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The History of English Podcast
Episode 71: On The Hunt
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In this episode, we explore the events leading to the death of William the Conqueror. And we’ll look at the reign of his son and namesake, William Rufus. The story of William’s succession is also the story of a sibling … Continue reading →
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- [00:09]
Kevin Stroud
Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 71 on the Hunt. In this episode, we're going to continue our look at the Norman settlement of England. We'll explore the events leading to the death of William the Conqueror. And we'll look at the reign of his son and namesake, William Rufus. The story of William's succession is also the story of a sibling rivalry. William's three sons fought with each other and even with their father for control of the Anglo Norman kingdom. But one thing that William and all of his sons had in common was a love for hunting. And the importance of hunting is a constant theme in this story. In fact, hunting. Hunting was so prominent and so important that it gave the English language lots of words and phrases. And many of those words and phrases may surprise you. But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and you can always reach me directly by email@KevinistoryofEnglishPodcast.com and I'm on Twitter glishhistpod. One other quick note. I may take a short Christmas break to work on transcripts and other matters related to the podcast. So the next episode of the podcast will probably be released around the first of the year. So just a little heads up about that. I know that many of you may wait for each upcoming episode with bated breath. The podcast can be very alluring. When a new episode pops up, you pounce on it. It's frustrating when you expect a new episode to be released and it doesn't come. You start to feel hoodwinked and eventually you get fed up. You're at the end of your tether. A great hue and cry goes out for something to fill the void. So you go on the hunt for another podcast to listen to. Well, none of that may be true, but that is a quick sampling of some of the words and phrases that we have inherited from hunting jargon in the Middle Ages. Bated breath, Alluring. Pounce, Hoodwinked, fed up, end of your tether, hue and cry. All of those phrases can be traced back to the language of the hunters. And those terms reflect how important hunting was for such a long period of time. Of course, hunting goes back to the earliest hunter gatherers, and even after people adopted herding and farming, they still continued to hunt. It helped to supplement the diet because farming didn't tend to produce a lot of excess. And of course, during the winter months, there were no crops to harvest at all. So Hunting continued to be essential for the survival of many people well into the Middle Ages. But during the Middle Ages, something else started to happen. For the wealthy, hunting became a sport. It wasn't really about survival, because they had more than enough to live on. For them, it was more about the excitement of the chase and the pride that came with a successful kill. It was a way for wealthy nobles to prove their manliness to each other when they weren't leading men into battle. And frankly, many of them never actually fought in a battle. So hunting was an effective substitute to show how adept they were at stalking and killing an enemy. Hunting emerged as the sport of kings and the nobles, but hunting was also essential for the survival of the peasants and the common man. There were only so many deer and wild boar to hunt, and there was only so much forest land available to the hunters. Now, prior to the Norman Conquest, the wooded areas were generally available to anyone who wanted or needed to hunt. So the nobles and the common people shared the forest. But all of that changed with the arrival of William the Conqueror and his Norman successors. When William arrived in 1066, he brought a new word with him, the word forest. But that word didn't exactly mean what it means today. Before the conquest, the Anglo Saxons called the tree filled regions beyond the fields the wudu, or woods. So woods is an old English word, and the Normans introduced the word forest. Now, today, the words mean essentially the same thing, but that wasn't the case during the time of William the Conqueror. Forest actually had a specific legal meaning that was much broader than just a wooded area. And to understand the original meaning of the term forest, we have to consider its history. I actually mentioned the word forest back in episode 21. In that episode, I noted that the original Indo European language had the word dwer, which meant a door or doorway. And that word passed into English as the word door. The word also passed into Latin, but the original Indo European d sound shifted to an F sound in Latin. And that produced the Latin word for foris, f o r I s, which meant beyond the door or outdoors. So it meant outside. And that Latin word foreis produced the word foreign, meaning things that are from elsewhere outside the house, as opposed to things that are domestic or from inside the house. It also produced the word forum, which was the Roman marketplace that was located outside in the open. And it produced the word forest. But in order to understand the development of the word forest, we have to consider another word that came in from French around this same time. The word park. A park was an Enclosed natural area. So it was a game preserve with fixed boundaries, typically a hedge or a fence or some other boundary. And that boundary was designed to keep