THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD ANIMALS lxxiii 



is the first date at which I have found the name of ' Badger ' 

 applied to Meles taxus in Lakeland. 1 It appears to have been 

 first recognised locally towards the close of the seventeenth 

 century. The Dacre parish book contains an entry, ' To 

 Lancelot Holme of Penerath [Penrith] for Killing of a badger, 

 £00, 00s. 06d.' This payment was registered in 1690. Seven 

 years later, in 1697, the Penrith wardens made an entry of 

 their own : ' To John Salkeld for a Badger Head, £0, 0s. 6d.' 

 The Barton parish book includes an entry made for the Chepelry 

 of Martindale in 1706 : 'To Mich. Tyson and Tho. Cookson 

 for killing of two wild Cats and a badger, £0, 3s. 0d.' In 

 1715 an entry occurs in the Barton parish book : ' To Lord 

 Lonsdale's Huntsman for a badgher, £0, Is. 0d.' In the Dacre 

 parish the word ' Brock ' continued to be used in preference to 

 the term ' Badger ' for the first few years of the eighteenth 

 century, a remark that is equally true of Barton ; but the 

 modern term soon supplanted the older synonym. The records 

 of Badgers butchered in Dacre parish between 1685 and 1750, 

 a period of sixty-five years, yields a total mortality of thirty- 

 six individuals. This includes an entry for the year 1736, in 

 which the chronicler records the death of ten of these harmless 

 creatures in a single year. Perhaps the saddest feature of this 

 exterminating policy lies in the fact that no mercy was shown 

 even to the tender young. Among the disbursements of the 

 churchwardens of Dacre for 1694 you may read this shameful 

 entry : - Imprimis for 6 Brock heads 4 old and 2 young, 

 £00, 05s. 00d.' The Barton book is equally guilty in assert- 

 ing the slaughter of such innocents. In 1731 it records, ' One 

 old Badger, £00, 01s. 00d., 3 young Badgers £00, 01s. 00d.' 

 The same thing recurs in 1732 : ' 3 ould Badgers, £00, 03s. 00d., 

 2 young Badgers, £00, 00s. 08d.' Truly a 'pittisome ' affair this ! 



1 Professor Skeat says that in Middle English [1200-1460] 'this animal 

 had three familiar names, viz., the brock, the gray, and the bawson, but 

 does not seem to have been generally called the badger ' {Dictionary of 

 the English Language, p. 47). He adds that the name is a sort of nick- 

 name derived from the Middle English badger or bager= l a dealer in 

 corn.' This fanciful origin is verified by the fact that the French equi- 

 valent ' blaireau ' is derived from the French ble, corn. 



