Medieval Hunting
Page 20
Examination of the textual and pictorial sources clearly demonstrates that there was a class structure within hunting indicated by dress, equipment, quarry type, and especially by language, methods and techniques. All men hunted, but in different ways, according to their rank. Each class perception of what constituted hunting must have been limited, and therefore biased, by these socio-economic and gender factors. However, there is much evidence that the common interest of hunting united the classes under certain conditions of dependence, enabling men to cross social barriers and even rise in rank and status. The legitimate vehicle for this was the royal and noble hunt establishment, with its social mix of trained and employed professional men and aristocratic hunters. Stealing venison and other game was the illicit vehicle of social equality, as anyone who poached, be they noble, priest, peasant or woman, committed the same heinous crime within the legislative strictures of an aristocratic deer-hunting culture. The Forest Laws were the social levellers in this particular way, although punishment appears to have been related to class and the ability to pay an appropriate fine. Ironically, game legislation united the classes in another, more lasting way. Those outlaws of myth and legend who poached the king’s deer, particularly Robin Hood and his Greenwood band of merry men, became folk heroes, the admired icons of rich and poor alike. That all classes identified with these law-breakers is the real triumph of the anonymous fifteenth-century poets.
However, the 1390 Game Law spelled the end to commonalty hunting on unenclosed land and initiated an establishment policy, basically one of increased cooperation between Crown and great and small nobility, to restrict hunting to persons of ‘gentle’ rank. This legal measure naturally added to the hardening of class divisions already apparent during the second half of the fourteenth century. The act was in fact seldom invoked or enforced over the next century, probably the result of the decline in population and the easing of pressure on resources, including game meat. However, Henry VII reissued the 1390 Game Law, revived the Forest eyres, targeted poaching and re-established royal authority in his Forests. Successive restrictive Game Acts passed by Tudor governments confirmed the sport and pastime of hunting as a privilege of the nobility and gentry.2
Both the social dichotomy and universality of hunting are perfectly demonstrated by two manuscript pictures. The first is part of ‘The Trinity’, an illustration from The Hours of Marguerite D’Orléans, made soon after her marriage to Richard, Count of Étampes in 1426.3 The bas de page is of the standard hart hunt, the mounted field of both men and women, with professionals on foot, pursuing the quarry with hounds along a stream valley by the edge of a forest. Horns are being winded and the leading hunter steadies a cross-hilted spear to thrust at the hart. A hunt servant with his spear is waiting ahead in cover, his sturdy alaunt ready to seize hold of and bring down the quarry when it is wounded by the hunter. However, if we follow the stream up its course to the top right, we suddenly come on the tiny figure of a hunter, dressed in blue with red leggings and a red hat with a wickerwork game-bag strapped to his waist. He is concealed in a clump of Greater Reedmace, a plant often but incorrectly called ‘bulrush’, beside the water’s edge. This small but deadly figure is taking, quite literally, a pot-shot with his crossbow at a duck struggling to rise from the water, an ‘unsporting’ action on his part, while other birds circle overhead in panic. This hunter is physically marginal to the main hunting scene, though still a part of it. He is also, in medieval eyes, marginal to the theme of hunting and yet an acknowledged, though lesser, element. The nobles hunt in aristocratic style, legitimately and in public, while he, a common hunter and almost certainly a poacher, is hunting unsportingly and covertly. The audience’s eye is immediately caught by the exciting, colourful depiction of the glorious stag hunt; it is easy to overlook the lone insignificant figure. He is skilfully hidden from us, the audience, by the artist. This too mirrors reality; the illegal hunter lurks in hiding, far from the public gaze and unseen, but still a recognised feature of medieval hunting.
