# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Falconry

FALCONRY.
Modern England is once more rapidly assimilating her field sports to the nobler and more picturesque woodcraft of our feudal ancestors. A club of Falconers exists at this moment, near Ware,—the United Holland and English fraternity, known as the “Loo Hawking Club.” A hundred private mews, supported by gentlemen in every county of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with a regular trade in and interchange of falcons, broken and unbroken, foreign and domestic, as of old, indicate an enthusiastic desire to revive this, the cherished sport of chivalry and mediæval England. Well adapted, like archery, for extending the scanty range of open-air exercises in which women can appropriately indulge, both these graceful pastimes have been enthusiastically adopted by the sex, by which their permanence and popularity are secured. Falconry has been revived, too, amongst officers of the army, as a congenial recreation for the military caste. At Aldershott camp, the Curragh of Kildare, and in the Phœnix Park, Dublin, scarcely a day in the season passes by in which this sport may not be witnessed, accompanied with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance peculiarly its own.
It may be observed that no art or craft has more copiously lent itself to the figurative and proverbial language of our forefathers, than the sport now enlarged upon. Poets, from Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, down to those of modern date, have borrowed metaphors and illustrations from falconry. Such of us as are familiar with Shakespeare will easily recall a hundred instances of these sylvan technicalities, which cavaliers and high-born dames deemed indispensable to colloquial elegance. “A gentleman,” says Lady Juliana Berners, the sporting prioress of Sopwell Nunnery, writing four hundred years ago, “is known by his horse, his hawk, and his greyhound.” “Hist, Romeo! hist!—O, for a falconer’s voice, to lure this tassel gentle back again!” sighs Juliet after her lover’s enforced departure. Prince Hamlet also uses “a falconer’s voice,” when to his friend Marcellus’s hawking cry, “Hillo-ho-ho! my lord,” he responds—“Hiilo-ho, boy! come bird, come!” like a sportsman recalling a goshawk to his wrist. Let me now briefly explain these terms of art. Lure is a device imitating the body of a fowl, with the real wings of partridge, grouse, or drake, fastened to its sides, whereon the hawk, whilst training, should be constantly fed, the meat being tied to it, whirled round the falconer’s head, or thrown to a distance. The docile bird, anticipating food, swoops down from her loftiest pride of place, and is again easily placed upon her master’s fist. “Tassel gentle” means a sagacious, loving, well-conditioned male hawk, being a corruption of tiercel, he being a tierce, or one-third less than his mate. Nature has endowed the latter with superior size and strength, for on her devolves the entire care of the brood, to find sustenance for which is no trivial labour where game is few and far between. In “Othello,” we have Shakespeare again speaking in the technicalities of this ancient sport, which he loved so well—the Moor thus apostrophising his hapless Desdemona—
E’en though her jesseIf I do prove her haggard, E’en though her jesses were my dear heartstrings, I’ll whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey on fortune.
Haggard, is a hawk wild and stubborn, which no caresses can reclaim. Jesses are the short straps fastened to a falcon’s legs, by which she is retained on the wrist.
The Lady Juliana Berners—a sort of celibate Di Vernon in her day, who loved perhaps a high mettled falcon better than her breviary—was a lady of great beauty and mental endowments. Some of you have looked into her “Boke of St. Alban’s,” printed in Westminster Abbey by Wynkyn de Worde, and esteemed on that account by Frognall Dibdin’s disciples to be worth exactly its own weight in sovereigns: perhaps “fifty or so” might “turn the scale of its avoidupois.” My lady regarded falconry as a sport for princes, and a passionate love of it the sure criterion of gentle birth. Indeed, how many of our ancient worthies, in their portraits adorning the ancestral halls of Britain, are represented holding a hooded falcon on the wrist. She enumerates the various species of hawk specially assigned to different sportsmen according to their degrees of rank. Thus, the falcon gentle is for a prince, a falcon of the rock for a duke, a peregrine for an earl, a goshawk for a poor man, a musket for the holy water clerk, a kestril for a knave, and last, not least, the bold, diminutive merlin for a lady.
