HAWKING, the exercise of taking wild-fowl by means of hawks. The method of reclaiming, manning, and bringing up a hawk to this exercise, is calle à falconry.

There are only two countries in the world where we have any evidence that the exercise of hawking was practised in ancient times. These are Thrace and Britain. In the former it was pursued merely as the diversion of a particular district, if we may believe Pliny, whose account is rendered obscure by the indistinctness of his own ideas of the matter. The originaI Britons, with a fondness for the exercise of hunting, had also a taste for that of hawking; and every chief amongst them maintained a considerable number of birds for that sport. To the Romans this diversion was scarcely known in the days of Vespasian, yet it was introduced immediately afterwards. Most probably they adopted it from the Britons; but we know certainly that they greatly improved it. In this state it appears amongst the Roman Britons in the sixth century. Gildas, in a remarkable passage in his first epistle, speaks of Maglocunus, on his relinquishing the sphere of ambition, and taking refuge in a monastery; and proverbially compares him to a dove, which hastens away at the noisy approach of the dogs, and with various turns and windings takes her flight from the talons of the hawk.

In after times, hawking was the principal amusement of the English. A person of rank scarcely stirred out without his hawk on his hand; and in old paintings this is the criterion of nobility. Harold, afterwards king of England, when he went on a most important embassy into Normandy, is painted embarking with a bird on his hand, and a dog under his arm; and in an ancient picture of the nuptials of Henry VI. a nobleman is represented in much the same manner. In those days, “it was thought sufficient for noblemen to winde their horn, and to carry their hawk fair, and leave study and learning to the children of mean people.” The former were the accomplishments of the times. Spenser makes his gallant Sir Tristram boast,

Ne is there hawk which mantleth her on pearch, Whether high tow’ring, or accoasting low, But I the measure of her flight doe search, And all her prey, and all her diet know.

In short, this diversion was, amongst the old English, the pride of the rich, and the privilege of the poor. No rank of men seems to have been excluded from the amusement. We learn from the book of St Alban’s, that every degree had its peculiar hawk, from the emperor down to the holy-water clerk. Vast was the expense which sometimes attended this sport. In the reign of James I. Sir Thomas Monson is said to have given L. 1000 for a cast of hawks. We need not wonder then at the rigour of the laws tending to preserve a pleasure which was carried to such an extravagant pitch. In the 34th of Edward III. it was made felony to steal a hawk; and to take its eggs, even in a person’s own ground, was punishable with imprisonment for a year and a day, besides a fine at the king’s pleasure. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the imprisonment was reduced to three months, but the offender was to find security for his good behaviour for seven years, or he in prison till he did so. Such then was the enviable state of the times of old England. During the whole day the gentry were given to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; in the evening, they celebrated their exploits with the most abandoned and brutish sottishness; and the inferior ranks of people, by the most unjust and arbitrary laws, were made liable to capital punishments, to fines, and loss of liberty, for destroying the most destructive of the feathered tribe. The love of game-laws runs in the blood of our territorial aristocracy; it has descended to them from very ancient times, and forms part of their inheritance.

According to Olearius, the diversion of hawking is more followed by the Tartars and Persians than ever it was in any part of Europe. “Il n’y avoit point de hutte,” says he, “qui n’eust son aigle ou son faucon.”

The falcons or hawks which were in use in these kingdoms are now found to breed in Wales, and in Scotland and its isles. The peregrine falcon inhabits the rocks of Caernarvonshire. The same species, with the gyrfalcon, [7:11:174]the gentil, and the goshawk, are found in Scotland, and the lanner in Ireland. But we may here notice, that the Norwegian breed were, in old times, in high esteem in England, and were thought bribes worthy a king. Jeof-frey Fitzpierre gave two good Norway hawks to King John, to obtain for his friend the liberty of exporting a hundredweight of cheese; and Nicholas the Dane stipulated to give the king a hawk every time he came into England, that he might have liberty to traffic throughout the king’s dominions. Hawks were also made the tenures by which some of the nobility held their estates from the crown. Thus Sir John Stanley had a grant of the Isle of Man from Henry IV. to be held of the king, his heirs, and successors, by homage and the service of two falcons, payable on the day of his or their coronation. And Philip de Hastang held his manor of Combertoun, in Cambridgeshire, by the service of keeping the king’s falcons.

