perty of whosoever could first take them. But the northern barbarians, who overran the Roman empire, bringing with them the strongest relish for this amusement, and being now possessed of more easy means of subsistence from the lands they had conquered, their chiefs and leaders began to appropriate the right of hunting, and, instead of a natural right, to make it a royal one. When the Saxon kings, therefore, had established themselves into an heptarchy, the chases were reserved by each sovereign, for his own particular amusement. Hunting and war, in those uncivilized ages, were the only employment of the great: their active, but uncultivated, minds were susceptible of no pleasures but those of a violent kind-such as gave exercise to their bodies, and prevented the uneasiness of thinking. But as the Saxon kings only appropriated those lands to the business of the chase which were unoccupied before, so no individuals received any injury. But it was otherwise when the Norman kings were settled upon the throne; the passion for hunting was then carried to an excess, and every civil right was involved in general ruin. This ardour for hunting was stronger than the consideration of religion, even in a superstitious age. The village communities, nay, even the most sacred edifices, were thrown down, and all turned into one vast waste, to make room for animals, the object of a lawless tyrant's pleasure. Sanguinary laws were enacted to preserve the game; and in the reigns of William Rufus and Henry the First, it was less criminal to destroy one of the human species than a beast of chase. Thus it continued while the Norman line filled the throne; but when the Saxon line was restored, under Henry the Second, the rigour of the forest laws were softened. The barons also for a long time imitated the encroachments, as well as the amusements, of the monarch; but when property became more equally divided, by the introduction of arts and industry, these extensive hunting grounds became more limited; and as tillage and husbandry increased, the beasts of chase were obliged to give way to others more useful to community. Those vast tracts of land, before dedicated to hunting, were then contracted; and, in proportion as the useful arts gained ground, they protected and encouraged the labours of the industrious, and repressed the licentiousness of the sportsman.* In the present cultivated state of this country, therefore, the stag is unknown in its wild, natural state; and such of them as remain among us are kept, under the name of red deer, in parks among the fallow deer; but they are become less common than formerly. Its excessive viciousness during the rutting season, and the badness of its flesh, inducing most people to part with the species. In England, the hunting the stag and the buck are performed in the same manner; the animal is driven from some gentleman's park, and then hunted through the open country.† But those who pursue the wild animal, have a ANCIENT BRITONS. - Dio Nicaeus, an ancient author, speaking of the inhabitants of the northern parts of this island, tells us they were a fierce and barbarous people, who tilled no ground, but lived upon the depredations they committed in the southern districts, or upon the food they procured by hunting. Strabo says also, that the dogs bred in Britain were highly esteemed upon the continent, on account of their excellent qualities for hunting; and these qualities, he seems to hint, were natural to them, and not the effect of tutorage by their foreign master. The information derived from the above cited authors does not amount to a proof that the practice of hunting was familiar with the Britons collectively; yet it certainly affords much fair argument in the support of such an opinion; for it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the pursuit of game should have been confined to the un cultivated northern freebooters, and totally neglected by the more civilized inhabitants of the southern parts of the island. We are well assured that venison constituted a great portion of their food; and as they had in their possession such dogs as were naturally prone to the chase, there can be little doubt that they would exercise them for the purpose of procuring their favourite diet; besides, they kept large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, both of which required protection from wolves and other ferocious animals, that infested the woods and coverts, and must frequently have rendered hunting an act of absolute necessity.-STRUTT'S SPORTS AND PASTIMES. STAG HUNTING.-This princely diversion has become almost extinct in this country. The state of the country does not now seem calculated for stag hunting. There are places at this time in England which much higher object, as well as a greater variety, in the chase. To let loose a creature that was already in our possession, in order to catch it again, is, in my opinion, but a poor pursuit, as the reward when obtained is only what we before had given away. But to pursue an animal that owns no proprietor, and which he that first seizes may be said to possess, has something in it that seems at least more rational; this rewards the hunter for his toil, and seems to repay his industry. The chase is continued in many parts of the country where the red deer is preserved, and still makes the amusement of such as have not found out more pass under the name of forests, but which are in a great measure unforested, and no longer afford shelter and protection to the deer tribe. In fact, the stag has been on the decline in this country for upwards of a century. In the parks of the great he has been for the most part supplanted by the fallow deer; while he is not to be found in a wild state in half a dozen places in England. He still roams at large in the Highlands of Scotland, though much reduced in number; and even in these parts he will, at no distant period, become as scarce as that beautiful, lesser animal, the roe-buck, which is now rarely seen, but which, an age or two back, was found in abundance, and not only animated, but gave a peculiar interest and beauty to the otherwise dreary scenery of this mountainous region. His late majesty George III. was much attached to stag-hunting, and for that purpose he had an excellent establishment, though the manner in which his majesty pursued the chase was scarcely entitled to the name of hunting. The hounds were fine looking dogs, and unquestionably well bred, so were the stags they pursued: they might be said to live together in harmony at Swinley, both dogs and game; and at certain periods the latter was brought from the place in a cart to a particular spot, and little better than a burlesque upon hunting ensued. When the deer was turned out, he was accompanied by two persons upon horseback, one on each side, whose business was to keep him constantly in view. After the lapse of a few minutes, the hounds were laid on the scent, and the chase commenced. The king and his attendants followed. The dogs ran swiftly, it must be allowed; but whenever they got to any distance, or out of sight of his majesty, they were stopped by the hunts man till he came up, and then the chase continued. In consequence of this arrange ment, the chase could never be lost, or the hounds at fault; for, as the two persons who rode on each side the stag had him always in view, they could direct the huntsman in case of need; and, consequently, while this system rendered the chase an unerring pursuit, it extracted the very essence of hunting, by removing altogether those checks and uncertainties on which the pleasure almost depends at least in the estimation of the true sportsman In Devonshire, wild deer are yet to be found, which are hunted in a regular, sportsmanlike manner; and at Wexford, in Huntingdonshire, in some extensive woodlands belonging to the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Westmoreland, a few are still to be met with. In a very old poem, hunting the stag is very accurately and very forcibly depicted; it is of the time of Charles II.