For the ladies of old—and in modern days likewise—were and are passionate amateurs of this fascinating out-of-door pastime. When travelling, from castle to castle in a round of fashionable visits, the beautiful little merlin, equipped with embroidered jesses and silver bells, was never off their wrist. Sorry am I to add they carried them to church also, and many an edict is on record, launched by successive ecclesiastical councils, against the heathenish custom of perching hawks upon the edges of pews, where the sound of their ​jingling bells sacrilegiously intermingled with that rung out at the elevation of the Host.
In the hawking-field, the obsequious cavalier felt a pride and pleasure in waiting upon these fair dames, and by every gallant assiduity to enhance the pleasure of their flights.
A falconer Henry is when Emma hawks,
With her of tiercels and of lures he talks.
High on her wrist the tow’ring merlin stands,
Practised to rise and stoop at her commands;
And when obedient now the bird has flown,
And headlong plucked the trembling quary down,
Her Henry hastens to relieve the fair,
And with the honor’d feather decks her hair;
Yet still, as from the sportive field he goes,
His plaintive sighs reveal a lover’s woes,
And by his inward sorrow is expressed,
A nobler game pursued than bird or beast.
Amongst the English monarchs who delighted in hawking, the most enthusiastic was James I. Many warrants are extant amongst the State Papers for compelling the owners and cultivators of land around his hunting-seats, to open the fences and plough all arable fields in broad furrows, that his and prince Henry’s necks might not be endangered in their headlong career, galloping after his soaring hawks. His royal continental cousins, well knowing his dominant taste, were at times completely triumphant in the most important State business by timely gifts of a cast or two of high-bred, highly-trained falcons. “The king,” writes my lord treasurer, in an unedited State Paper now before me, “means this day to be at Newmarket, though his physicians and most about him are against the journey: but he is so desirous to see certain new hawks fly that he would not be stayed. Here is a Monsieur, come from the French king, with a present of fifteen or sixteen casts of hawks, some ten or twelve horses, and as many setting dogs. He made his entry very magnificently with all this retinue in excellent good order, and with store of torch-light, which gave the more lustre to all this long show, and to his own bravery, being indeed very rich and gallant. His hawks fly at anything, kites, crows, pies, or whatsoever comes in the way. He is to tarry until he hath instructed our men in this kind of falconry, which had not need be long, being so costly, for he and his train stand the King in five-and-twenty pounds a-day. I have forgotten his name, though he be a baron, but the best reputation he hath is to be a good falconer.”
The cost of entertaining these gallant woodsmen soon began to tell unpleasantly upon James’s at all times slender exchequer; so, thinking he paid somewhat dear for his whistle, he directs the Secretary of State, who was also Prime Minister of his wood-craft, to take measures for their dismissal. “Go,” he writes to Sir Anthony Pell, his own chief falconer, “and inform yourself of him, or receive directions how to find out the number of inferior falconers that are fit to receive gold chains, being of the train of this Frenchman, and about what value the chains have been that any of our men received, that have carried hawks and dogs to the French King.”
The baron-falconer having become quite a pet with all the court ladies who loved to bear a hawk upon their wrists, is in no hurry to re-cross the Channel, seeing which, his Majesty—whose falconers have now acquired all the art and mystery of the French mode of hawking—again addresses Mr. Secretary Conway, to move my Lord Cecil in the matter. “His Majesty hath commanded me to signify unto your lordship,” writes the Secretary, “that he thinks it high time to deliver himself from the great burden of the noble falconers; and therefore desires your lordship to make expedition with the presents and jewels specified in the note endorsed, to be furnished by Mr. Heriot, his jeweller, and therefore prays your lordship to give order for his picture, and the case garnished with diamonds, value eight hundred or a thousand pounds.”
Falconers rejoice in a language peculiarly their own—wholly incomprehensible to the uninitiated, which is what they specially desire: thus, in their dialect, a nestling, or young hawk, is an eyass (in French, nyasse), i.e., a young bird from the nest, unfledged. Mrs. Ford wittily terms her little page “my eyass-musket,” i.e., young sparrow-hawk.
