a
festival present. At particularly distinguished shooting feasts they
were very grandly attired; for example, at Coburg in 1614, there were
five of them who wore the colours of the royal house,--yellow silk
waistcoat, black hosen, yellow English stockings, long black and yellow
knee ribands, beautiful Cordova shoes with silk ribands, a Spanish
velvet hat with yellow feathers, a kasseke with loose sleeves, red,
yellow, and black embroidery before and behind, with coats of arms;
besides all this, the large club, and round the knee a string of bells,
which rattled loud.

Their batons, often preposterously large, of leather or of split
clacking wood, and sometimes gilded, had much to do on the
shooting-ground. With them they cleared the lists of the thronging
people, and punished those who transgressed the rules. Anyone who ran
between the shooter and his mark after the clock was set, anyone who
disturbed the shooters at their stand, who misbehaved from drunkenness
or insolence, or who injured the weapons of strangers from wantonness
or spite, fell under their jurisdiction without respect of rank; and
this jurisdiction was exercised in a remarkable way. Far on one side of
the shooting-ground was erected a conspicuous scaffold, on which were
two coloured benches. This building was called, according to an old
bitter jest, "the gallows;" and later, the "_pritschmeister's_ pulpit;"
to it the culprit was led with many grotesque ceremonies, there laid
upon the bench, and belaboured with the baton in a way which was neatly
expressed in the old technical language by this sentence, "His head was
cut off at the tail." At the same time the _pritschmeister_ delivered a
discourse, which did not make his position more agreeable. One may
conceive how attractive this practice of the law was to all who did not
partake of it. The custom was carried on through the whole of Germany,
most moderately by the serious Swiss, and decorously and impartially in
the cities. At a later period, when great princes arranged shooting
festivals, traces of royal humour are to be found, which enjoined the
performance of this scene on minor personages for insignificant
misdemeanours. Thus, after the prize shooting in 1614, Elector Johann
Georg diverted himself by having not only some scullions, but even one
of his bears cudgelled; the bear had to be chained to the bench. The
_pritschmeister_ obeyed his Electoral Grace, but in his inward heart he
felt that su