the animals in and to prevent them from wandering away or escaping. So the park was an enclosed natural area or preserve, and it still retains that meaning today. We still call a natural area with fixed boundaries a park, like a city park. But during the Middle Ages, the park was typically located in a wooded area. So the area inside the boundaries were the park, and the areas outside of the park were the large, undefined wooded areas. So using that word forest, meaning outside, it produced the word forest, meaning the wooded area outside of the boundaries of the park. So the Normans brought the words park and forest with them. Now, even though forest could mean an undefined wooded area, the Normans gave the term a specific legal meaning. They extended the definition to mean any land designated by the King as a hunting preserve. And that meant any land subject to special forest laws imposed by the king. And while those lands or forests included a lot of wooded areas, they also included a lot of places that weren't wooded. Sometimes the Norman forest included a farmstead and even villages. So the meaning of the word forest was much broader in the 11th and 12th centuries. Now, all of this goes back to the Norman love of hunting. William and his successors wanted to be able to hunt while they were in England, and they didn't want anything to encroach on their sport. So they set aside large tracts of land as hunting preserves. And that meant that those areas were subject to these special laws that prohibited anyone other than the king from disturbing those areas. But the lines were drawn so broadly that it included all the land within the designated areas. And as I said, it included homes and manors and even farmsteads and villages. The key to all of this is that anyone and everyone within those forest boundaries had to obey those very strict forest laws. Those laws essentially meant that the people couldn't touch anything in the restricted area, the land couldn't be disturbed, and the intent was that the land be allowed to revert to its natural state. Now, it's important to understand that William didn't confiscate these lands. The barons and the prominent landholders remained in place. William just imposed special restrictions on the use of the lands, and that basically prevented the barons and peasants from doing anything practical with the land. Now, if this had been limited to a few small areas here and there, it wouldn't have been that big a deal. But the Norman kings couldn't resist declaring large portions of England as forests. Over the next century and a half, about one third of the country was designated as royal forest, and that included the entire county of Essex, east of London. And that meant that these very restrictive laws were imposed on all of that land. And the laws applied to both the barons and the peasants. So these restrictions came to be hated by just about everybody. Under these new rules, a person who lived in or near a royal forest couldn't disturb the flora or fauna. The forest had to be maintained as a natural area. The people couldn't cut down or uproot trees, they couldn't even prune the branches of a tree, so their access to firewood and building materials became limited. Since they couldn't cut down trees, they couldn't clear the land in the forests, so the land couldn't be used to grow crops. The people couldn't dig fish ponds, they couldn't divert streams to other locations for fishing or drinking water or irrigation. They couldn't put up fences or hedges. And most large animals, like deer and wild boar, were also off limits. They could only be hunted and killed by the king. These rules were brutally enforced. Anyone who violated them could be killed or castrated. So many of these newly designated forest areas quickly reverted to a natural state. And that's partly how the word forest took its modern sense as a wooded area that's natural and undisturbed. So you can start to see why these new laws were so hated. Most of the animals and commodities of the forest were now off limits. And remember, these rules could even extend to villages and farming communities within the designated forest areas. Sometimes farmsteads were simply torn down and the peasants displaced. All of this led to suffering and starvation, all for the sake of giving William lots of land for hunting. And there was no real check on William's ability to make these designations. So, as I noted, even the barons came to resent these rules. And in fact, these were some of the major grievances that led to Magna Carta. About a century and a half after the conquest, one of the largest forests designated by William was in the far south of England. It was close to Winchester, the old Wessex capital, and it was easily accessible from London as well. It was established around the year 1079, and it became a favorite for royal hunts. In order to make it an ideal preserve for deer, William cleared out many of the people in the region. Small hamlets and isolated farmsteads were simply wiped away. The forest was first recorded in the Domesday Book with the Latin term Nova Foresta, which was literally the New Forest, because it was A brand New Forest at the time. The forest still exists today, and in fact, it became a National park in 2005. Now, as I said, most of the people of England hated these new forests and the forest laws that were brutally imposed. Many people cursed William for the hardships caused by those new restrictions. And those curses may have worked, because a surprising number of William's descendants actually died in that new forest called the New Forest. William had lots of children, girls and boys, but the boys were in line to inherit his kingdom. He had