History of the Fife Pitcairns

154 THE FIFE PITCAIRNS.
To be appointed Master Falconer to the King was in
the days of Charles I. to be elected to a very honourable
office ; and down to the middle of the seventeenth century
falconry was followed with an ardour that perhaps no
sport in our country ever called forth — not even fox-
hunting.
Stringent laws and enactments — notably in the reigns
of William the Conqueror, Edward III., Henry VIII., and
Elizabeth — were passed from time to time in its interest.
Falcons and hawks were allotted to degrees and orders of
men, according to rank and station ; for instance — to royalty
the jerfalcons, to an earl the peregrine, to a yeoman the
goshawk, to a priest the sparrow-hawk, and to a knave or
servant the useless kestrel. 1
The hawks in England at the present time are the three
great Northern falcons — viz., the Greenland, Iceland, and
Norway falcons — the peregrine falcons, the hobby, the
merlin, the goshawk, and the sparrow-hawk. In former
days the Saker, the Lanner, and the Barbary or Tunisian
falcon were also employed. The Greenland, Iceland, and
Norway falcons are called gyrfalcons, from their gyrations
through the air.
In the reign of Edward III. the punishment was death to
any one who maliciously killed a falcon.
The aim of the falconer must be to have his hawks always
keen, and the appetite when they are brought into the field
should be such as would induce the bird in a state of nature
to put forth its full powers to obtain its food, with as near
as possible a corresponding condition as to flesh.
On the left leg of each falcon, and also beneath the
feathers, is a small brass bell, and on each of their legs
is a "jess" or strap of thin leather neatly fastened round
it. The ends of each pair of jesses are attached by slits
in them to a brass swivel, made in the form of a figure
8, and through the farther end of this swivel is passed
the leash by which it is firmly tied down to the perch by
means of a " falconer's " knot.
1 Sir Walter Scott.