Eyasses, of whatever species—whether goshawk, peregrine, hobby, launier, small and valiant merlin, or sparrow-hawk—are best for a tyro to try his hand upon, because young and manageable,—like himself, we hope. They may be procured by making friends with any gamekeeper who has a large extent of woodland in the vicinity of the trainer’s residence. In this case, the enthusiastic youngster will do best if he leave the birds with the old ones as long as possible; if procured from a distance, on the contrary, they should be taken from the nest when quite callow, and before the feathers are enough grown to be in danger of being broken on the journey, the rapidity and perfection of a falcon’s flight, be she trained or wild, depending on the preservation of her pinions.
The little birds—in this state not much larger than a house-sparrow, and covered with milk-white down, but even now looking formidable by their large, fierce, stern eyes, and sharp, aquiline beaks—should be tended with unremitting assiduity. Instead of caging them within-doors, as some do foolishly, place them on fresh clean barley-straw in a large hamper, firmly fixed on its side about breast-high, amongst the branches of some convenient tree, in a retired, sheltered situation. The hamper lid may be so supported, on a level with the straw, as to form a dining-room for your eyasses to come out upon when they are fed. This is an interesting process—interesting to the lad in charge, doubly interesting to the birds, which have, perhaps, journeyed far and are sharp-set. Expecting their arrival, he will not fail to have in readiness a freshly-killed pigeon, rook, or two or three blackbirds: the brains, heart, and entrails of which they are quite au fait in extracting, and appear to enjoy mightily. Failing of these, a nice juicy, raw cut of fresh ​beef, without skin or fat, will supply their place. With a shout—“Hoo-hoo! ha, ha, ha!”—and a shriek of the hawking-whistle, constantly hanging at your button-hole at feeding-time, and subsequently in the field, present a morsel about the size of a small horse-bean to each of the greedy little pensioners in succession, till they cease altogether their shrill, chirping screams, and will receive no more. Thrice or four times in the day, but always at unvarying hours, from sun-rise to sun-down, the interesting process should be repeated. Leave no meat in the hamper, which should be kept scrupulously clean, and the eyasses are never to be handled. Hawks do not drink, the blood and juices of their flesh diet being all that nature requires, but they intensely enjoy a bath in hot weather. Place them gently on the brink of a shallow sandy spot in some small crystal brook, and they will rush in, splashing vigorously until wet as a fish, and then sunning and pluming themselves upon the grassy bank. If no brook lies convenient, a shallow earthen pan, about thirty inches in diameter, and four inches deep, nearly filled with pure water, will serve. But a bath of some kind cannot be dispensed with. They sicken without it.
By pursuing this treatment, your hawks, which are by nature exceedingly intelligent, and, when subdued, fond of human society, speedily learn to challenge, the moment they hear the whistle and voice of their keeper. This they do by uttering a loud, chirping note, and as soon as their pinions are grown they will leave their hamper at their master’s well-known call, and, flying towards him, perch upon his head, arms, and shoulders, eager for the expected meal. Give to each by times an oft-repeated fancy name—“Jessie,” “Death,” “Beauty,” &c., are appropriate. Shakespeare has “Old Joan”:—“In sooth, my lord, the wind was very high, and, ten to one, ‘Old Joan’ had not gone out,”—i. e., had refused to fly. They hate a breezy day. The growth of eyasses is rapid: they will soon desert the basket entirely, perching on the branches of adjacent trees and roofs of buildings, sometimes extending their flights to a considerable distance; but, if fed constantly at the same spot, and at the same hour, they will certainly return. At this time only, leaden bells, covered with soft leather, are by some falconers attached to their legs in addition to the usual sonorous musical ones formed of silver bell-metal, and thus hampered they may be confidently left to their own pleasure and devices. Feeding times are now reduced to twice a day, and the meat need be no longer carved for them. Cast down to each a fresh blackbird, rook, jackdaw, starling, &c., or slice of fresh beef and mutton, throwing yourself on the greensward in the midst of your plumed favourites, and cheering them to the onslaught