four sons. The eldest was Robert, or Robert in English. The next was Richard or Richard in English, then Guillaume, or William in English, commonly known as William Rufus. The youngest son was Henri, or Henry in English. By the way, going forward, I'll use the English names because that's typically how they're known in English history. Now, as I said, the second son was Richard, and In the year 1081, he was hunting in the New Forest. The New Forest was still brand new, only about 2 years old, and Richard was probably in his late teens at the time. And while on that hunting trip in the New Forest, young Richard died. Now, the details of what happened are unclear, and historical accounts vary, but the most common version of the story is that he accidentally hit a tree branch while chasing a deer. He was thrown from his horse and died. With Richard's death, that left William with three surviving sons. Robert, William, Rufus, Henry. And they constantly fought with each other and with their father. In fact, during the last few years of his life, William found himself at war with his eldest son Robert, back in Normandy. And to understand these events, we have to return across the Channel to Normandy. After William conquered England, he became a king in his own right. So he was both King of England and still Duke of Normandy. That made him one of the most powerful and important rulers in all of Western Europe. And that was a big problem for Normandy's neighbors in France. To the southeast of Normandy was Paris, in the region controlled by the King of France. The French king was named Philip, and his kingdom was still technically limited to a small area around Paris, even though he didn't have direct control over much territory, he was the king, and he had a lot of vassals throughout France, So he still had a considerable amount of power and influence, and he now saw William as his biggest threat, and he constantly looked for ways to create problems for William. Normandy's other big rival was the region of Anjou, to the southwest of Normandy. The conflicts between Anjou and Normandy had existed since the earlier Norman dukes had expanded westward and that had brought Normandy into conflict with Anjou. Now, between Normandy and each of these two rival territories, there were buffer zones. These were disputed regions that often changed hands back and forth. Between Normandy and the French king's territory around Paris, there was the disputed region known as the Vexin. And between Normandy and Anjou, in the southwest, there was the disputed region known as Maine. In fact, the region of Maine is the ultimate source of the name of the state of Maine in the United States. Early French settlers in North America named the region after this French province. Well, during the early reign of William, as Duke of Normandy, he had conquered both of these disputed regions, so he controlled the Vexin and Maine. So that meant he controlled both of those buffer zones. And in Maine, he designated his eldest son Robert as the Count of Maine. But after 1066, as William's rivals rose up to challenge his power, he lost control of both regions. The Vexin was recaptured by the King of France, and a rebellion in Maine allowed it to secure its independence. So William no longer controlled either region. That left his son Robert with the title of Count of Maine. But the Normans didn't actually have any control there anymore. That meant that Robert had a title but no power. And what Robert really wanted was some power. He wanted a region to rule. So his only option was to wait until his father died so he could succeed him. But as the years passed, his father must have seemed almost immortal at a time when people tended to die very young. William lived for a long time. He was nearly 40 years old when he conquered England, and then he lived for another 20 years. As the years passed, his son Robert became more and more impatient, and the two didn't get along anyway. And this is where Philip, the King of France, comes into play. Philip had recaptured that buffer region, the Vexin, and now he sought to play the young Robert against his father. Philip made an alliance with Robert, and he encouraged Robert to challenge his father's rule in Normandy. And that actually led to open warfare between father and son. William spent most of the last decade of his life in Normandy, trying to recover lost territories and occasionally fighting against his son. In the year 1087, William decided to launch an invasion into the Vexin to recapture that region from Philip. At the strategic city of Manta, William directed his men to burn everything to the ground, and they proceeded to do just that. But in the process, the sky was filled with floating embers, and one of those embers landed beside William's horse. The horse became startled, and it threw William backwards so violently that he suffered severe internal injuries. The injuries were mortal and everyone knew it, including William. But it was a slow, lingering death. William was taken back to the Norman capital at Rouen. As William lay dying, he had time to make his final arrangements. Under Norman tradition, the duchy was supposed to pass to the eldest son when the father died. Of course, William's eldest son was Robert, and he hated the prospect of leaving everything to the son with whom he had fought for years. But he felt he had no choice but to leave Normandy to Robert, since that was Norman tradition. So Normandy was left to Robert. But Norman tradition didn't apply to England, so William felt no obligation to leave England to Robert as well. The next eldest son had been Richard, but Richard had died in that hunting accident in the New Forest several