mmanded to cause a horn to be sounded, that it might not appear as if
they had intended to steal the game." In "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v.
5), Falstaff, using the terms of the forest, alludes to the perquisites
of the keeper. Thus he speaks of the "shoulders for the fellow of this
walk," _i. e._, the keeper.

[404] See Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes," 1876, p. 65.

Shakespeare has several pretty allusions to the tears of the deer, this
animal being said to possess a very large secretion of tears. Thus
Hamlet (iii. 2) says: "let the strucken deer go weep;" and in "As You
Like It" (ii. 1) we read of the "sobbing deer," and in the same scene
the first lord narrates how, at a certain spot,

"a poor sequester'd stag
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt
Did come to languish; ...
... and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase."

Bartholomaeus[405] says, that "when the hart is arered, he fleethe to a
ryver or ponde, and roreth cryeth and wepeth when he is take."[406] It
appears that there were various superstitions connected with the tears
of the deer. Batman[407] tells us that "when the hart is sick, and hath
eaten many serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a
heate that he hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body unto the
very eares and eyes, at which time distilleth many tears from which the
[Bezoar] stone is gendered."[408] Douce[409] quotes the following
passage from the "Noble Art of Venerie," in which the hart thus
addresses the hunter:

"O cruell, be content, to take in worth my tears,
Which growe to gumme, and fall from me: content thee with my heares,
Content thee with my hornes, which every year I new,
Since all these three make medicines, some sickness to eschew.
My tears congeal'd to gumme, by peeces from me fall,
And thee preserve from pestilence, in pomander or ball.
Such wholesome tears shedde I, when thou pursewest me so."

[405] "De Proprietate Rerum," lib. xviii. c. 30.

[406] Cf. Vergil's description of the wounded stag in "AEneid,"
bk. vii.

[407] Commentary on Bartholomaeus's "De Proprietate Rerum."

[408] The drops which fall from their eyes are not tears from
the lachrymal glands, but an oily secretion from the inner
angle of the eye close to the nose.--Brewer's "Dictionary of
Phrase and Fable," p. 217.

[409] "