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 