with voice, whistle, and swinging-lure, till you waken the echoes from rock, hill, and valley. The lure consists of four jackdaws’ wings, placed two and two, face to face, firmly united at their butts, so as to resemble a bird’s pinions as they appear when extended in flight; a couple of slight thongs, three or four inches long, are fastened to the upper and lower surface, to which meat can be tied in training, and a looped strap of three feet enables the hawker to whirl it round his head as he cheers and shouts to his falcon, when he calls her from the perch a long distance off, or desires to make her descend from her pride of place, invisible amongst the clouds. Garnished with meat on both sides, up goes the lure, and almost before it descends to the ground, the falcon has seized it, and with cowering wings makes it her prey. The falconer must bear in mind that appetite—appetite—is the chief bond of union and obedience between him and his favourite, however noble and generous the race to which she belongs. A very moderate meal, therefore, if any, should be given on the morning a falcon is taken to the field. If full-fed, she probably will take perch in some tree or rocky ledge—alike deaf and insensible to voice, whistle, and lure. Hawk with Trappings.And now it is that the utility of her bells becomes manifest, for, although out of sight, each movement gives them sound. Should she also, after killing her game beyond the falconer’s ken, attempt to plume—i. e., feed upon it amongst the tall fern or stubble—every movement of her talons reveals her whereabouts with a silver sound.
a. Hawk’s Leg, with Jesse attached. b. Jesse (of dog’s skin). c. Leash and Swivel. d. Beevit. e. Lure.
And thus having sufficiently dwelt on all essential preliminaries, we proceed to the main business of training. The sportsman begins by fitting her with jesses, hood, bewits, and bells, the use of which has been already explained. She must be carried continually on the fist for a certain period, and if stubborn and disposed to bate, i. e., to struggle to get away, the old falconers plunged her head into cold water. I can recommend a better mode of curing this shyness, natural to all her species. It is to carry her day by day to the village smithy, where, perched upon your hawking-glove, she will have to endure the bustling concourse, the noise, and clouds of fiery sparks flying everywhere about. It is also well to set up a perch and leave her there for a brief period. Thus, by assiduity and watching, she is brought to submit to have her head covered with the hood—in which, be it remarked, she will afterwards greatly delight, as a feeding signal. This troublesome employment, fatiguing to both trainer and bird, continues for a week at least; but it rarely happens but at the end of this, her necessities, and the privation of light, make her lose all idea of liberty, and tame down her natural wildness. The master judges of his success when her head can be covered without resistance, and when, uncovered, the meat presented is seized and eaten with avidity and contentedly. The repetition of these lessons by degrees ensures success. Her wants being the chief principle of dependence, it is endeavoured to increase her appetite by giving little balls of flannel and feathers, which are greedily swallowed. Having thus excited the appetite, care is taken to satisfy it, and thus gratitude attaches the bird to her tormentor.
When the first lessons have thus succeeded, and the falcon shows signs of docility, she is carried out upon some green, the head uncovered, and by tempting her with food at intervals, she is taught to jump upon the fist and continue there. It is now necessary to study the character of the bird; to speak frequently to her if she be inattentive to the voice, to stint the food of such as do not come kindly or readily to the lure, and to keep her watching, if not sufficiently familiar.
When the docility and familiarity of the bird are sufficiently confirmed on the green, she is then carried into the open fields, but still kept fast by a string about twenty yards long. She is then unhooded as before, and the falconer standing some paces off shows her the lure; when she flies upon it, she is permitted to take a large morsel of the food tied thereon. She is, lastly, shown the game itself, alive but tame, which she is designed to pursue. After having seized this several times with her string, she is left entirely at liberty, and carried out for the purpose of pursuing that which is wild. At that she flies with fierceness; and having seized or killed it, she is brought back by the voice and lure.
