82 The Dog Book 



de Chasse." This was translated into English by the Duke of York about 

 1410, and his version was given the title of "The Master of Game." He 

 added a little to the original, but left the portion we will quote from as it 

 was. Gaston de Foix lived in the South of France and was a great man in 

 his time — one of the feudal monarchs with large estates and an immense 

 revenue with which to maintain his kingly hospitality and take part in the 

 wars of his times. He also followed the chase and owned hundreds of 

 hounds of all kinds, and was therefore a man who had knowledge of what 

 he was writing about. Living as he did close to the borders of Spain, we 

 can accept without cavil, what some recent writers have thrown doubts 

 upon, that the spaniel owes its name to that country; but whether it origi- 

 nated there or whether it was bred from dogs which came with the early 

 migrations from the East, will never be known. 



In our "Early History of the Dog" we mention having found in the 

 Cypriote collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a small terra-cotta 

 model of a dog bearing a resemblance to the spaniel, but that would not 

 indicate anything by itself. It may not be a spaniel, and even if it is, the 

 original might have been brought to Crete. Besides which we have so 

 altered and improved these old "Spaynels" that, beyond being descendants 

 of these old-timers, there is no connection at all between the setters and 

 spaniels of to-day and the dogs Gaston de Foix wrote about. For what we 

 know of the latter, and also all information obtained from "The Master of 

 Game," we owe to the splendidly performed task of William A., and F. 

 Baillie-Grohman, who have lately published a copy of this quaint old 

 English book with a parallel-column modern English version. This present- 

 day volume is not a copy of any single one of the several manuscript copies 

 of the book, either in English or in the original tongue, but the accepted 

 best copy has been compared with others, and the result is the correction 

 of errors which crept into the various manuscript copies, and the giving 

 us a perfect copy of what was the original but now lost manuscript dic- 

 tated by the old French sporting nobleman. 



Chapter Seventeen of "The Master of Game" is devoted to spaniels 

 and their nature, and is as follows: "Another kind of hound [the word dog 

 was not then in general use] there is that are called hounds for the hawk, 

 and spaniels, for their kind came from Spain, notwithstanding that there 

 are many in other countries. And such hounds have many good customs 

 and evil. Also a fair hound for the hawk should have a great head, a great 