Hawking, though an exercise now much disused, does yet furnish a great variety of significant terms, which still obtain in our language. Thus, the parts of a hawk have their proper names. The legs, from the thigh to the foot, are called arms ; the toes, the petty singles ; and the claws, the pounces. The wings are called the sails ; the long feathers of the wings, the beams; the two longest, the principal feathers ; and those next thereto, the flags. The tail is called the train; the breast feathers, the mails; and those behind the thigh, the pendant feathers. When the feathers are not yet full grown, the falcon is said to be unsummed ; when they are complete, it is summed. The craw, or crop, is called the gorge ; the pipe next the fundament, where the faeces are drawn down, is called the pannel ; the slimy substance lying in the pannel is called the glut; the upper and crooked part of the bill is called the beak ; the nether part, the clap ; the yellow part between the beak and the eyes, the sear or sere ; the two small holes therein, the nares.

As to the furniture, the leathers, with bells buttoned on the legs, are called bewits ; the leathern thong by which the falconer holds the hawk, is called the lease or leash ; the little straps, by which the lease is fastened to the legs, jesses ; and a line or packthread fastened to the lease, in disciplining the bird, a creance. A cover for the head, to keep the falcon in the dark, is called a hood ; and a large wide hood, open behind, to be worn at first, is called a rufter hood. To draw the strings, that the hood may be in readiness to be pulled off, is called unstrihing the hood ; the blinding a hawk just taken, by running a thread through her eyelids, and thus drawing them over the eyes, to prepare her for being hooded, is called seeling ; a figure or resemblance of a fowl, made of leather and feathers, is called a lure ; the resting place, when off the falconer’s fist, is called the perch ; the place where the meat is laid is called the hack ; and that in which the bird is set, whilst the feathers fall and come again, the mew.

Anything given to a hawk, to cleanse and purge the gorge, is called casting ; small feathers given to make the bird cast, are called plumage; gravel given to help to bring down the stora¢ch, is called rangle ; the throwing up of filth from the gorge after casting, is called gleaming ; the purging of grease, or other matter, ensearning ; being stuffed is called gurgiting ; inserting a feather in the wing in lieu of a broken one, is called imping ; giving a leg, wing, or pinion of a fowl to pull at, is called tiring The neck of a bird the hawk preys on is called the inke ; and what the hawk leaves of its prey is called the pill or pelf.

There are also proper terms for the several actions of the bird. When a hawk flutters, as if striving to get away, either from the perch or hand, it is said to bate ; when, standing too near, they fight with each other, it is called crabbing ; when the young ones quiver and shake their wings in obedience to the elder, it is called cowring ; when the bird wipes its beak after feeding, it is said to feak ; when it sleeps, it is said to jouk ; from the time of exchanging the coat, till the bird turn white again, is called intermewing ; treading is called cawhing ; when the hawk stretches one wing after the legs, and then the other, it is called mantling ; the dung is called muting ; when the hawk mutes a good way behind, it is said to slice; when it does so directly down, instead of jerking backwards, it is said to slime, and if it be in drops, it is called dropping ; when the bird as it were sneezes, it is called sniting ; when it raises and shakes itself, it is said to rouze ; and when, after mantling, it crosses its wings together over its back, it is said to warble.

When a hawk seizes, it is said to bind ; when, after seizing, it pulls off the feathers, it is said to plume; when it raises a fowl aloft, and at length descends with it to the ground, it is called trussing ; when, being aloft, it descends to strike the prey, it is called stooping ; when it flies out too far from the game, it is said to rake ; when, forsaking the proper game, it flies at pyes, crows, and the like, it is called check ; when, missing the fowl, the bird betakes itself to the next check, it is said to fly on head. The fowl or game it flies at is called the quarry ; the dead body of a fowl killed by the hawk is called a pelt. When the bird flies away with the quarry, it is said to carry ; when, in stooping, it turns two. or three times on the wing, to recover itself ere it seizes, it is called canceliering ; when it hits the prey, yet does not truss it, it is called ruff. The making a hawk tame and gentle, is called reclaiming ; the bringing one to endure company, manning ; an old stanch hawk, used to fly and set example to a young one, is called a make-hawk.

