Medieval Hunting

by Richard Almond

  John of Salisbury indicates that such methods were used by common folk who believed ‘that birds of the sky and fishes of the deep are common property’, a notion which perhaps understandably annoyed the local gentry who apparently punished offenders severely.71 This punitive approach by landlords may appear harsh, and it probably was rather an exceptional action at the time, given the legal standing of the Forest Laws. It was likely a reaction to the truculent and socialistic attitudes of the local peasantry, not a serious attempt to stop them taking small birds which would have been legally untenable, and practically impossible to enforce. The Forest Laws, of course, were concerned with protecting the verte and venison and not with prosecuting peasants for trapping small birds. It was a convenient but popular belief that wild beasts were the property of no man, but the legal doctrine of ferae naturae was only first advanced in the mid-thirteenth century by Henry de Bracton (d. 1268).72 As Peter Coss reminds us, the ideal world envisaged by the peasants at Mile End and Smithfield in 1381 was a secular commonwealth which included free access to the beasts of the forest and fowls of the river.73 This radical belief was not restricted to England or to the late fourteenth century. In the 1520s, peasants from Stuhlingen in Wurttemberg demanded the right, according to ‘the divine law of God’, to ‘hunt and shoot’ all kinds of game ‘and to satisfy our hunger’.74 Even temporary legal restrictions challenged not only the debateable right of all men to hunt, but more importantly, denied common men a vital food resource.

  Large game birds were a tempting target for the common hunter, but their successful capture required some careful preparation. A simple method illustrated in Roy Modus of securing a cock pheasant is to lay a trail of grain to the trap, a wicker basket whose edge is held up by a figure-of-four support. The pheasant follows the grain and stands on a bar or trigger which releases the basket, capturing the bird alive.75 An added refinement is a small mirror propped up under the basket which is supposed to anger the cock bird who, perceiving a rival, rushes in and trips the trigger.76 A useful marginal sketch shows the reader how to make and set the ingenious trigger.77 Game birds are not commonly depicted in illuminated manuscripts, and this bird in Roy Modus appears to be the common, or dark-necked pheasant, a variety regarded as the strain that originated in Central Asia and south-east Russia and was introduced into continental Europe sometime before the eleventh century.78 A very good illustration of the same variety of cock pheasant appears in the margin of Egerton 1146.79 However, the outstanding game bird picture in this German manuscript is that of a cock red-legged or ‘French’ partridge, possibly the only example of a single clearly identifiable bird of this species in a late medieval manuscript.80

  The wild boar was a particular and dangerous nuisance to farmers in the Middle Ages and indeed still is so in Bearn, south-west France, where it remains a favourite quarry of hunters. An ingenious rustic method of trapping this marauding beast, which has been raiding a farmer’s apple orchard, is described in detail by Gaston Fébus. He advises that if it has been noticed that for several nights animal raiders have been feeding on apples in an orchard or on sheaves in a cornfield, a feeding place with corn or apples should be prepared, surrounded with hurdles or stones to a height of about one ell (about a metre or yard). To get at the feed the beast has to jump over these obstacles. After the game has taken the bait for three or four nights, you should then dig a pitfall in the middle of the feeding place, near the spot where the animal lands after it has jumped over the hurdle or stone wall.81 The beast falls through the covering into the pit where it can be despatched by the farmer.

  Other large animals could be trapped using this peasant method. The wolf was hated and feared by country people and every effort was used to exterminate it. Aristocratic wolf hunting was not sufficient to control the packs which pillaged stock and threatened human lives. Baiting meat with poison was a much favoured method and one used in Spain until very recently. Fébus describes various ways in which wolves were taken including ‘Si devise comment on puet prendre les lous aus aguilles’.82 In this method needles or hooks were inserted into chunks of meat which were left at the end of a blood-trail. The wolf found the bait by scent then greedily gulped it with agonising and eventually fatal results. A large hook concealed in a chunk of meat suspended on a rope tied to a bough was a variation. In this case, the wolf leaped up to grab the bait and impaled itself on the hook.83 Wattle fencing, universal in rural areas during the Middle Ages and for centuries to come, was often used to direct the quarry to bait, a pit, snare or net. An illustration in Livre de chasse shows a wolf hanging from a wooden beam. The precursor to this would be as follows: having been guided by portable wattle fencing to the bait, which was laid within a rope noose tied to a pivoting beam, the wolf has taken the bait, sprung the snare and been hoisted into the air.84 Another miniature shows temporary fencing set up in an X shape, used by hunters to guide a wild boar to a pit, the bait being laid on straw over the pit mouth.85 Spring-traps set in fence gaps were a favoured way to protect vineyards and orchards against animal poachers. A trip-device in the gap released a spear or bolt fixed to a bent bough. Peasants used this device against bears and other large beasts.86 The Calendar miniature for November in MS Egerton 1146 shows a large boar, snared by a rope noose set in a gap in wattle fencing, about to be despatched by a hunter on foot using a boar spear.87 This effectively illustrates peasant methodology successfully utilised by a German noble, who quite possibly had read Gaston Fébus’s book of instruction, Livre de chasse, as part of his hunting education.

