THE GYR FALCON. 3 



his sanctuary. Penetrating even into the precincts of con- 

 ventual life, we find the falcon attracting the admiration of 

 the most noble of the inmates ; and to so much advantage that 

 in the fifteenth century the prioress of Slopewell nunnery 

 gave the result of her observations to posterity in the " Book 

 of St. Albans." Possessing a peculiar nicety of discrimination, 

 we observe in it the various hawks employed for hawking, 

 adapted to the different ranks of those privileged to keep 

 them. Thus we have u the hawks belonging to an emperor, 

 the eagle, vulture, and merloun ; to a king, the gyr falcon, 

 and tiercel of the gyr falcon ; to a prince, the falcon gentle, 

 and the tiercel gentle ; to a duke, the falcon of the rock ; to 

 an earl, the falcon peregrine ; to a baron, the bustard ; to u 

 knight, the sucre and sucret ; to an esquire, the lanere and 

 the lanerd ; to a lady, the merlyon ; to a young gentleman, 

 the hobby ; to a priest, the sparrow-hawk ; to a holy- water 

 clerk, the musket; to a yeoman, the goshawk; to a poor 

 man, the tercel of the goshawk ; to a knave or servant, the 

 kesterel." Possessing the minds of all those classes, their love 

 for the falcon became a complete mania, so much so that it 

 was nothing unusual for knights proceeding to church to 

 have their missal in the shape of some u goodly falcon" sus- 

 tained upon the wrist ; whilst the clergy became so enamoured 

 of hawking that their undisguised admiration of it caused 

 them to be the subjects of the lampoons and satires of the 

 poets of the day. 



The present species, receiving the distinctive appellation 

 of Norwegian falcon, became of such rarity and value that 

 kings did not hesitate to receive them as presents and bribes 

 from their subjects. u King John, having received two 

 Norwegian hawks from Geoffry Fitzpierce, for allowing one 

 Walter le Madena permission to import a hundred-weight of 

 cheese ; and another merchant, Nicholas the Dane, agreed to 

 give the king a hawk every time he came to England, that he 

 might have liberty to traffic through the king's dominions." 



Valued in our own day for the purposes of hawking, the 

 late Sir Charles Giesecke once mentioned, in a lecture, of 

 having been present at a hawking party in Norway where a 

 gyr falcon was flown at a hare ; the bird clutched the hare 

 with one foot, and the stump of a tree with the other, with 

 such tenacity that, from the speed of the hare, the leg of the 

 gyr falcon was torn from its socket, and being unable to ex- 

 tricate its claws, both perished. Better attended to in Persia, 

 where the gyr falcon is trained to the chase, each bird before 

 flight is defended with stout leather trowsers to prevent a 

 B 2 



