34 



SavernaJce Forest. 



" Venison."" It may be pronounced in three syllables, a 

 Shakespeare does, " Come shall we go and kill us venison " ; or, 

 many of our oldest writers and some later ones — as Dryden — in two : 



"He, for the feast prepared 

 In equal portions with the ven'son shared." 



But whether pronounced one way or another, the word now is used 

 only in speaking of thejlesk of one particular animal. In the forest 

 laws it meant what the French word does, from which it comes, 

 " venaison 33 — hunting — in Latin, venatio ; and it included every 

 kind of animal that was the object of pursuit. There was a dis- 

 tinction. Some animals were called beasts of chase, as the buck, 

 the doe, the fox, the martron or martin cat, and the roe. Others 

 were beasts and fowls of warren, as the hare, cony, pheasant, and 

 partridge. Beside these there were wolves and wild boars. 1 The 

 whole were legally included under the name of venison. 3 



In our ancient forest law-language then, by " vert and venison,'"' 

 are meant all green things that grow and all animals that are hunted. 



" Wild beasts 33 the forest law calls them. We apply that term 



1 The wild boar was in this forest down to Henry the Eighth's time, perhaps 

 later. The martern, or martin cat was a privileged beast. It was once common 

 in Wiltshire woods. 



The fox is also described in the oldest accounts as a privileged beast, that is, 

 under the forest law : which is not very intelligible : because fox-hunting, at 

 least in its steadily established form, is not much more than one hundred and 

 thirty years old. One often sees in old parish account books of that date, a 

 shilling paid by the parish to anybody who had killed a fox, as so much vermin. 



2 The original meaning of the word venison, i.e., hunting, is shewn in the 

 Latin Vulgate account of the death-bed scene of the patriarch Isaac, in. the 

 twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis. The old man calls his son Esau to him, 

 saying, " Take thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, 

 and take me some venison." In the Latin "go out to the field" is "Egredere 

 foras" (abroad, into the forest) : and "Take me some venison" is " cum venatu 

 aliquid apprehenderis " (when thou hast taken anything by hunting ). So also 

 " I will eat of my son's venison " does not necessarily mean the flesh of the deer, 

 for the Latin is " cibos de venatione filii " (food of my son*s hunting). It might 

 have been that of some other kind of animal. The classical Latin word for 

 the flesh of the deer we find in Virgil's account of JEneas and his crew refreshing 

 themselves. They had killed six bucks, " cornubus arboreis " (with branching 

 horns) : and then sit down and " Implentur veteris Bacchi pinguis que ferinse" 

 (Take their fill of old wine and fat venison). 



