Vows on the Pheasant. 
223 
a solemn vow on the pheasant to perform some deed of 
prowess, is ascribed by Dr. Brinsley Nicholson to a Pagan 
source, though at the same time he identifies it with the 
token of the covenant of the rainbow, mentioned in 
Genesis 
u The mediaeval knights,” he writes, “ seem to have known nothing 
of the origin or meaning of the oath by the peacock or pheasant, there 
is therefore the more reason for believing it to have been traditional 
and imported. Its incongruous combination also with vows to God 
and the Virgin seems to show that it was a Pagan oath Christianized in 
outward form by the adspersion of holy words. From it as an example, 
and when birds were divided into noble and common, and taken as 
heraldic devices, other similar oaths would follow. But these were the 
oaths of particular persons, and, as in the case of the swan, oaths by 
one’s ancestral honour, that by the peacock was universal among the 
nobly horn. I conjecture then, and believe, that the oath by the 
peacock, and that by the pheasant, were variants of one and the same 
oath, the irid-coloured pheasant being the representative of the peacock 
where peacocks were scarce or unknown, and both of them the emblems 
or representatives of the covenant how in the clouds. The bringing of 
the bird alive, or dressed in its feathers, the great solemnity of the 
oath, the fidelity to it that was meant to he thus ensured, and perhaps 
the taking of it by many or with many, as though entering into a 
compact or covenant, are all further circumstances tending to cor¬ 
roborate this view.” (Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. iii. p. 565.) 
Dr. Nicholson explains the connexion between Iris 
and the,peacock as arising from the fact that Iris was 
the attendant on Juno. . When the peacock became 
known, her place was taken by that bird. Be this as it 
may, the oath 'thus taken was considered most binding. 
In 1458, Philip 1 e Bon, Duke of Burgundy, vowed, “ Sur 
le faisan,” to go to the deliverance of Constantinople, 
which had recently fallen into the hands of the Turks. 
The Pheasant was apparently plentiful in England. 
Though not preserved in the modern sense of pheasant 
the word, it was the quarry pursued by the 
goshawk, and was protected accordingly. 
The Pheasant is repeatedly mentioned in the old 
