xed upon the birds, which were battling or chasing each
other high overhead. The hawk did not always win the fight:
sometimes a crafty heron would turn his long bill upwards just as
the hawk was descending upon him, and pierce his antagonist through
the body.

Great skill and perseverance were required in training these birds.
When they were not flying after their prey, they were hoodwinked,
_i.e._ their heads were covered with caps, which were often finely
embroidered. On their legs they had strings of leather, called
_jesses_, with rings attached. When a hawk was being trained, a long
thread was fastened to these rings to draw the bird back again, but
when it was well educated, it would obey the voice of the falconer
and return when it had performed its flight. It was necessary for
the bird to know its master very intimately, so a devoted follower
of the sport would always carry his hawk about with him, and the two
were as inseparable as a Highland shepherd and his dog. The
sportsman would feed his bird and train it daily, and in an old book
of directions he is advised "at night to go to the mews, and take it
from its perch, and set it on his fist, and bear it all the night,"
in order to be ready for the morrow's sport.

[Illustration: A FALCONER.]

The mews were the buildings where the hawks were kept when moulting,
the word "mew" being a term used by falconers to signify to moult,
or cast feathers; and the King's Mews, near Charing Cross, was the
place where the royal hawks were kept. This place was afterwards
enlarged, and converted into stables for horses; but the old name
remained, and now most stables in London are called mews, although
the word is derived from falconry, and the hawks have long since
flown away.

The sport declined at the end of the seventeenth century, when
shooting with guns became general, but our language has preserved
some traces of this ancient pastime. When a person is blinded by
deceit, he is said to be "hoodwinked," and this word is derived from
the custom of placing a hood over the hawk's eyes before it was
released from restraint.

On the Feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas, the tenants were in the
habit of bringing presents of a fat goose to their landlord, in
order to make him kind and lenient in the matters of rent, repairs,
and the renewal of leases, and the noble landlords used to entertain
their tenants right royally in the great halls of their ancestral
mansions, roast