The second example is in the same tradition of dual depiction and is the June bas de page illustration in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146, made around 1500.4 At first glance, the scene is of classic hare hunting. The noble hunter, mounted on a splendid horse and accompanied by his hounds, pursues a hare through thick woodland. His companion has clearly been unhorsed, perhaps an indication of the danger of hunting at speed in the forest. However, this is not the whole story. Nearby, a poor man with a crossbow, probably a poacher, is also hunting, and he is taking a pot-shot at a rabbit on the field boundary, outside the Forest. Here we have many of the ingredients of legitimate aristocratic hunting: the hare as the noble quarry; hunting on horseback with hounds; the elaborate but practical and tidy dress of the hunter; his expensive equipment, including whip and spurs (his sword is hidden as it is carried on the left hip, as is the case in seven of the other Egerton Calendar pictures); the fine tack of the horses; the environment of the Forest; the danger and excitement of the mounted chase. There are also the elements of commonalty hunting: the rabbit, despised as true quarry but forbidden to men without rights of warren; hunting on foot; the green but ragged dress of the peasant; his lack of edged weaponry; the agrarian nature of the ground hunted, the field showing ridge and furrow cultivation with a growing green crop, presumably a variety of cereal; and a rabbit warren in the foreground. Importantly, this commonalty hunting, perhaps of the illegal variety, takes place outside the demarcated Forest, the hunting preserve of the nobility, but next to a warren. In addition, the face of the noble hunter is clearly depicted in profile in what is virtually miniaturist detail; he is a recognisable individual, as a medieval noble would be. In contrast, the face of the peasant is obscured by his crossbow. He is thus anonymous, just one of the rural masses; he could be anyone, it is not important. This was, of course, an age when individuality was still largely one of the prerogatives of the gently born but, increasingly, identification was a feature also being applied to, and used by, wealthier townsfolk, scholars and artists. The miniaturist is very cleverly giving an aristocratic audience the stereotypical picture of feudal social division, based upon certain signals they all would understand, and yet, at the same time, he is clearly indicating the universality of hunting. ‘Everybody does it but in different ways and for different quarry’ is the sub-text to this miniature masterpiece. A tacit sympathy and acknowledgement can be detected in this picture by the patron, and/or the artist, for the common hunter, even the poor poacher. Moreover, it is the only picture from the cycle of twelve hunting scenes in the Calendar of MS Egerton 1146 which depicts a poor man hunting. The other eleven miniatures are, significantly, of aristocratic quarry and methodology.
This particular picture can additionally be read at another level, and that is in a very personal way. The bas de page is such a strange montage of untypical elements that it should perhaps be interpreted in a correspondingly unusual manner. It appears entirely possible that it commemorates, or ‘freeze-frames’, a real hunting incident in the Germanic forest of five hundred years ago. The mounted hunter, who features as the central figure in the other Calendar pictures, is the patron of the Book of Hours, and the hunter thrown from his horse is his hunting companion and friend. It is a pleasant thought that the patron may have instructed the artist to include, and thus record forever, this highly memorable incident, this special day, in his personal prayer book. No doubt he afterwards took great pleasure in looking at this superb miniature during long and possibly tedious services in his private chapel.
Medieval and Renaissance man and, to an extent impossible to quantify, woman also, was fascinated by hunting and by the image of the chase. In an age when natural resources probably appeared infinite and the wilderness of nature close at hand, the pursuit of wild quarry must have fulfilled many of the needs of body and mind. For the nobility, hunting cleansed the spirit and counteracted the artificiality and sinfulness of court life. It created the Catholic guilt of pleasure then relieve
d it by hard exercise and the excitement of the chase. Perhaps the ritualistic procedures at the end of the hunt were a replacement for established religious practice, fulfilling some deep spiritual need to communicate with nature. Some of these instinctive needs and their solutions hold true for modern hunters, but they are seldom expressed in rhyme, song or verse any more, more often in prose form. How-to-do-it books or instructive manuals are, however, a feature of all modern sports and pastimes, including hunting and other field sports. Contemporary instructional literature stresses the ‘right way to do things’, and people accept this sensible notion. How can it be otherwise? What keen and interested newcomer to hunting, fishing or shooting would go out without reading at least some literature on practices, dress and equipment? In addition, those of us who are already ‘lerned’, gain much continued pleasure from reading and re-reading such texts. Books on field sports, whose modern wisdom is regarded with so much respect are, no more nor less, the equivalents of the medieval hunting books. Modern procedures are now based upon ‘good practice’ rather than élitist ritual, and ceremony, still an important element, is now termed ‘tradition’. So, are modern hunters much different from our hunter-ancestors? It seems clear that in respect to the written word they differ but little from those remote aristocratic hunters of the medieval world. The real difference is that most of European society is now literate; therefore all who can read have access to textual information, which is reinforced by the many thousands of hunting, fishing and shooting websites to be found on the Internet. Being conversant with ‘the right way’ is no longer an exclusive class and aristocratic prerogative. Over a period of five and a half centuries, the printed word has gradually, but inexorably, eroded and removed that particular bastion of social division. The big difference in methodology is that most hunting is now done on foot with the aid of a rifle or shotgun. Hunting live quarry on horseback with hounds is still practised but it is now the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed in some countries, hunting on horseback is no longer allowed. The development of reasonably priced and accurate firearms has democratised hunting, bringing the pursuit of almost all types of game within reach of most Europeans. Millions of people in Europe are now legitimate hunters. However, it is significant that in spite of the wide availability of hunting, poaching is still a problem in every European country.