years earlier. So William designated his next son, William Rufus, as his heir in England. That left the youngest son, Henry, and Henry didn't get a kingdom or a duchy. Instead, he had to settle for money. £5,000 of silver, to be exact, and that was a lot of money at the time. Both of the younger sons were present at Rouen, and William Rufus immediately set sail for England while his father was still lingering on his deathbed. The plan was to get to England before his older brother, Robert, could claim the throne there. Meanwhile, the younger brother, Henry, set about counting his silver, every single pound of it, to make sure it was all there. And this isn't the last time we'll hear from Henry. He'll eventually succeed his brother William Rufus as King of England, thereby becoming Henry I of England. And that propensity to count every single pound will continue on after he becomes king. But we'll look at his story a little later. On the 9th of September, in the year 1087, William the Conqueror took his last breath. It had been a long and violent life, and it had been a life that forever changed the history of England and the history of the English language. In the town of Peterborough, north of London, there was a great abbey, and the monks at that abbey continued to maintain a version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle in English. The occasional entries in that book are some of the rare surviving writings in English in the years after the Norman Conquest. And for the year 1087, this chronicle includes a long entry commemorating the death of William. When a prominent person died, it was common for the scribes to commemorate the passing with a poem. And the Peterborough Chronicle contains just such a poem to note the death of William. The poem was composed in rhyming verse, which, you might remember, was unusual for old English poetry. Rhyming was much more common in the Latin tradition. So this particular poem shows the heavy influence of Latin at the time. The poem begins with the lines, castellus hele vertien unt ermen suite swainchien. In modern English it reads, castles he had built and miserably oppress the poor. So that gives you some sense of how the Anglo Saxons viewed William. And notice that the first word of the poem is castellus castles, a Norman French word that was already so common in the language that it opened the poem. The poem then states that William as king was very stark and rigid. Say king was a sweethasteric. It says that he extorted many marks of gold, minimark goldes and many more hundreds of pounds of silver and mahundre punda silveres. It says that greediness he loved above all. Gradi ne sa he louva de med ayl. And then we have the following. He settled many deer parks, and he laid laws therewith. He set mutual deirfrith and he laid lochu therewith. So that whosoever slew a hart or hind, that's a male or female deer, that man should be blinded. That swa hwa swa sloche hert othahinda that hina man shelda blandien. He forbade men from killing harts and also boars, and he loved the tall deer as if he were their father. He forbed the herte swolta etch daberis swa suite he lovida the heedair suilcha, he vera hera vader. Likewise he decreed that the hares should go free. The rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men lamented. Etch he sat beitham herein that he mosten freo feren his ricimen hit manden ante ereme menhit becheroden. But he was so stern that he considered their hatred not at all for the king's will they must follow. Akhe wasois stith that he ne ructa hera el ranith achimosten mit ela thes cungis vila forchein. So as the Anglo Saxon monks commemorated the death of William, we get a sense of how they viewed him. He was oppressive, and he compelled everyone to follow his will. He exploited the resources of England. But it's fascinating that the poet focuses so much on these hunting preserves. He created the new Royal Forest. The poem states that William loved deer as if he were their father. And based on William's difficult relationship with his children, he may have loved the deer even more. The poet also emphasizes that these forest restrictions were hated by rich men and poor men alike. With respect to the actual language of the poem, it's still decidedly Old English. The poet uses the word castellus, or castles, but otherwise the poem relies almost entirely on Old English words. In describing the rich men and the poor men, the poet uses the phrases riccimene and erememein. Ricciamen is obviously rich men, both Old English words, and ermemein is poor men, using the Old English word ereme, which meant poor. The word poor is actually a Norman French word derived from the Old French word pauvre, and it's found in some of the earliest Middle English texts. But here the poet continued to use the more traditional Old English term herme. But note that the phrase rich and poor, which is very common in modern English, is a combination of Old English and Norman French. Rich is from Old English and poor is from French. And that's just an example of how mixed the two vocabularies became during the upcoming Middle English period. I should also take note of the poet's words for the animals protected by William's new forest laws. He begins by referring to the forest or preserves as deirfrith, literally the deer peace, the place where deer live in peace. That was the best way to describe the preserves in Old English. Now, you might remember from an earlier episode that the Old English word deer or deer didn't mean what it means today. In Old English, deer was a general term for a wild animal, so it could include deer, boar, foxes, or any number of other wild animals. So it was common to refer to the hunt