Let us here describe the hood above spoken of. It is a head-piece formed of leather and crimson velvet, surmounted by a stem, bearing aloft a plume of particoloured feathers. The hood is very becoming and ornamental to the brave bird, and an essential aid to the falconer in training: being put off and on at pleasure, its properties as a restraint are very great. Wearing this, the hawk, whether at home or abroad, can be kept perfectly quiet; without it, our control over her wild and timorous disposition is very limited. Varvels are silver rings, sometimes attached to the ends of the jesses, bearing the owner’s name, crest, and address.
Modern falconers encourage or call the attention of their hawks to the springing quarry by some distinct cry, the usual modern one being “Hoo-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Upon killing, the cry is “Whoop!” and that to give notice to the field upon viewing a lost hawk, “Upho!”
Hawking at the brook—i. e., at waterfowl, such as ducks, teal, widgeon, &c.—was one of that royal Nimrod James the First’s prime diversions, so much so indeed that my MS. describes him often rising abruptly from the council-table, saying “that he had worked long enough, and would fain go see his hawk fly a mallard at the brook.” More than ​once, when confined to his bed with the gout, he insists upon being carried out in a litter for the same purpose.
The sport of brook-hawking necessarily belongs to an aquatic district, where rivers, meres, ponds, &c., are frequent, the game being ducks, teal, widgeon, &c. To train your hawk for this sport, procure three or four tame ducks of the same colour as the wild one, and throw her up one of these daily for as many days. When she brings them down, suffer her to plume them at her leisure, giving her the heads and necks for her reward; then get several more which, on trial, you know to be good flyers, and send one of them with a servant before you to a pond surrounded with bushes, where he is to be hid till your arrival. On coming to the same place, strike the bushes with your pole, as a signal for your servant to cast the duck into the air, but without discovering himself. The hawk being sharp-set will swoop directly after her, and bring her down in an instant, selecting the mallard “young and gay, whose green and azure brighten in the sun.” She is now completely made, and after a few more similar lessons you may boldly enter your falcon at wild game. Creep as near as possible to the pond or marsh, beating the bushes or hedges to raise the fowls. As soon as she brings one of them down, let her plume and amuse herself with it, and then reward her as usual.
In partridge hawking, when the game rises, the falcon will swoop down upon it with wonderful velocity, and either kill at its first flight, or force it to take refuge in a bush or hedge. In the latter case the hawk makes her point, that is, rises perpendicularly in the air, and hangs with quivering wings over the spot where the partridge dropped into cover. The falconer must be on horseback, provided with a steady pointer and one or two spaniels under good command. When a bird is marked down, or pointed by the dog, the hawk is to be unhooded and cast off (thrown from the fist). She will wheel in airy circles around her master, and if of a good race, mount to a considerable height, the higher the better. If she ranges at too great a distance, make her to incline inwards by the voice and lure.
The gyr falcon was the ancient falconer’s prime favourite—a present, as already observed, meet to be offered to the monarch on his throne. She is the boldest, the most perfect winged, and, in proportion to her weight, the strongest both for action and endurance of all the feathered tribe. Dwelling in inclement Iceland, subjected to violent winds, heavy snows, and protracted rains, and often compelled to endure severe abstinence in a locality where there is no tree, hardly even a bush, for the shelter of a bird, and requiring at other times to range for several hundred miles before she can procure a meal either for herself or her young, the gyr falcon has indeed a very laborious life, which it bravely upholds. The weight of a female Icelander is about three and a half pounds; its length from bill to tail about twenty-three inches; the spread of its wings above four feet. Fine stuffed specimens may be seen in the British Museum. She is excellent for hawking at the heron.
Lo! at his siege, the hern,
Upon the bank of some small purling brook,
Observant stands, to take his scaly prize,
Himself another’s game. For mark, behind,
The wily falconer creeps; and on his fist
Th’ unhooded falcon sits: with eager eyes
She meditates her prey, and, in her wild
Conceit, already plumes the dying bird.
The falcon hovering flies,
Balanc’d in air, and confidently bold,
Hangs o’er him like a cloud; then aims her blow Full at his destined head. The watchful hern Shoots from her like a blazing meteor swift.