Throughout the ensuing centuries, man has continued to hunt, in spite of the shrinkage of wild places, loss of habitat, growth of urban areas, restrictive legislation, party politics and, very importantly, changes in quarry type and populations. In some favoured areas of the world, hunting generates much-needed currency from abroad, and this includes the grouse-moors of Yorkshire and Scotland as well as the more exotic and remote hunting grounds of Africa, Asia and Russia. In most countries of the world, the right to hunt depends not upon rank and status but upon a valid permit and the ability to pay a fee or subscription. In many countries, the bag is not only limited but, particularly with larger game, is specific as to how many individuals of each quarry type may be taken on one permit. Today, there is much national and international control, and hunting is widely recognised as a vital factor in conservation policies of maintaining habitat together with the complex interdependent eco-systems of animal and bird species. It seems ironic that attitudes have come full circle. We now recognise what was obvious to our European ancestors a millennium ago: our own oneness with nature and the irreplaceable functions of hunting in the maintenance and preservation of the planet.
Hunting may be out of fashion in the British Isles at the moment, but there is nothing any individual, or political party, can do to take away man’s inbuilt thrill of the chase. For that is the factor that has remained unchanged, the chase, the pursuit of a living, wild creature which possesses all the advantages of its wildness. Whether on horseback with hounds, on foot with dog and gun, or wading the stream with rod in hand, the hunt is all, or almost so. The climactic kill is, in a way, immaterial, though sadly, the necessary full-stop to the chase. There are few true hunters who do not experience a momentary pang of regret when coming upon the fallen quarry, be it stag, pheasant, hare or woodcock. It is strange but true that releasing caught quarry, whether fish, feather or fur, does not satisfy the inward hunter. It is peculiarly unfulfilling. There is also the simple but ancient pleasure of putting your quarry in the game-bag and taking it home, being aware that you are providing delicious food for yourself, family and friends. There are exceptions to this kill-and-keep factor, particularly in fishing, such as the necessary release of salmon and sea-trout, caught in some hard-hit British or foreign river, for conservation or re-stocking purposes. However, this does not affect the point regarding the deep atavistic traits of man and the fulfilment of some of those needs by hunting. The medieval authors and hunters perceived the great moral question and ambiguity of hunting. Man needs to hunt to release the pressures of being human, to appreciate the countryside, the seasons, to be aware of the beauty and brevity of life, and the inevitability and sadness of death. He needs to be barbaric in order to be civilised, cruel to be cultured. Many people are still fascinated by hunting and most Europeans have strong feelings either for or against this most ancient of man’s pastimes. Not to allow hunting would be a gross, perhaps far reaching, miscalculation of the possible damage to our innermost psyche. We are all the inheritors of hunter-gatherers from not so long ago and the stream of consciousness of our ancient ancestors still runs deep and powerful. As that great hunter and big-game fisher Ernest Hemingway puts it in his terse but beautifully direct and perceptive way:
We were all hunters and it was the start of that wonderful thing, the hunt. There is much mystic nonsense written about hunting but it is something that is probably much older than religion.5
Notes
The following abbreviations have been used:
Birrell: Jean Birrell, ‘Peasant deer poachers in the medieval forest’, in Richard Britnell and John Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 68–88.
BSA facsimile edn: Dame Juliana Berners, The Boke of Saint Albans, 1486, facsimile edition (London, 1899).
Dalby: David Dalby, Lexicon of the Mediaeval German Hunt (Berlin, 1965).
H & H: John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, The Art of Medieval Hunting (London, 1988).
Ldc, 616: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Livre de chasse, MS fr. 616.
Ldc, Tilander: Gaston Phébus, Livre de chasse, ed. Gunnar Tilander, Cynegetica, XVIII (Karlshamn, 1971).
MG, 1904: Edward, Duke of York, The Master of Game, ed. W.A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (London, 1904).
MG, 1909: Edward, Duke of York, The Master of Game, ed. W.A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (London, 1909).
Modus: Gunnar Tilander, (ed.), Les Livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio, Vol. 1, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1932).
Pisanello: Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon, Pisanello, Painter to the Renaissance Court (London, 2002).
PTA: M.Y. Offord, (ed.), The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Early English Text Society No. 246 (London, 1959; repr. 1967).
Tristan: Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan, trans. and ed. A.T. Hatto (London, 1960; repr. 1967).
Introduction
1. Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven and London, 2001; repr. 2002), pp. 133 and 155.