for deer, meaning wild game. But by far the most desired animal was the animal we know today as the deer, deer. So those were the animals that were most often being pursued. And when people said they were going to hunt deer, they may have been using a general term, but they were usually referring to that particular animal. So over time, the word deer or deer became restricted to the animal we know today as deer. Before the sense of the word deer shifted to a specific animal, that particular animal was called a hart or hinda. Hart gave us the word hart, H A R, T. And in Old English, it could be used as a general term for the animal, or it could be used specifically to mean a male deer. And that's how this particular poet used the term. By the way, the word hart is cognate with the word horn. And both words come from an Indo European root word that meant horn, horn. And just as the Indo European word for horn gave us heart, the Indo European word for hornless gave us the word for a female deer, which was hinda or hind today. So hart and hind are the Old English terms. But again, as the sense of the word deer became restricted to this particular animal, those older words hart and hind, largely disappeared. Now, what's interesting about the evolution of the word deer is that the same basic thing happened in Latin. So let's look at Latin for a minute. The word hunt is an Old English word, and the Latin equivalent was venari. And that produced the Old French word for hunt, which was venerie. And that word actually passed into Middle English as venery. So in Middle English, you might go on a hunt using Old English, or you might engage in venery using French. Well, the object of the hunt or venery was venison. Again, venison comes from the same root as venery. And the original sense of venison was any wild animal that was hunted. So it could refer to a deer or a boar or even a rabbit. So at this point, the Latin word venison and the English word deer basically meant the same thing, any wild animal that was hunted. But again, since the primary object of the hunt was the animal we know today as the deer, the sense of both words became restricted over time. And just as deer became restricted to that particular animal, the word venison also became restricted to the meat of that particular animal. So today we think of venison as the meat of the deer. By the way, the same Indo European root that gave us the words venery and venison also gave us the word venerate. If you venerate something, you admire it and hold it in high regard. And that linguistic connection shows how important deer were to medieval hunters. The same root word also gave us the name of the goddess Venus, as well as the word venereal, as in a venereal disease. Again, Venus and venereal had to do with desire, specifically sexual desire. So if your sexual desires lead you on a different kind of hunt, a different kind of venery, if you will, you might end up with a venereal disease. So be careful. As we've established, hunting can sometimes be dangerous. Now, I noted that the word hunt is an Old English word, and French had the word venery, which was quite common in Middle English. But English also borrowed another word from French to describe the hunt. That was the word chase. I noted in an earlier episode that the words chase and catch were originally the same word. Chase was the version of the word from standard Old French, with its ch sound at the beginning and catch was the version from Norman French, with its hard K sound at the beginning. Over time, the words became distinct in English. First you chase something, then you catch it. But both words came into English around this time, because both words appear in some of the earliest Middle English documents and both words related to hunting. The reason why a hunt was often called a chase is because of the way early hunts were often conducted. Let's take a royal hunt, for example. The hunting party would find a clearing in the woods, and the king and his closest attendants would take cover near the clearing. The other men in the hunting party would track down the deer in the forest, and when they found the deer, they would blow a horn to signal that they had found it. And then they would chase the deer back towards the clearing where the king and his attendants were waiting. As the deer approached, the king and his attendants would take aim with their bows and arrows, and they would try to kill it. But sometimes the animal would run between the various men in the hunting party, and in the confusion, a shooter might miss the deer and hit one of the other hunters by mistake. These types of accidents were very common, so lots of people died on the hunt. In addition, some of the animals, like wild boar, were also very dangerous by themselves. If cornered, they could easily kill a hunter with their horns. So hunting accidents were a common cause of death, even among the family of the king, as we've already seen. Now, in addition to the words that we've already explored, a few other French words related to hunting also entered English during the early Middle English period. One of those words was the word retrieve. Today, the word has a general sense. It can refer to the process of finding and bringing back any object. So I might ask you to retrieve my keys or retrieve my hat. But the word retrieve was originally used to describe the process whereby dogs would find lost game and bring it back to the hunter. That's why those dogs were sometimes called retrievers. Again, the sense of the word has become more general over time. Along the same lines as retriever, we also have the word terrier. Terrier comes from the Latin word terra, meaning earth or land