a great annoyance 

 to the royal hunting expeditions. At length one Nigel, 

 a huntsman, dug a pit in a certain spot which he had 

 observed the boar to frequent, and, placing a sow in the pit, 

 covered it with brushwood. The boar came after the sow, 

 and, falling into the pit, was easily killed by Nigel, who 

 carried its head on his sword to the king, who was then 

 residing at Brill." For this the king knighted him "and 

 amply rewarded him 1 " 



All this goes to prove the manly courage of the men 

 who killed boars ; yet the boar's courage is all bloodthirsty 

 ferocity. Adonis will not stay with his celestial charmer ; 

 his thoughts are all given to the boar-hunt he has on hand — 



*' But for she saw him bent to cruell play, 

 To hunt the salvage beast in forest WT-de. 

 Dreadful! of danger that mote him betyde, 

 She oft and oft advized to refraine 

 From chase of greater beastes, whose brutish pryde 

 Mote breede him scath unwares." 



So, too, the lovely Thyamis wedded to a " loose, unruly 

 swain," 



bring it into cultivation, began to fiil up the ditch by levelling the 

 mound. Having lowered the latter about four feet he came on the 

 skeleton of an enormous boar lying flat on its side and at full length. 

 Probably this was the very spot where it had been killed, the earth 

 around having been heaped over it so as to form the ditch and mound. 

 The space formerly thus occupied can still be traced. It extends about 

 thirty feet in length and eighteen in width, and the field containing it 

 is yet called 'the Boar's Head Field.' " — Book of Days. 