-ED. At length the great and unexpected sound Now to the stream, when neither friends uor force, But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood Stands but to fall revenged on those that dare But vain's his strife; at last resigns his blood, DISTANCE A DEER WILL RUN-Many years since, a stag was hunted from Whinfield Park, in the county of Westmoreland, until, by fatigue and accident, the whole pack was thrown out except two fox-hounds bred by Lord Thanet, who continued the chase during the greatest part of the day. The stag returned to the park whence he had been driven, and, as his last effort, leaped the wall, and died as soon as he had accomplished it. One of the hounds ran to the wall, but being unable to get over it, laid down, and almost instantly expired; the other hound was found dead about half a mile from the park. The length of the chase is uncertain; but, as they were seen at Redkirk, near Annan, Scotland, distant by the post road forty-six miles, it is conjectured that the circuitous course they took could not make the distance run less than one hundred and twenty miles! liberal entertainments. In those few places where the animal is perfectly wild, the amusement, as was said above, is superior. The first great care of the hunter, when he leads out his hounds to the mountain side, where the deer are generally known to harbour, is to make choice of a proper stag to pursue. His ambition is to unharbour the largest and the boldest of the whole herd; and for this purpose he examines the track, if there be any, which if he finds long and large, he concludes, that it must have belonged to a stag, and not a hind, the print of whose foot is rounder. Those marks also which he leaves on trees, by the rubbing of his horns, show his size, and point him out as the proper object of pursuit. Now to seek out a stag in his haunt, it is to be observed, that he changes his manner of feeding every month. From the conclusion of rutting time, which is November, he feeds in heaths and broomy places. In December they herd together, and withdraw into the strength of the forests, to shelter THE GREAT HUNTINGS OF OLD.-All readers of border minstrelsy remember the ballad God prosper long our noble king, A woful hunting once there did, It is one of the most popular poems in our The union of the chase and war, was a natural alliance; for amongst a rude people personal prowess in the one, was the quality which most commanded success in the other. Gaston de Foix, occasionally one of the most triumphant, because one of the most cruel, treacherous, and altogether abominable heroes of the days of chivalry, was the mightiest hunter of his day. He is said to have kept sixteen hundred hounds; and he wrote a book on hunting. The Scottish kings used to shoot the deer from an elevated seat as the packs were driven before them, a practice demanding as much enterprise, and altogether as rational, as what, in the terms of modern sporting, is called the battue. Pennant in his History of Scotland has described a scene of more danger; he has translated a passage from an old author, which illustrates in a graphic way, the ancient modes of hunting:-"One of the walks retains the name of the King's seat, having been the place where the Scottish monarchs placed themselves in order to direct their shafts with advantage at the flying deer, driven that way for their amusement. A chase of this kind had very nearly prevented the future miseries of the unhappy Mary Stuart. The story is told by William Barclay; it gives a lively picture of the ancient manner of hunting. "In the year 1563, the Earl of Athol, a prince of the blood royal, had, with much trouble and vast expense, a hunting match for the entertainment of our most illustrious and gracious queen. Our people called this a royal hunting. I was then a young man and present on that occasion. Two thousand Highlanders, or wild Scotch, as you call them 6 here, were employed to drive to the huntingground all the deer from the woods and hills of Athol, Badenoch, Marr, Murray, and the counties about. As these Highlanders use a light dress, and are very swift of foot, they went up and down so nimbly, that, in less than two months' time, they brought together two thousand red deer, besides roes and fallow deer. The queen, the great men, and a number of others, were in a glen when all these deer were brought before them. Believe me, the whole body moved forward in something like battle order. The sight still strikes me, and ever will strike me, for they had a leader whom they followed close wherever he moved. This leader was a very fine stag with a very high head. This sight delighted the queen very much, but she soon had cause for fear: upon the earl's-(who had been accustomed from his early days to such sights,)-addressing her thus: Do you observe that stag who is foremost of the herd? there is danger from that stag; for if either fear or rage should force him from the ridge of that hill, let every one look to himself, for none of us will be out of the way of harm; for the rest will follow this one, and, having thrown us under foot, they will open a passage to this hill behind us.' What happened a moment after confirmed this opinion; for the queen ordered one of the best dogs to be let loose on one of the deer: this the dog pursues; the leading stag was frighted; he flies by the same way he had come there; the rest rush after him, and break out where the thickest body of Highlanders are; they had nothing for it but to throw themselves flat on the heath, and allow the deer to pass over them. It was told the queen that several of the Highlanders had been wounded, and that two or three had been killed outright; and the whole body had got off, had not the Highlanders, by their skill in hunting, fallen upon a stratagem to cut off the rear from the main body. It was of those that had been separated that the queen's dogs and those of the nobility made slaughter. There were killed that day three hundred and sixty deer, with five wolves, and some roes." |