or soil. We have that root in the word terrain. Well, back in Normandy, hunters would hunt badgers, but badgers would dig tunnels and hide in mounds of dirt. These mounds were called terriers, based on the Latin word terra. And one type of dog was particularly good at digging into terriers and getting the badgers. This type of dog was called a chien terrier, literally an earth dog. And over time, the name was Shortened to just terrier. And speaking of hunting dogs, another early borrowing from French was the word leash. Now, so far, I've focused on the hunt for wild game using horses and dogs. But what about the hunt for birds like ducks, quail, pheasants, and other fowl? Well, that was much more difficult in the era before guns. Many of those birds flew beyond the range of arrows. But there was a way to catch those birds, and that was to use a trained hawk or falcon to seek out other birds and catch them. This type of hunting was called falconry, and it became very popular with the noble classes. Just about every baron and lord had a trained falcon or hawk. Now, the use of falcons was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages. In fact, this was generally considered to be the most noble type of hunting. Trained hunting birds like falcons and hawks were status symbols. It was very expensive to train a bird, so only the wealthiest people could afford one. So it became a symbol of nobility. Nobles would often walk around with their birds on their arms, so they would take their birds just about everywhere. There are even reports that some bishops and abbots took their birds with them to church. And if you look at paintings from the Middle Ages, you'll see that knights and nobles are often depicted with hawks or falcons on their arms. And that was just a way of indicating that the person was a noble or other prominent person. Now, today, it's difficult for us to imagine how popular falconry was at the time when guns were invented and became widespread that rendered falcons unnecessary, and most people stopped keeping falcons and hawks for hunting at that time. But we can get a sense of how popular falconry was by looking at the English language. Lots of common words and expressions can be traced back to this type of hunting. So let's explore some of those terms, and let's begin with the process of training the bird. The training of a young bird began by tying a leash to the bird's legs and then tying the other end of the leash to a perch. At this point, the bird was tethered to the perch so it couldn't really fly away. The bird was restrained or abated, using the French word abate. In Middle English, the word abated was sometimes shortened to just baited. So a tethered bird was said to be baited. In the 1500s, Shakespeare picked up on this usage, and it was Shakespeare who coined the phrase with bated breath. In the Merchant of Venice, he used the phrase to mean with restrained breath, as in holding one's breath. And from there, the phrase with bated Breath became a common English expression, but ultimately it can be traced back to a baited or restrained bird. Now, sometimes a young, untrained bird would attempt to fly away, but it couldn't, since it was tethered to the perch. The young bird would struggle against the tether, becoming more and more frustrated, before eventually realizing that it couldn't fly away. That led to the phrase I'm at the end of my tether to mean that my frustration level has peaked and I can't take it anymore. Some scholars think that the phrase at the end of my tether later led to phrases like at the end of my rope and at the end of my leash. They all mean the same thing. Now. Once the bird was accustomed to being tethered, it was then introduced to the hood. The hood was a piece of leather that covered the bird's eyes, but it left an opening for the beak. So it was literally a hood that covered most of the bird's head. The hood served a couple of purposes. First, it covered the bird's eyes, so it forced the bird to train by using its other senses. So it had to rely on its sense of taste and hearing and touch. The hood also tended to calm the bird by blocking out any distractions. A hawk's eyesight can actually be 10 times better than a human's. So the bird would sometimes get distracted by a target way off in the distance that the trainer couldn't even see. So again, the trainer wanted to get the bird to focus on a specific target that was close by. And when the hood was placed on the bird, the bird couldn't see that far off target anymore. It had to rely on its other senses, like its sense of hearing. So the hood was a way of deceiving the bird, pulling its focus away from one target to another. And in that situation, the bird was said to be hoodwinked. And that led to the modern expression hoodwinked to mean the process of tricking or deceiving someone. The next step in training the bird was to get the bird accustomed to pursuing a target and then returning to the trainer. The trainer would take a piece of meat and tie feathers to it. The feathers were usually the wings of the bird that was to be hunted. The trainer would then remove the bird's hood and let the bird go after the feathered meat. And when the bird became accustomed to the meat, the trainer would tie a string to it and whirl it in the air so the bird could learn to pursue a target in flight. And through this process, the bird came to associate feathers with feasting. Eventually, the bird could be untethered and allowed to fly around on its own. And as soon as the trainer pulled out that piece of feathered meat, it caught the bird's attention, and the bird would return to the trainer. This type of meat with feathers attached to it had a very specific