Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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is called a ‘scammell’ by the gunners of Blakeney. But as this bird is not a rock-breeder,221 it cannot be the one intended in the present passage, if we regard it as an accurate description from a naturalist’s point of view.” Holt says that “scam” is a limpet, and scamell probably a diminutive. Mr. Dyce222 reads “scamels,” i. e., the kestrel, stannel, or windhover, which breeds in rocky situations and high cliffs on our coasts. He also further observes that this accords well with the context “from the rock,” and adds that staniel or stannyel occurs in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), where all the old editions exhibit the gross misprint “stallion.”

       Hawk. The diversion of catching game with hawks was very popular in Shakespeare’s time,223 and hence, as might be expected, we find many scattered allusions to it throughout his plays. The training of a hawk for the field was an essential part of the education of a young Saxon nobleman; and the present of a well-trained hawk was a gift to be welcomed by a king. Edward the Confessor spent much of his leisure time in either hunting or hawking; and in the reign of Edward III. we read how the Bishop of Ely attended the service of the church at Bermondsey, Southwark, leaving his hawk in the cloister, which in the meantime was stolen – the bishop solemnly excommunicating the thieves. On one occasion Henry VIII. met with a serious accident when pursuing his hawk at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire. In jumping over a ditch his pole broke, and he fell headlong into the muddy water, whence he was with some difficulty rescued by one of his followers. Sir Thomas More, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., describing the state of manhood, makes a young man say:

      “Man-hod I am, therefore I me delyght

      To hunt and hawke, to nourish up and fede

      The greyhounde to the course, the hawke to th’ flight,

      And to bestryde a good and lusty stede.”

      In noticing, then, Shakespeare’s allusions to this sport, we have a good insight into its various features, and also gain a knowledge of the several terms associated with it. Thus frequent mention is made of the word “haggard” – a wild, untrained hawk – and in the following allegory (“Taming of the Shrew,” iv. 1), where it occurs, much of the knowledge of falconry is comprised:

      “My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty;

      And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,224

      For then she never looks upon her lure.

      Another way I have to man my haggard,

      To make her come, and know her keeper’s call;

      That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites

      That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient.

      She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;

      Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not.”225

      Further allusions occur in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 1), where Viola says of the Clown:

      “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;

      And to do that well craves a kind of wit:

      He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

      The quality of persons, and the time;

      And, like the haggard, check at every feather

      That comes before his eye.”

      In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Hero, speaking of Beatrice, says that:

      “her spirits are as coy and wild

      As haggards of the rock.”

      And Othello (iii. 3), mistrusting Desdemona, and likening her to a hawk, exclaims:

      “if I do prove her haggard, —

      I’d whistle her off.”226

      The word “check” alluded to above was a term in falconry applied to a hawk when she forsook her proper game and followed some other of inferior kind that crossed her in her flight227– being mentioned again in “Hamlet” (iv. 7), where the king says:

      “If he be now return’d

      As checking at his voyage.”228

      Another common expression used in falconry is “tower,” applied to certain hawks, etc., which tower aloft, soar spirally to a height in the air, and thence swoop upon their prey. In “Macbeth” (ii. 4) we read of

      “A falcon, towering in her pride of place;”

      in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 1) Suffolk says,

      “My lord protector’s hawks do tower so well;”

      and in “King John” (v. 2) the Bastard says,

      “And like an eagle o’er his aery229 towers.”

      The word “quarry,” which occurs several times in Shakespeare’s plays, in some instances means the “game or prey sought.” The etymology has, says Nares, been variously attempted, but with little success. It may, perhaps, originally have meant the square, or enclosure (carrée), into which the game was driven (as is still practised in other countries), and hence the application of it to the game there caught would be a natural extension of the term. Randle Holme, in his “Academy of Armory” (book ii. c. xi. p. 240), defines it as “the fowl which the hawk flyeth at, whether dead or alive.” It was also equivalent to a heap of slaughtered game, as in the following passages. In “Coriolanus” (i. 1), Caius Marcius says:

      “I’d make a quarry

      With thousands of these quarter’d slaves.”

      In “Macbeth” (iv. 3)230 we read “the quarry of these murder’d deer;” and in “Hamlet” (v. 2), “This quarry cries on havock.”

      Another term in falconry is “stoop,” or “swoop,” denoting the hawk’s violent descent from a height upon its prey. In “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1) the expression occurs, “till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged.” In “Henry V.” (iv. 1), King Henry, speaking of the king, says, “though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.” In “Macbeth” (iv. 3), too, Macduff, referring to the cruel murder of his children, exclaims, “What! … at one fell swoop?”231 Webster, in the “White Devil,”232 says:

      “If she [i. e., Fortune] give aught, she deals it in small parcels,

      That she may take away all at one swoop.”

      Shakespeare gives many incidental allusions to the hawk’s trappings. Thus, in “Lucrece” he says:

      “Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells

      With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells.”

      And in “As You Like It” (iii. 3),233 Touchstone says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires.”

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