64 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



great close within three miles of the forest that 

 have any saltories \saltatorium\, or great gaps, 

 called deer-lopes, to receive deer into them when 

 they be in chasing, and when they are in them they 

 cannot get out again." This is, perhaps, the 

 earliest explanation which can now be found of the 

 meaning of the term "deer-leap," although, as 

 will presently be shown, this definition admits of 

 modification, for the contrivance in question was 

 not, as here implied, a mere pitfall into which deer 

 were driven, or might accidentally fall, and be 

 confined until killed by the owner, who exercised 

 the right of thus capturing them. Whether the 

 Saxon "der-fald" (deerfold) may be regarded as 

 synonymous with " deer-leap," is not certain. Prof. 

 Earle, in his edition of the Saxon Chronicles, 

 considers it identical with the haia. He says : 

 " The hunt began by sending men round to brush 

 and beat the wood, and drive the game with horns 

 and dogs into the ambuscade. This pen is the haia 

 so frequently occurring among the silvcB in Domes- 

 day. The 'der-fald' of our text seems to be the 



" 1 

 same. 



It is remarkable that this very word " Deerfold," 



or, as it is pronounced, " Darfill," still survives as the 



name of a rough, hilly tract of country in the 



1 The meaning of the word haia (Fr. haie) is discussed and 

 explained in my Essays on Sport and Natural History, pp. 

 41, 42. It occurs as the name of a town in Brecon, and also in 

 tne plural as the towns of Hayes in Middlesex and in Kent, and 

 a piece of land in the parish of Shobdon, close to the site of a 

 priory founded by Sir Oliver de Merlimond in the twelfth 

 century. 



