Part 13 (1/2)

From the ”Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais” of M. Viollet-Leduc.]

From the establishment of the Franks in Gaul down to the fifteenth century inclusive, there were but two meals a day; people dined at ten o'clock in the morning, and supped at four in the afternoon. In the sixteenth century they put back dinner one hour and supper three hours, to which many people objected. Hence the old proverb:--

”Lever a six, diner a dix, Souper a six, coucher a dix, Fait vivre l'homme dix fois dix.”

(”To rise at six, dine at ten, Sup at six, to bed at ten, Makes man live ten times ten.”)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 131.--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Tonnerre.]

Hunting.

Venery and Hawking.--Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.--Gaston Phoebus and his Book.--The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.--Sporting Societies and Brotherhoods.--Sporting Kings: Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.--Treatise on Venery.--Sporting Popes.--Origin of Hawking.--Training Birds.--Hawking Retinues.--Book of King Modus.--Technical Terms used in Hawking.--Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.--Fowling.

By the general term hunting is included the three distinct branches of an art, or it may be called a science, which dates its origin from the earliest times, but which was particularly esteemed in the Middle Ages, and was especially cultivated in the glorious days of chivalry.

_Venery_, which is the earliest, is defined by M. Elzear Blaze as ”the science of snaring, taking, or killing one particular animal from amongst a herd.” _Hawking_ came next. This was not only the art of hunting with the falcon, but that of training birds of prey to hunt feathered game.

Lastly, _l'oisellerie_ (fowling), which, according to the author of several well-known works on the subject we are discussing, had originally no other object than that of protecting the crops and fruits from birds and other animals whose nature it was to feed on them.

Venery will be first considered. Sportsmen always pride themselves in placing Xenophon, the general, philosopher, and historian, at the head of sporting writers, although his treatise on the chase (translated from the Greek into Latin under the t.i.tle of ”De Venatione”), which gives excellent advice respecting the training of dogs, only speaks of traps and nets for capturing wild animals. Amongst the Greeks Arrian and Oppian, and amongst the Romans, Gratius Faliscus and Nemesia.n.u.s, wrote on the same subject.

Their works, however, except in a few isolated or scattered pa.s.sages, do not contain anything about venery properly so called, and the first historical information on the subject is to be found in the records of the seventh century.

Long after that period, however, they still hunted, as it were, at random, attacking the first animal they met. The sports of Charlemagne, for instance, were almost always of this description. On some occasions they killed animals of all sorts by thousands, after having tracked and driven them into an enclosure composed of cloths or nets.

This ill.u.s.trious Emperor, although usually at war in all parts of Europe, never missed an opportunity of hunting: so much so that it might be said that he rested himself by galloping through the forests. He was on these occasions not only followed by a large number of huntsmen and attendants of his household, but he was accompanied by his wife and daughters, mounted on magnificent coursers, and surrounded by a numerous and elegant court, who vied with each other in displaying their skill and courage in attacking the fiercest animals.

It is even stated that Aix-la-Chapelle owes its origin to a hunting adventure of Charlemagne. The Emperor one day while chasing a stag required to cross a brook which came in his path, but immediately his horse had set his foot in the water he pulled it out again and began to limp as if it were hurt. His n.o.ble rider dismounted, and on feeling the foot found it was quite hot. This induced him to put his hand into the water, which he found to be almost boiling. On that very spot therefore he caused a chapel to be erected, in the shape of a horse's hoof. The town was afterwards built, and to this day the spring of hot mineral water is enclosed under a rotunda, the shape of which reminds one of the old legend of Charlemagne and his horse.

