Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  The second description is more graphic and detailed, and in the manuscript is entitled ‘To breke þe hert’:

  Atte þe fyrst begynnyng he reuerseth hym & slytteth hym from þe herber to þe tuell, and crosseth from þe ryght leg to þe lyfte. He turneth off þe huyde & þan makez þe herber & arereth þe shulders, & from þe splent bone rytteth hym downe to corbyns bone, and þan gederez þe suet. & þan vnpaunchet hym & takez owte þe ratte & þe mawe, & dyyght hytte who so wyll, & kyt þe slent bone & clene þe brest. Shape his aunters & arere þe noumblez, a crosse & disseuer þe haunch fro þe sydez togedyr, & cutte þe quylettez & ley on þe skyn, & ley þe hede aboue, & blow a forloyn & geder þe houndez to þe halowe.89

  The final two lines of this quotation from The Tretyse signal the second great ritual, the curée, thus called as the reward fed to the hounds originally took place on the hide or cuir of the beast.90 The paunch and small intestines were emptied, washed and chopped up, mixed with blood and bread and fed to the hounds. Sometimes the heart, lungs and liver were included.91 This was fed on or under the hide, to the accompaniment of hunting cries and notes on the horn by the noble and professional huntsmen. The head of the hart was placed with the mess on the hide, as described by Gaston Fébus, or under it with the antlers still attached in order to hold the hide up, as described by Edward of York.92 According to The Master of Game, the lymers were rewarded after the other hounds, never being allowed to take their share with the rest of the pack.93 Both Livre de chasse and MS Egerton 1146 contain graphic illustrations of this ceremony.94 The curée was performed as a ritual but its underlying purposes were practical. As Gottfried von Strassburg has Tristan say ‘And believe me, it was devised for the good of the hounds. It is a beneficial practice, since the bits one lays on the hide serve to flesh the hounds, being sweet to their taste from the blood.’95

  Precise directions in the late medieval hunting treatises as to the sequence of events, including horn blowing, signal both the practical and ceremonial importance of the curée. It fed and trained the hounds by the association of reward after a successful hunt, and it provided a pause and symbolic end after the physical excitement of the mounted chase. The noble huntsman was also paying his last respects to his quarry, as well as rewarding his faithful hounds. According to French hunting tradition, if the hart was worthy sport for a noble, then it was fitting that it should receive not only an honourable death, usually at the hands of a nobleman, a ‘social equal’, but also the proper post-death rituals. These procedures of formally breaking-up the carcass and curée were regarded in France as the personal responsibility of a noble. However, these ceremonies of French aristocratic hunting did not become fully established in Germany until the sixteenth or even seventeenth centuries. By then, many French-derived stag hunting terms, including curée, were part of the language of German hunters.96 Clearly, however, Gottfried von Strassburg, a German knight and probable member of the Strassburg urban patriciate,97 was perfectly conversant with such practices in the early thirteenth century and it is significant that his hero Tristan is a French courtly hunter.

  It is interesting that in spite of the insistence placed by French hunting practice on a noble undoing the hart, this procedure was not regarded as particularly important in England. The Master of Game provides the English alternative:

  But on the other hand if the lord will have the deer undone, he that he biddeth as before is said, should undo him most woodmanly and cleanly that he can and wonder ye not that I say woodmanly, for it is a point that belongeth to woodmanscraft, though it be well suiting to an hunter to be able to do it. Nevertheless it belongeth more to woodmanscraft than to hunters, and therefore as of the manner he should be undone I pass over lightly, for there is no woodman nor good hunter in England that cannot do it well enough, and better than I can tell them.98

  The good hunter, in this context a gentleman-hunter, needed to know how to undo the hart, and he would be conversant because of his aristocratic education, but the professional woodman, meaning here a yeoman forester and hunter who was trained in the practical procedure of undoing, would actually perform the task. Usefully, this gave him the right to the chine, as stated in The Tretyse off Huntyng. Why was there this ambiguity? Did the English gentleman consider that breaking-up a beast was below his dignity? Was it perhaps that he disliked getting his hands dirty, or worse, covered in blood? There is probably some truth in both these notions, but I think that there is another very English reason, for which I have no evidence whatsoever from the hunting books. Englishmen have never placed much worth on unnecessary ceremony, especially that imported from the continent, and a gentleman-hunter perhaps considered that once the hart was hunted and slain, then his part of the job was completed. The messy chores of breaking-up and curée were the necessary jobs of underlings who were paid to do such things and ‘tidy up’.