Observe th’ attentive crowd; all hearts are fixed
On this important war. The vulgar and the great,
Equally happy now, with freedom share
The common joy. The shepherd-boy forgets
His bleating care; the labouring hind lets fall
His grain unsown; in transport lost, he robs
Th’ expectant furrow; and, in wild amaze,
The gazing village point their eyes to heaven.
The Loo Hawking Club wear appropriate uniform, “the Lincoln green,” and those beautiful, slender, black feathers found at the back of a mature heron’s neck, in their caps, set in a jewelled aigrette. The heron’s plume, as most people know, has ever been the distinguished symbol of knighthood, and of noble and princely rank. To gain this much coveted falconer’s trophy, the members of the United Loo Hawking Club gallop as recklessly (what more need be said?) as in a fox hunt after Reynard’s brush.
These are expensive joys, fit for the great,
Of large domains possessed. Enough for me
To boast the gentle spar-hawk on my fist,
To fly the partridge from the bristly field,
Retrieve the covey with my busy train,
Or, with my soaring hobby, dare the lark.
Daring larks is a minor species of falconry. The hawk cast off the fist hovers a few feet above the falconer’s head, whilst he quarters any likely field. The larks feeding there, terrified at the sight of their ancient enemy, lie on the ground close as stones. The sportsman, carrying in his hand a little contrivance like the angler’s landing-net, drops it over any number of larks he pleases, the birds submitting to be thus captured, rather than encounter the swoop of the hawk the moment they take wing, and terrified by her tinkling bells.
* ↑ “Mew” means a building where hawks are generally kept, but more especially during the moulting season and in cold weather. During fine weather they do best and look best ranged in line, each with perch and tether upon a smooth-shaven velvet lawn. The King’s Mews at Charing Cross, though latterly used as stables, and also for keeping a very large portion of valuable Public Records in—to the great advantage of the legion of the genus Rodentia, that burrowed in them—were built originally for housing the royal falcons, which remained there for ages.
* ↑ Dutch falconers, from the village of Falconswaerd, near Bois le Duc, which is a colony of these old-world sportsmen, visit England every season, bringing for sale a supply of ready-trained falcons.
* ↑ At the Manchester Exhibition was a portrait, by Titian, of a Duke of Milan, holding the spar-hawk on his fist. The painter greatly errs in giving him a falcon beneath his rank.
* ↑ “Musket,” the male sparrow, or spar-hawk, a very game bird, of extremely elegant form, and very rapid wing. Hand firearms were quaintly named after this sporting hawk, allusive to the swiftness of the missile they discharge.
* ↑ “Knave,” a serving-man.
* ↑ A brace.
* ↑ To this diverse training Hamlet alludes in the passage—“Let us to it like French falconers—fly at anything we see.”
* ↑ State Papers.
* ↑ See “Fortunes of Nigel.”
* ↑ “An aiery of children, little eyasses.”—“Hamlet.” Aiery, a hawk’s nest.
* ↑ The place where he stands fishing.
* ↑ About the year 1844, there was a wonderful hawk, belonging to the Loo United Hawking Club, named Bulldog, which generally took his heron at the third stoop—a feat unsurpassed. Two falcons, named Sultan and De Ruyter, in their third year, killed, at Hockwold, Norfolk, and at Loo, fifty-four herons; and subsequently, fifty-seven herons the same year. This Club consisted of about fifty members, under the immediate patronage of the King of Holland, with His Royal Highness the Prince Alexander of Holland at its head. It had many English subscribers, and those particularly zealous in originating it are the Duke of Leeds, the Lord Berners, Hon. Charles Wortley, and Mr. Gage Earle Freeman, Premier Falconer of Britain.
* ↑ Even the largest game, when unsuccessfully chased into covert by a falcon, will almost suffer itself to be trodden on, rather than rise to the enemy that soars remorselessly overhead, awaiting till it is sprung. So Shakespeare, who was an adept in hawking, and every sylvan sport,— “The proudest he that holds up Lancaster, Dares stir a wing, if Warwick shake his bells.” “Henry VI.,” part iii., act i., sc. 1.