name. In French, it was called a lure, and we still have that word today, spelled L, U, R, e. And since the bird was attracted to the lure, it was said to be alluring. Over time, the word alluring has come to describe anything tempting or enticing. But lure and alluring both began with falconry. Sometimes the falcon became accustomed to the lure, and it stopped pursuing it. In those cases, the trainer would actually use a decoy bird, A stuffed bird that looked real but wasn't. That would entice the falcon back to the perch or the net. The stuffed bird was often a pigeon, and it was often attached to a perch or stool. This type of decoy was called a stool pigeon. Over time, it came to mean any type of decoy. And in later centuries, the police would sometimes use an informer to catch criminals. And that was just a different type of decoy. And in the 1800s, American English applied that term stool pigeon, to. To those police informers. And that's the sense of the phrase today. Now, once the falcon was accustomed to the lure, the trainer introduced the falcon to live birds. The first live birds introduced were usually partridges or snipes. The snipe was a very common bird in England, and it was considered a delicacy, but it was very difficult to catch because it was so quick. Now, falcons could be trained to catch them. But when guns were introduced in the 1500s, it became much easier to kill snipes. Even so, the hunter had to be concealed in the brush to get a good shot. And that led to the term sniper, meaning a concealed gunman. But originally, it meant someone hunting a snipe. Now, when the falcon pursued a particular bird, it would track it down and grab it in flight. The falcon would use its claws to grab and hold the bird. The heel claw of the falcon was its talon, but the other claws were called pounces. Using a French term, the word pounce is actually related to the word punch. And the connection between those words is the fact that the pounces were claws that punched holes in things. Well, the meaning of the word pounce, meaning a bird's claws, shifted over time to refer to the process of seizing something with claws. And that gave us the modern sense of the word pounce, meaning to seize or attack something. Now, when falcons caught their prey, they would return it to the trainer. They weren't supposed to eat it. The falcons were actually fed at specific feeding times. But you didn't want to feed the bird immediately before going hunting, because when the falcon ate and had a full stomach, it didn't want to fly at all. So it was basically useless until it got hungry again. A full falcon that didn't want to fly was said to be fed up. In other words, it was fully fed. Over time, the phrase fed up has passed into general usage to mean that a person has had enough and has reached a point where he or she doesn't want to do something anymore. Sometimes the falcon would eat too much and be fed up, and sometimes they would drink too much, which would produce the same result. A falcon's drinking bowl was called a bose. The word bose and bowl may be related, but I can't find any actual confirmation of that. Anyway, the process of a bird drinking from a bose was called bose. So it became a verb. And that verb came to refer to the process of drinking too much. The pronunciation later shifted to booze, and it came to refer to the process of drinking too much alcohol or getting drunk. You might go boozing and drink too much, just like a falcon would booze and drink too much water. Today the word booze has also become a noun, referring to the alcoholic drinks that a booze might consume. Once a bird was fully trained, it could be taken out on the hunt. The bird had to be secured to its owner or handler. The bird would sit on the handler's protruding index finger, but the bird had to be leashed so it wouldn't fly away. Sometimes the handler would hold the leash between his index finger and his thumb. In that case, the bird was set to be on under the handler's thumb, meaning under control. And that led to the phrase under my thumb or under your thumb to mean under control. Sometimes the handler would extend the leash around his hand and wrap it around his little finger. And that led to the phrase wrapped around his little finger to again mean under control. Sometimes the falcon was carried around on a mobile perch. Another word for the perch was the cadge, and the person who carried around the cage was called the cadger. It was usually an older hunter who had become too old for regular hunting activities, so it became his job to carry around the cadge. So the cadger was usually an old man. Over time, the pronunciation shifted from cadger to codger, and that gave us the modern word codger, as in an old codger. Some etymologies also link the word cadger with the word caddy, a person who carries a golfer's bag at a golf course. Now, speaking of an old codger, we get another common English word from an old hawk. It was always better to train a hawk or falcon when it was young, but sometimes an adult hawk would be caught during migration. An adult female hawk caught in the wild was called a haggard. Since they were usually caught at the end of a migration, they were usually thin and tired, having made a long journey. Over time, the word haggard became an adjective describing a person or animal that's thin and tired or worn out. When falcons were not hunting, they were allowed to rest. They would sleep, and when they would awaken, they would shake their feathers. Many scholars think this is the origin of the phrase shake a tail feather or shake your tail feathers to mean wake up and start moving. There was actually a French word for a bird shaking its feathers when it