The reclaiming, manning, and bringing up a hawk to the sport, cannot easily be brought under any precise set of rules. It consists in a number of little practices and observances, calculated to familiarize the falconer to his bird, and the latter to the falconer.

When the hawk comes readily to the lure, a large pair of luring bells are to be put on; and the more giddy-headed and apt to rake out the hawk is, the larger must the bells be. Having done this, and the bird being sharp-set, ride out in a fair morning, into some large field unencumbered with trees or wood, with the hawk on your hand; then having loosened the hood, whistle softly, to provoke her to fly; unhood, and let the bird fly with its head into the wind; for by that means it will be the better able to get upon the wing, and will naturally climb upwards, flying a circle. After the hawk has flown three or four turns, then lure her with your voice, casting the lure about your head, having first tied a pullet to it; and if your falcon come in and approach near you, cast out the lure into the wind, and if she stoop to it, reward her.

You will often find, that when she flies from the hand, she will take stand on the ground. This is a fault which is very common with soar-falcons. To remedy it, fright her up with your wand; and when you have forced her to take a turn or two, take her down to the lure, and feed her. But if this does not succeed, then you must have in readiness a duck sealed, so that she may see no way but backwards, and that will make her mount the higher. Hold this duck in your hand, by one of the wings, near the body; then lure with the voice to make the falcon turn her head; and when she is at a reasonable pitch, cast your duck up just under her; when, if she strike, stoop, or truss the duck, permit her to kill it, and reward her by giving her a reasonable gorge. After you have practised this two or three times, your hawk will leave the stand, and, delighted to be on the wing, will be very obedient.

It is not convenient, for the first or second time, to show your hawk a large fowl; for it frequently happens that [7:11:175]l they escape from the hawk, and the bird not recovering them, rakes after them. This gives the falconer trouble, and frequently occasions the loss of the hawk. But if she happens to pursue a fowl, and, being unable to recover it, gives it over, and comes in again directly, then cast out a sealed duck; and if the bird stoop and truss it across the wings, permit her to take her pleasure, rewarding her also with the heart, brains, tongue, and liver. But if you have not a quick duck, take her down with a dry lure, and let her plume a pullet and feed upon it. By this means a hawk will learn to give over a fowl that rakes out, and on hearing the falconer’s lure, will make back again, and know the better how to hold in the head.

Some hawks have a disdainful coyness, proceeding from their being high fed. Such a hawk must not be rewarded though she should kill; but you may give her leave to plume alittle, and then taking a sheep’s heart cold, or the leg of a pullet, when the hawk is busy in pluming, let either of them be conveyed into the body of the fowl, that it may savour of it; and when the hawk has eaten the heart, brains, and tongue of the fowl, take out what is enclosed, call lier to your hand, and feed her with it. Afterwards give her some of the feathers of the fowl’s neck, to scour her, and make her cast.

If your hawk be a stately high-flying one, it ought not to take more than one flight in a morning; and if the bird be made for the river, let her not fly more than twice. When she is at the highest, take her down with your lure; and when she has plumed and broken the fowl a little, feed her, by which means you will keep her a high-flyer, and fond of the lure.

So much for the technicalities of hawking, which, from change of times and manners, has now in a great measure fallen into disuse. The reader, however, will find some admirable descriptions of this national sport in the novels of Scott, who appears to have understood it thoroughly, and who, on this, as on many other subjects, has brought the past, as it were, before us, rendering us familiar with its habits, customs, and amusements, and deeply engaging our sympathy in favour of the feelings, notions, and even prejudices, with which these were associated.