382 EARLY NOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 



their " outpassing," or export, fourpenee "ilktymmyrj" i. e. so many 

 as are inclosed or packed between two boards of timber, usually amount- 

 ing to forty skins.* This Scottish code is copied nearly verbatim from 

 the laws and customs instituted for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by Henry I. 

 and confirmed by subsequent royal charters ; and among the exports 

 from the Tyne, are specified the skins of foxes, martins, sables, bea- 

 vers, goats and squirrels .f Thus we perceive that the beaver was 

 known in Wales in the tenth century, and its skins were objects of 

 export both in Scotland and England, at least till the middle of the 

 twelfth century. In further illustration of the existence of the "Welsh 

 beaver, Dr. Charles Wilson remarks : " Silvester Giraldus, travelling 

 in this country in 1188 with Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, who 

 preached there that crusade in wbich he afterwards followed Eichard 

 Cceur de Lion to the Holy Land, and perished at Acre, tells us, in 

 speaking of the river Teivi, that it retained a special notability : ' in- 

 ter universes namque Cambrise seu etiam Loegrise fluvios, solus hie 

 castores habet.' He then proceeds to give an account of the habitat 

 of tbe animal, at some deep and still recess of the stream ; describes 

 its dams and huts and its methods of construction, with considerable 

 minuteness; and records the dangers to which it is liable on the 

 score of its skin, which is coveted in the west, and the medicinal part 

 of the body, coveted in the east ; while he adds, with evident scruples 

 as to the orthodoxy of tbe practice, that in Grermany and the north- 

 ern regions, great and religious persons, ' tempore jejuniorum,' eat 

 the tail of the fish-like creature, as having both the taste and colour 

 of fish :" a practise, which, it will be seen has been transferred, with 

 the races and medieval creed of Europe, to the New World . 



To those illustrations of the varied evidence by which the presence 

 of the beaver is traced in Britain from the remotest period, down, at: 

 least, to the twelfth century, may be added others of a diverse 

 character, borrowed from different, yet not less interesting and trust- 

 worthy sources than those hitherto referred to, viz. : the pages of 

 our elder poets. They serve at least to show the familiar occurrence 

 of the name of the heavev, in the traditional illustrations belonging 

 to the reigns of Richard II. and the Eourth and Eifth Henries of 

 England, with the contemporary Scottish sovereigns ; nd to confirm 

 the evidence derived from other sources, of the probable existence of 



* Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, v. Timmer. 



t Archaeological Institute, Newcastle. Memoirs of Northumberland, vol. I. p. 27. 



