10 
INTRODUCTION. 
We have here an allusion to the ancient method of 
“ breaking up ” a deer.* “ The fellow of this walk ” is the 
forester, to whom it was customary on such occasions to 
present a shoulder. Dame Juliana Berners, in her “Boke 
of St. Albans,” 1496, says,— 
“ And the right shoulder, wheresoever he be, 
Bere it to the foster , for that is fee.” 
And in Turbervile’s “Book of Hunting,” 1575, the 
distribution of the various parts of a deer is minutely 
described. 
The touching description of a wounded stag, in As You 
Like It , can scarcely escape notice. Alluding to “the 
melancholy Jaques,” one of the lords says,— 
“ To-day my lord of Amiens and myself 
Did steal behind him, as he lay along 
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood ; 
To the which place a poor sequestred stag, 
That from the hunters’ aim had ta’en a hurt, 
Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, 
The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans, 
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 
* “ We say the deer is ‘ broken up,' the fox and hare are 'cased.' ”—The Gentle¬ 
man s Recreation. 1686. 
From this ancient practice, too, is derived the phrase, “to eat humble pie," 
more correctly written " umble pie." This was a venison pasty, made of the 
umbles (heart, liver, and lungs), and always given to inferiors, and placed low 
down on the table when the squire feasted publicly in the hall. 