  Only when these rituals were completed was the remainder of the carcass trussed up and carried to the lord’s gate where the hunters blew the prise to inform everyone of the successful capture and slaying of the hart.99 This marked the end of a perfect day’s hunting in pursuit of a single and carefully selected beast.

  Aristocratic texts, both instructional hunting books and romantic literature, place great emphasis on these two rituals at the end of the formal chase of a single hart, as do many images from the time. To medieval society, they were powerful representations of noble hunting, marking it as different from any other type of hunting, which it was, but also attempting to present it as the only legitimate form of hunting. This is nonsensical, of course, and may be regarded as the presumed prerogative of the medieval ruling élites. In addition, these ritualistic bases for class division are not particularly special when examined in relation to their practicality. The two-fold value of the curée, fleshing and training the hounds, has already been discussed and in that context appears eminently sensible. What about breaking-up the carcass? The idea of chopping a deer’s carcass into four equal portions, as advanced by the Huntsman-in-Chief in Tristan, is totally impractical, and physically almost impossible. No hunter in his right mind could have ever seriously considered such a possibility, even a peasant desperate to dismember a poached deer and cart off or hide the pieces. The procedural way of breaking a carcass is simply the best way of tackling a not too difficult problem, the requirements being a good, sharp, strong knife, patience and a minimum of training. In fact, confronted with such a task, by the nature of the anatomy of the animal an intelligent person would almost inevitably follow the main logical steps as detailed in the hunting manuals.

  Obviously, gentle authors introduced the particular obligatory sequence, like dealing first with the fore-quarters and then the hind-quarters and so on, plus the odd item of superstition such as the ‘ravens’ portion’, in order to add mystery and exclusive veracity to the whole ritual. Regarding the origins of such procedures, there are no clues in the Classical Greek or Latin texts, which tend to deal with hounds, horses, nets, trapping and recognising important features of the prey,100 but this is hardly surprising. There is one good way to break-up a deer and it is certain that this had been known to hunters, and probably those who sold and cooked venison, for thousands of years. The need to write it down as a component of rank and status would not arise until the development of French court culture from the eleventh century.

  However, the chase of a selected beast provided special sport and, perhaps as a gesture of respect to the quarry, the carcass deserved special treatment. When many deer were slain in sport, as in bow and stable hunting, the carcasses could not be given such time-consuming treatment. In this event such tasks were traditionally apportioned to various individuals, both hunters and non-participants. Edward, Duke of York, tells us in his own words:

  And than shud þe kyng telle þe maister of þe game what dere he wold were þen and to whom [and a list follows, including] . . . and delyuere it to þe procatours of þe chirch þat owen to haue it [and] . . . some to gentilmen of þe contre bi enfa
rmacion of þe forster or parker, as þei han be frendly to be balv and . . . þe sergeant of þe larder [and finally] þe remenaunt to officers and to hunters as hym good liketh.101

  Hunting large quarry par force, particularly the hart or boar, was undoubtedly the most challenging, and also the most dangerous, form of aristocratic hunting technique. On the other hand, bow and stable, in which herds of deer (red and fallow), hinds and does as well as younger males, were driven towards standing huntsmen, was also frequently practised in late medieval Europe. In this method, also aristocratic, numbers of deer were unharboured or ‘put up’ by lymer hounds, kept on the move and driven by beaters, shot as they came upon the hunters at their stations, and pulled down by pursuing greyhounds if wounded. This must have often been the case as even modern archers wound, rather than kill, large game and have to follow it up. The technique was not new in England. Large-scale driving of red and fallow deer, called drifting, now a term applied to the rounding up of ponies, had been practised by hunters in the New Forest since the late eleventh century.102 William Twiti explains setting up Archers and Greyhounds and Stably in a strange combination of vocabulary drawn from English, French and Latin:

  An oþer chace ther is whan a man hath/ set vp archerys and greyhoundes e de/ establie, and the best passe out the/ boundys and myne houndes after. Than/ shall Y blowe on this maner: a mote/ and aftirward rechace . . .103

  This is done:

  De aver les genz que sunt entour la/ chace a moy e rechater vpon my houndys/ that be past the boundys. Whech be the boundes? þer as the [h]oundes/ ben, þei that we assigned, as Y haue sayd to-fore.104

  Horn motes end the hunt, informing his men to assemble and recall the hounds.105

  The Master of Game is more informative than Twiti on this type of hunting, perhaps because it was becoming an increasingly fashionable event, culminating in the grandes battues of the Renaissance. Edward comments that it was the duty of certain tenants to attend the king’s hunts and to act as part of the stable. It was part of the Master’s duty to provide guaranteed sport and when arranging a day’s hunting, the Duke of York, as the royal Master of Game, placed his stations to keep the game within certain boundaries so as to force it to pass the stand of the king.106 The Master of Game also is specific that the king takes up his stand accompanied by his yeoman of the bows (or bowbearer) and the fewterers with their hounds ready to let slip.107 According to the Black Book of Edward IV, the monarch retained his own yeoman of the bows and a yeoman for his hounds.108 Arranging such an event must have been complex and have necessitated the liaison and close cooperation of royal huntsmen and servants with the officials of the local hunt establishment. In a large, especially royal, hunt, courtiers and any gentle companions were directed to their own stands, each with their own bowbearers and fewterers. Other hunters, who included the professional hunt staff and foresters, were stationed around the boundaries of the Forest section, in order to drive any ‘great deer’ (harts) back towards the royal party and to take lesser game themselves.109

  The place, or station, where the noble archer stood with his bowbearer and fewterer to receive the game was also known as the tryst. The game might be driven to him, or, if he had not been directed to a particular station, he might have placed himself in a likely position from which to shoot at passing game. In French this was called shooting a l’affut, from the Latin ad fustem, meaning near the wood, as the hunter leant his back against, or hid behind, a large tree, thereby concealing himself from the game.110

  Not surprisingly, the lexis of bow and stable hunting is an important element of imaginative and romantic literature. In the deer hunt in the third fit of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the dreamer poet tells us how early in the morning:

  There were a hundred choice huntsmen there, whose fame/ Resounds. / To their stations keepers strode; / Huntsmen unleashed hounds: / The forest overflowed/ With the strident bugle sounds.111

  So skilful are they at the tryst, and so strong the hounds, that the game is brought down as fast as one can look. It is significant that respecting the fence month (close season), the castellan and his hunters take only hinds and does, the harts and bucks being allowed their freedom.112 This highlights the importance of the legality of aristocratic hunting, even in imaginative literature. Did courtly audiences perhaps need to be reminded of this aspect of their favourite sport and pastime?

  In Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, the poet dreams of participating in a great hunt given in honour of the Emperor Octavian. Chaucer’s vivid description demonstrates his own intimate knowledge of aristocratic hunting, the result of his gentlemanly education. He includes elements of both par force and bow and stable hunting, for at one stage the narrator tells his audience ‘How they would slee the hart with strength’ and use ‘many relaies and limers’, yet at another point describes how ‘I was go walked fro my tree’, obviously his tryst or stand, by a whelp (young hound) into a magic Greenwood of huge trees, full of all three species and ages of deer.113 So, led by the theme of the chase, the audience enters an area of magic and forest fantasy, paralleled by the May forest of The Parlement of the Thre Ages.

