Callow meant a bird whose feathers were still growing and was untested on the wing. Fed-up referred to a falcon which had been given a full-ration of food. At which point the bird would lose interest in hunting or doing anything. Haggard meant a bird that was older and captured in mature plumage.
If you are lucky enough to live in a Mews, you are living in a building in which falconers kept their birds of prey during the moulting period, which could house several hundred birds, because mews comes from the French muer meaning to moult. Other terms, including hoodwink, lure, under the thumb, cadging, gorge, old codger and even mantelpiece all have their origins in medieval falconry.
That
falconry terms have come to be so much part of our language, is a measure of
how important it was in medieval times. An afternoon’s entertainment for young
girls was to bet on whose merlin could catch the most larks, and the greatest
spectacular in medieval times was thought to be the Haut Vol ‘the great
flight’, when the quarry bird such as a kite, raven, crane or heron climbed
high into the air and the bird of prey tried to attack it from above, resulting
in a great aerial battles of life and death.
Nearly
everyone in the Middle Ages, rich or poor, would have kept a bird of prey, both
for entertainment and for hunting for meat. If you’d gone shopping back then, you
wouldn’t have seen people taking their dogs for a walk in the towns, but their
falcons or hawks instead. This was because birds of prey were often caught from
the wild and released again at the end of the season, so every year, women and
men would have been seen walking around the towns with birds on their arms to man or tame them. It was even
recommended that women took their birds to church. Can you imagine the noise
and mess that created, but I bet they didn’t have trouble with pigeons in the
church towers in those days.
Each falcon bore on its leg a tiny silver tablet giving its owner’s mark, and a man known as the ‘guardian of the lost’ would set up his tent on a rise with a banner flying above it so that in the vast camp he could easily be seen. Any owner seeking a lost bird would go to him, and any man finding a lost falcon would take it to the guardian. An early example of a lost property office!
Some people think that the famous Boke of St Albans which lists the birds for each social rank – Eagle
for an Emperor… A Merlyon for a lady
– was a record of who was permitted to keep each type of falcon. In fact a
number of the birds listed were never used in falconry, so it would appear that
was written more as a satire comparing the temperaments, symbolism and characteristics
of birds of prey to the different classes of people.
One last thought, if you were a royal falconer and were careless enough to lose your master’s valuable bird of prey, the weight of the bird could be cut from your living flesh – makes docking a man’s wages look positively benevolent, doesn’t it?
(Old Codger? - that's a corruption of cadge, the wooden frame on which the falcons perched and which was carried out into the field by a cadger, usually an old man. The cadger used to beg tips from the nobles as payment for this service.)
10 comments:
Ah, I can see, in that last bit, where we got our modern term "to cadge"! :-) What a fascinating post!
Wonderful! I did my PhD on medieval hunting (not hawking, which is an entirely different discipline) and there are similarly loads of words taken from hunting terminology. I didn't know about lost hawk office. I don't think there was an equivalent for dogs, but I suppose they are more likely to come back.
The Boke of St Albans does certainly have some satirical content (in the list of 'company terms' - compound nouns - for instance). But it is also a repository of information collected (and corrupted) over centuries, so it may as easily be error. It's a strange text of disputed provenance.
Thank you - fascinating stuff!
What a wonderful post! Thanks Karen...I've learned so much. And lovely pictures.
Wonderful post! I've been reading up on falconry lately, too. Have you happened across anything that indicates whether it is possible for a falcon to have more than one master at a time?
In the sense that a falcon would have to get used to be handled, fed, hooded and healed by the falconer, who would have to train them and get them fit before hunting, then in the field the bird would have to be willing to ride (all be it hooded) on the arm of the falconer's master or mistress who would released her, it would appear falcons would respond to more than one person. Even though it would be the falconer who would retrieve them from the kill. Certainly there are lots of accounts of where visitors would borrow a host's falcon for day.
King Frederick used to distribute his treasured birds among his favoured nobles to take home and look after during the molt - a favour they dreaded, as not only was it very expensive, but there was also the nightmare that one of the more valuable birds, like a gyrfalcon, would die and then they'd be faced with the cost of replacing it, never mind his wrath.
The old books on the subject do often suggest that master and servant should wear the same colour or use the same glove at the start of the season, and certainly the medieval falconers were advised to always dress the same when dealing with birds, so it maybe that was the key.
Thanks, Karen, that's really good information I can use!
Have just returned to re-read this lovely post. Thank you for all the information and details.
Well I didn't know any of that. Utterly fascinating, thank you. Off to tweet the link.
Brilliant post,really interesting
Post a Comment