128 
The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare's Time. 
“ A hart of ten 
I trow he be, madam, or blame your men : 
For by his slot, his entries, and his port. 
His frayings, fewmets, he doth promise sport. 
And standing 'fore the dogs : he bears a head 
Large and well beamed, with all rights summed and spread.” 
The slot of a deer is the print of his feet in the ground ; 
entries are places through which the deer has lately 
passed, which indicate his size; frayings are the peelings 
of the horns. Many other phrases are met with in plays, 
such as abature , grass trampled down by the passing 
deer; and foile , grass only slightly pressed down. 
“ Besides these ambiguous contigigrated phrases,” writes John 
Taylor, the Water Poet, “ the horns have many dogmatical epithets, as 
a hart hath the burrs, the pearls, the antlers, the surantlers, the royals, 
the surroyals, and the croches. A buck’s horns are composed of burr, 
beam, branch, advancer, palm, and speller. I think Nimrod the great 
hunter would have been a madman or a wood-man, if he had studied 
half the wild and hare-brained terms that belong to this ship [wood- 
man-ship].” ( Works , p. 61, ed. Hindley, 1872.) 
In a note on the Merry Wives of Windsor , in Singer’s 
edition of Shakspeare, we find an explanation of a passage 
that has been altered by several commentators. Falstaff, 
when attired in the spoils of a hart of ten, naturally uses 
the terms of the forest. He says;— 
“ Divide me like a brib'd buck, each a haunch : I will keep my 
sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns 
I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman ? Ha! Speak I like 
Herne the hunter ? ” (Act v. sc. 5.) 
“ This,” says Mr. Singer, “ is the reading of the old copies, which 
has been unnecessarily changed to a bribe-buck by all recent editors. 
A brib'd buck was a buck cut up to be given away in portions. Bribes 
in O.F. were portions or fragments of meat which were given away 
Hence bribeur was a beggar, and the O.E. bribour a petty thief.” 
The shoulders of the buck were the perquisites of the 
keeper, or fellow of the walk. 