  By the middle of the sixteenth century, bow and stable hunting had developed into a complex and hugely expensive demonstration of wealth and power, much favoured by great nobles and European royalty. The original idea of a sporting occasion was prostituted into one of slaughter and self-indulgence, the idea being to guarantee sport for royalty. Two paintings of the time illustrate the beginnings of this departure from true sport. The Stag Hunt of the Elector Frederick the Wise, completed by Lucas Cranach in about 1529, shows dozens of deer, having been driven into a lake, being shot by hunters from their stands or trysts. The Elector Frederick and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I are easily recognised. The Stag Hunt for the Emperor Charles V at the Castle of Torgau, painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger in about 1544, is a similar scene of slaughter but on a grander scale, taking place in front of the impressive castle at Torgau.114 This sort of guaranteed hunting could degenerate and become even more symbolically ritualised. To celebrate the marriage of Leonello d’Este to Maria of Aragon in 1444, there was a St George play, followed by a joust and a ‘hunt’. The latter event involved the slaughter of animals released into the piazza in the middle of Ferrara.115 Bullfighting and other Games in the Piazza del Campo, Siena, painted in about 1600 by Vicenzo Rustici, is a further development of this notion of guaranteed sport, again making use of the great central square of a Renaissance city.116

  There are two other related ways in which aristocratic hunting differs markedly from commonalty hunting and these are the ‘fence month’, the season of non-hunting or disturbance of red deer, and approved seasons for hunting quarry. It could be rightly argued that the imposition of a close season is not a technique of hunting, but it is certainly part of aristocratic methodology in its wider sense, as is the season when it was best to hunt specific beasts.

  The concept of a close season, imposed on hunters for whatever reason, is intimately bound up with the whole aristocratic attitude towards quarry and methodology. The fence month is specifically mentioned by Edward, Duke of York, and at the end of the fifteenth century, The Boke of Saint Albans is also exacting about the times when certain beasts may be hunted or allowed relief. Only the hart and the hare are given the privilege of a close season. Of the hart, Dame Juliana Berners comments ‘From the Annunciacion of owre lady day/ The hert then releues the sooth for to say/ Till saynt Petris day and paule.’117 This made sense as early summer is the time when red deer calves are born and a regime of protection and lack of disturbance was essential to the well-being of both youngsters and nursing mothers. Prohibiting hart hunting thus also guaranteed the protection of hinds and calves, ensuring stock for the following year. William Baillie-Grohman uses the 1598 edition of Manwood’s manual to illustrate this point. Manwood’s fence month was:

  fifteen days before and ended fifteen days after midsummer. During this time great care was taken
that no men or stray dogs should be allowed to wander in the forest, and no swine or cattle were allowed to feed within the precincts, so that the deer should be absolutely undisturbed during three or four weeks after the fawning season.

  The deer had complete precedence; it was clearly imperative and doubtless enforced, that no commoner or his animals entered the Forest. He continues to explain the origin of the term:

  in this month there must be watch and ward kept with men and weapons for the fence and defence of wild beasts, for that reason the same is called fence or defence month.118

  The use of the term ‘fawning’, rather than ‘calving’, may indicate that Manwood was generally referring to fallow rather than red deer, the latter’s numbers being in decline by the end of the Tudor period. This tradition of imposing the fence month continued for centuries in England, C.J. Cornish commenting in 1895:

  ‘Defense de chasser’ is probably the origin of the ancient term of venery which heads the notices, posted during May and June at the gates of the royal deer parks, requesting that during the ‘fence-months’ visitors will prevent their dogs from disturbing the deer.119

  In spite of this special privilege accorded red deer, in general the advised hunting seasons were related to when animals were fit and in prime fat condition, not to the modern considerations of mating, pregnancy and nursing young. The concept of a season as a period which included the time when it was best to hunt deer and other animals because they were fat, or in grece, was pragmatic and economically based, very different from a period of relief imposed on hunters out of consideration for the quarry. Baillie-Grohman compiled a useful list of seasons from various medieval sources in his Appendix to The Master of Game. Inevitably, some of these sources were contradictory and the following is a simplified version:

  Red deer stag: June 14th. to September 14th., but probably from May onwards.