  As small ground-game, rabbits were naturally one of the main targets of commonalty hunters and a number of appropriate and effective netting techniques had evolved since the Norman Conquest for catching them. The line drawing in Queen Mary’s Psalter of women ferreting and netting rabbits illustrates the most common method of taking conies.88 Mark Bailey, in his study of the East Anglian Breckland, maintains that occasionally polecats, which are larger and fiercer than ferrets, were also used. Most warreners and trappers presumably reared their own ferrets, although there are records of medieval ferret-breeders in East Anglia. As the nets or hayes into which ferrets drove their prey were expensive items. Bailey quotes 30s. for a long net of perhaps 180 feet in length, trappers probably wove their own from locally grown hemp. He marshals evidence which clearly points to local peasants having a wide knowledge of trapping techniques regarding rabbits and predators.89 Although his research is mainly on the husbandry of rabbits in warrens in East Anglia, it seems reasonable to surmise that peasant expertise and methodology would be similar in other parts of England and Europe where rabbits were found. This is supported by information included in The Master of Game, which mentions conies as a quarry of the bisshunters and says ‘þei hunte hem with ferrettis and wiþ long smale haies’.90 In this context ‘smale’ could mean ‘low’ or possibly refer to the small mesh of the long-nets. The use of ferrets and nets was undoubtedly the commonest and most effective method of bolting rabbits from preserved man-made warrens, also known as garrenas or conigers, or natural warrens.91 A bas de page in The Luttrell Psalter shows a rabbit warren with conies entering and leaving their bolt-holes, and sitting in the sun. However, a ferret or polecat is just about to enter the central burrow and spoil their fun. There are no nets visible in this miniature.92 Long-nets were not the only type of net to be used with ferrets. A fifteenth-century Burgundian tapestry shows a group of peasants using ferrets and purse-nets to take rabbits in a warren. The men are setting nets over bolt-holes and extracting netted rabbits while their womenfolk assist by handing them equipment and pointing out newly caught conies.93

  Although a great magnate, Gaston Fébus did not ignore the humble rabbit as he knew its value. The MS fr. 616 version of Livre de chasse includes a chapter on the nature of rabbits, accompanied by a delightful illustration of rabbits and their warren. Fébus advises that if one wants good sport, rabbits should be kept near their warrens by hunting them two or three times a week with spa
niels and that the area should be fenced in.94 In a later chapter, he gives more precise instructions on rabbit hunting, including working ‘flushers’, such as spaniels, through hedges and thickets in order to drive them into their holes. One should then block or cover all the bolt-holes with purse-nets, except one, into which the muzzled ferret is dropped. The ferret is muzzled to prevent it killing a rabbit, feasting upon it then falling asleep. The ferret flushes the rabbits which try to bolt out of the holes and become enmeshed in the purse-nets. Fébus further explains that in open country the burrow can be surrounded with long nets and that purse-nets and snares can be set at holes in hedges along runs. If there is no ferret available, one can bolt the rabbits by smoking them out. Small bags containing orpiment (yellow arsenic), sulphur and myrrh are lighted and dropped into the holes. The accompanying miniature shows all the methods described necessary in taking rabbits: bolt-holes blocked with sticks; lighting a big fire at an entrance; putting the orpiment into a hole; dropping the muzzled ferret into a hole; a spaniel chasing two rabbits while another kills a rabbit; a rabbit caught in a purse-net; a hunt servant carrying away a couple of rabbits suspended from a stick over his shoulder.95 This thorough instruction contains no rituals or procedures and is totally practical in its nature. The techniques described by Fébus have remained unchanged to this day, except for the ingredients of the smoking-out mixture. It is quite possible that he was setting down ancient peasant methodology, tried, tested and perfected over many centuries in south-western France.