The sons of Charlemagne also held hunting in much esteem, and by degrees the art of venery was introduced and carried to great perfection. It was not, however, until the end of the thirteenth century that an anonymous author conceived the idea of writing its princ.i.p.al precepts in an instructive poem, called ”Le Dict de la Chace du Cerf.” In 1328 another anonymous writer composed the ”Livre du Roy Modus,” which contains the rules for hunting all furred animals, from the stag to the hare. Then followed other poets and writers of French prose, such as Gace de la Vigne (1359), Gaston Phoebus (1387), and Hardouin, lord of Fontaine-Guerin (1394). None of these, however, wrote exclusively on venery, but described the different sports known in their day. Towards 1340, Alphonse XI., king of Castile, caused a book on hunting to be compiled for his use; but it was not so popular as the instruction of Gaston Phoebus (Fig. 132). If hunting with hounds is known everywhere by the French name of the chase, it is because the honour of having organized it into a system, if not of having originated it, is due to the early French sporting authors, who were able to form a code of rules for it. This also accounts for so many of the technical terms now in use in venery being of French origin, as they are no others than those adopted by these ancient authors, whose works, so to speak, have perpetuated them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 132.--Gaston Phoebus teaching the Art of Venery.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of ”Phoebus and his Staff for Hunting Wild Animals and Birds of Prey” (Ma.n.u.script, Fifteenth Century, National Library of Paris)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 133.--”How to carry a Cloth to approach Beasts.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Ma.n.u.script of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

The curious miniatures which accompany the text in the original ma.n.u.script of Gaston Phoebus, and which have been reproduced in nearly all the ancient copies of this celebrated ma.n.u.script, give most distinct and graphic ideas of the various modes of hunting. We find, for instance, that the use of an artificial cow for approaching wild-fowl was understood at that time, the only difference being that a model was used more like a horse than a cow (Fig. 133); we also see sportsmen shooting at bears, wild boars, stags, and such live animals with arrows having sharp iron points, intended to enter deep into the flesh, notwithstanding the thickness of the fur and the creature's hard skin. In the case of the hare, however, the missile had a heavy, ma.s.sive end, probably made of lead, which stunned him without piercing his body (Fig. 134). In other cases the sportsman is represented with a crossbow seated in a cart, all covered up with boughs, by which plan he was supposed to approach the prey without alarming it any more than a swinging branch would do (Fig. 135).

Gaston Phoebus is known to have been one of the bravest knights of his time; and, after fighting, he considered hunting as his greatest delight.

Somewhat ingenuously he writes of himself as a hunter, ”that he doubts having any superior.” Like all his contemporaries, he is eloquent as to the moral effect of his favourite pastime. ”By hunting,” he says, ”one avoids the sin of indolence; and, according to our faith, he who avoids the seven mortal sins will be saved; therefore the good sportsman will be saved.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 134.--”How to allure the Hare.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Ma.n.u.script of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

From the earliest ages sportsmen placed themselves under the protection of some special deity. Among the Greeks and Romans it was Diana and Phoebe.

The Gauls, who had adopted the greater number of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of Rome, invoked the moon when they sallied forth to war or to the chase; but, as soon as they penetrated the sacred obscurity of the forests, they appealed more particularly to the G.o.ddess _Ardhuina_, whose name, of unknown origin, has probably since been applied to the immense well-stocked forests of Ardenne or Ardennes. They erected in the depths of the woods monstrous stone figures in honour of this G.o.ddess, such as the heads of stags on the bodies of men or women; and, to propitiate her during the chase, they hung round these idols the feet, the skins, and the horns of the beasts they killed. Cernunnos, who was always represented with a human head surmounted by stags' horns, had an altar even in Lutetia, which was, no doubt, in consequence of the great woods which skirted the banks of the Seine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 135.--”How to take a Cart to allure Beasts.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Ma.n.u.script of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

The Gallic Cernunnos, which we also find among the Romans, since Ovid mentions the votary stags' horns, continued to be wors.h.i.+pped to a certain extent after the establishment of the Christian religion. In the fifth century, Germain, an intrepid hunter, who afterwards became Bishop of Auxerre, possessed not far from his residence an oak of enormous diameter, a thorough Cernunnos, which he hung with the skins and other portions of animals he had killed in the chase. In some countries, where the Cernunnos remained an object of veneration, everybody bedecked it in the same way.

The largest oak to be found in the district was chosen on which to suspend the trophies both of warriors and of hunters; and, at a more recent period, sportsmen used to hang outside their doors stags' heads, boars'