The Master of Game

beast of this world that is strongest armed, and can sooner slay a man than any other. Neither is there any beast that he could not slay if they were alone s

eth a man with one stroke as with a knife, and therefore he can slay any other beast sooner than they could slay him. It is a proud67 beast and fierce and perilous, for many times ha

t considered so fatal as one from the antlers of a stag. An old fourteenth-century

himself been thrown to the ground, he with his courser, by a wild boar and the courser kill

east of St. Andrew69, and are in their brimming love three wee

, burning heat. It was also used in th

vembe

57, adds: "com

he sows. They abide not in one place one night as they do in another, but tfind their pasture for (till) all pastures fail them as hawthorns71 and other things. Sometimes a great boar has another with him but this

which is not quite clear. G. de F. has "a

See Appendi

outs which is right hard; they root deep in the ground till they find the roots of the ferns and of the spurge and other roots of which they have the savour (scent) in the earth. And therefore have I said they wind wonderfully far and marvellously well. And also they eat all the vermin and carrion and other foul things. They have a hard skin and strong flesh, especially upon their shoulders which is called the shield. Their season begins from the Holy Cross day in September76 to the feast of St. Andrew77 for then they go to the brimming of the sows. For they are in grease when they be withdrawn from the sows. The sows are in season from the brimming time which is to say the twelfth day after Christmas till the time wh

ell or better than a bear, but nothing abo

F. ren

pendix: W

ptemb

vembe

0, says that he only trusts in his defences an

be a young boar of three years old. In the third March counting that in which he

ed we have followed G. de F.'

and also they call the tusks above gres80 (grinders) for they only serve to make the others sharp as I have said, and when they are at bay they keep smiting their tusks together to make them sharp and cut better. When men hunt the boar they commonly go to soil and soil in the dirt and if they be hurt the soil is their medicine. The boar that is i

h grès, grinding-

side. And if that time he seeth anything that he thinks might hinder him in the way he would go, then he turneth again into the wood. Then will he never more come out though all the horns and all the holloaing of the world were there. But when he has undertaken the way to go out he will spare for nothing but will hold his way throughout. When he fleeth he maketh but few turnings, but when he turne

, has "fortress" i

d, singularly enough, also in the Shirley MS. the following words have

s) as other swine do, according t

urée nor are they judged as of th

d no longer, and then they chase their first pigs away from them for by that time they be two years old and three Marches counting the March in which they were farrowed.84 In short they are like tame sows, excepting that they farrow but once in a year and the tame sows farrow twice. When they be wroth they run at both men and hounds and other beasts as (does) the wild boar and if they cast down a man they abide longer upon him than doeth a boa

iting beasts the trace, and of red beasts foot or view, an

pendix: W