  The carved and hinged seats of choir-stalls found in many English monastic and collegiate churches and cathedrals provide an unusual visual source of hunting motifs. Christa Grössinger remarks that hunting is one of the most popular occupations shown on misericords and she continues ‘A great number of misericords reflect the interest in hunting as an everyday occurrence’.96 Intended as antidotes to the strict and celibate regime of monkish life, misericords portray humorous, bawdy, religious, chivalric and world upside-down themes. Many misericords are of everyday life and no doubt poignantly reminded monks and clerics of their previous existence outside monastic orders. Both aristocratic and commonalty methods of hunting are depicted, stag hunting predictably being the most common theme.97 However, some misericords show scenes of rabbit hunting by common hunters. An example in Ely Cathedral reveals three aspects of the walked-up hunt; that is, the pursuit of quarry by a lone hunter with the aid of a hound. In the left supporter, the hunter, with a stick over one shoulder and blowing his horn, walks through an oak wood, followed by his hound, while a rabbit flees through an oak thicket in the right supporter. The quarry is clearly a rabbit, with its characteristic short ears, and not a hare. In the centre, the successful hunter walks homeward, his brace of leashed hounds by his side and the slain rabbit slung over his shoulder.98 One cannot help wondering if this was a legal hunt or a poaching expedition. The horn and brace of hounds indicate legitimate hunting as silence and a single dog were the customary prerequisites for successful poaching. In Worcester Cathedral is an unusual misericord called The Rabbit Hunt, the central feature of which is a nun writing at a lectern. The right supporter is of a hunter, with a dead rabbit on a pole over his shoulder, who is using a ferret or possibly a polecat, to flush rabbits from a warren.99 This is an excellent example of a misericord illustrating an episode in the everyday life of an ordinary villager. The lone pot-hunter, with his ferret and a handful of small purse-nets to peg over individual bolt-holes, has taken rabbits in this way for centuries, and still does so. Two further misericords are particularly interesting as they illustrate both noble and commonalty hunting. The first is in King’s Lynn Museum and depicts a stag pursued by two hounds as the main theme, with a rabbit peeping from its burrow as a marginal figure. The gentle hunter’s presence is cleverly indicated by a horn and arrow incorporated into initials either side of the main carving. The second is in Holy Trinity, Coventry, showing a stag at bay with a hound holding its muzzle while a rabbit looks on. The tiny figure of a hunter stands behind.100

  The evidence, although scattered and sometimes of an indirect or ambiguous nature, indicates that the commonalty were hunting to a considerable extent. The methods they employed were usually markedly different from those of gentle hunters, although there were areas which overlapped, such as netting and trapping larger game. Quarry type differed too; the emphasis in commonalty hunting had to be on smaller game, particularly small birds; in other words, animals and birds which were not regarded by the ruling élites as worthy of hunting, or ‘chaseable’. Again, there was some overlap, particularly in the cases of predators and vermin. Clearly, commonalty hunting methods lacked the ceremonial and ritualistic aspects associated with aristocratic hunting. This is largely because obtaining fresh meat and protecting crops were the main objectives, rather than impressing one’s peers and superiors and deliberately creating an event which highlighted the social exclusiveness of the ruling classes. In addition, unlike par force or bow and stabley hunting, commonalty hunting usually only involved a handful of people out to acquire extra food. Procedures were thus irrelevant, unnecessary and time-consuming. However, it is worth noting that there were certain basic procedures in dealing with a carcass which were ritualistically performed by gentle hunters but to common hunters were simply the best ways of slitting, skinning, cleaning and butchering. Common hunting also differed in regard to numbers of participants from the large numbers involved in the aristocratic chase. Lone hunting was possibly the most widely followed commonalty method as it required little preparation, caused the least amount of disturbance and could be very effective. The same factors apply to hunting in small groups, with the added advantage of cooperation between individuals perhaps producing a bigger bag. These latter remarks apply equally to illegal hunting, discussed in the second half of the next chapter.

  One of the very few paintings specifically featuring peasant hunting is The Hunters in the Snow, signed and dated 1565, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.101 This is one of five remaining paintings from a sequence of probably twelve (perhaps six, one for every two months) large-format pictures, the idea based upon the labours of the months found in the Calendars of Books of Hours but actually illustrating the seasons. The Hunters in the Snow represents January and incidentally illustrates one of the severest winters of the Middle Ages. The dejected hunters, accompanied by a variety of equally downcast hounds, are returning to their village from a hunt which was not for sport but for necessity. Their meagre bag, slung on the back of a hunter, is a scrawny fox. A detail at the left margin of the picture is the inn sign, which in Old Dutch reads ‘Dit is In den Hert’, meaning ‘This is in the heart’.102 The painted figures of the sign are of a saint with a golden halo kneeling in front of a red deer stag. Bruegel intended the whole sign to be read as a pun. The saint is undoubtedly St Hubert, the Germanic patron saint of hunting, who had a vision of Christ on the cross, which miraculously appeared between the antlers of a stag he had hunted and forced to stand at bay. He had offended Christ by hunting on Good Friday, the day of the Crucifixion. (The same story applies to St Eustace, but in Italy; this was discussed in a previous chapter.) Hubert was immediately converted to Christianity, thus becoming pure ‘in his heart’. The chaseable stag is also correctly termed a ‘hart’ or ‘hert’, and represents Christ. The inn sign can also be read as an icon of irony, the stag highlighting the legal inaccessibility of the hart and its venison, and the inedibility of the only quarry killed by the hunters, a fox. In addition, the inn sign hangs by only one hook, a symbol which can be read in two ways. Perhaps, as Penelope Le Fanu Hughes points out, it may be a comment on humanity’s lack of spirituality.103 Karel Van Mander comments that Bruegel and his merchant friend Hans Franckert liked to disguise themselves as peasants and attend rustic feasts in order better to observe country people.104 It is possible that Bruegel has developed an empathy for these rural people and their hard way of life. The inn sign may reflect this empathy and be a pointed social comment by Brueg
el, that St Hubert was the patron saint of aristocratic hunters who cared little for peasant hunters and their success. Finally, the picture is one of great contrasts: the dejection of the hunters returning from the hunt, a complex occupation which is especially problematic in the winter, with the simple pleasures of the skaters on the ice in the village below, enjoying a rare opportunity for leisure provided by the harsh winter.

  Gaston Fébus makes it perfectly clear that the lower orders in the village communities of south-west France were actively engaged in hunting when he remarks ‘Assez en ay dit, quar c’est chasce de vileins et de communs et de paysanz’.105 Febus’s writings in Livre de chasse often demonstrate an essential human quality, perhaps rare in a late medieval aristocrat. His empathic style gives us the distinct impression that he realised the necessities and enjoyment of hunting to common men, and probably would have viewed with regret any curtailment of their traditional pleasures.106 Emperor Maximilian I also appreciated the hardy peasants’ pleasure and expertise in hunting, and one of his own joys, when hunting in the mountains of the Tyrol, was that he could be approached by the humblest of his subjects.107 No doubt many a hunting anecdote, and more, was exchanged during these meetings. It seems that hunters, whether peasant or prince, have always been able to communicate on some level as they have so much in common to talk about. This is not idle chitchat or mere gossip. In hunter-gatherer societies today, like that of the Inuit, discourse involves the oral passing on of up-to-date hunting news, such as recent sightings of game, game movements, other hunters, poaching and so forth. It often includes useful reports on the hunting environment, such as flooding, freezing and weather predictions. These unplanned meetings and conversations helped provide a useful basis for hunting trips then, and still do, particularly where remoteness and the environment make normal communications difficult. Also it cannot be denied, hunters love talking about hunting. There is no peasant equivalent of the aristocratic medieval literary texts praising the varied joys of hunting, so talking, tale-telling and singing of hunting provided the peasant equivalent of a literary tradition. Human nature being what it is, it is fairly safe to assume that peasants, and other humble hunters too, took pride in their skills and pleasure in their outings. Written or pictorial material is not needed to demonstrate these natural human emotions; their unrecorded pleasure can safely remain as taken for granted.