awoke. That word was rousse, and that produced the word rouse, as well as the related word arouse. Again, rouse and arouse were originally terms used in falconry. So all of that means that this particular type of hunting gave us baited breath. At the end of my tether, hoodwinked lure, alluring stool pigeon, pounce, fed up, booze under my thumb, wrapped around my little finger, Codger, haggard, rouse, arouse and shake a tail feather. So you can start to see how important falconry was in the Middle Ages. As I noted, this was the favorite type of hunting for many nobles, and trained falcons were a sign of nobility. But like other forms of hunting, it was increasingly restricted by the expansion of the royal forest. As we saw earlier, both the nobles and the peasants hated the expansion of those royal preserves. With the death of William the Conqueror, his son, William Rufus, was now the King of England. And William Rufus continued to designate new royal forests. But that was only one source of tension between the new king and his nobles. As we know, most of the wealthy barons of England were French. After the conquest, they received large land holdings in England, but many of them still had holdings in France as well. And as long as William the Conqueror was the ruler of Normandy and England, that wasn't a problem. But now England and Normandy had different rulers. William's eldest son, Robert, was Duke of Normandy, and his middle son, William Rufus, was King of England. So those barons now had divided loyalties. They were technically vassals of both rulers, and that created a lot of conflicts, especially if Robert were to claim the English throne. As the eldest son, they were also inclined to support Robert, since Norman tradition favored the eldest son. They also resented the many fees that were being imposed and collected by William Rufus, which they considered excessive. All of this led to a revolt by several of the prominent barons in England. They threw their support to Robert in Normandy. They marauded and plundered parts of the country, but Robert never crossed the channel to support their rebellion. So the uprising eventually started to fall apart. William Rufus secured his position in England by appealing to the people. He promised leniency in the enforcement of the forest laws. He also promised to repeal or reduce some of the taxes he was collecting. And over time, he garnered the support of the furred, or militia, and he finally defeated the rebellious barons. Many of the rebels were exiled and their lands were confiscated. So William Rufus was finally able to secure his position as his father's successor in England. But he wasn't able to maintain the popular support of the people, and he probably didn't care because he didn't really need that support as he moved forward. William Rufus was a fascinating figure. Whether he was a good king or a bad king is difficult to say, because he was good in some ways and bad in others. Politically and militarily, he was shrewd and very successful. But he was also a tyrant. He lived an extravagant lifestyle, and he bled the country dry to support that lifestyle. In an era when almost every king ruled as an openly Christian king, William Rufus didn't. He seemed to have no interest in religion at all, and he openly quarreled with the Church. And that's partly why history has not been kind to him, because Church scribes tended to write the history of the period, and whether they wrote in English or Latin or French, it didn't really matter. They all painted William Rufus as a depraved tyrant, and that image became the popular view of him by later historians. His legacy is shaped by the fact that he tried to generate revenue and money from any source he could. When it came to payments owed to him by his vassals, he demanded every pound. Whereas his father had tended to show some leniency in regard to those payments, William Rufus demanded those payments without exception. Sometimes he demanded payments that were arbitrary and excessive. When a vassal died with an underage heir, William Rufus took possession of the estate and milked it dry before the heir became an adult. And when a bishop or abbot died, he'd leave the position vacant. Without a serving bishop or abbot, William Rufus could collect the monies owed to the church or abbey in their absence. This even included the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Archbishop lanfranc died in 1089, William Rufus left that position vacant for four years. And during that time, he collected the rents owed to the diocese. And that was why the monks and the other church officials despised him. As I noted, they got to write the history of the period. William of Malmesbury wrote a very influential history of England in Latin during this period. He wrote of William Rufus that he feared God too little and man not at all. He described the king's courtiers as being effeminate. He also said that the king's attendants didn't behave as nature had intended them to. The other great historian of the period, Orderic Vitalis, wrote that William Rufus had no lawful wife, but he gave himself insatiably to obscene fornications and frequent adulteries. It was noted that William Rufus wore his hair very long in the Anglo Saxon tradition. It was a style detested by the Normans because they thought it looked effeminate. It was noted that William Rufus didn't wear traditional Norman clothing. Instead, he wore the clothes that were the style of the day. Now, later historians have read between these lines and concluded that William Rufus was probably either gay or bisexual. And I note this because he never married or showed any interest in getting married, and he never had any children, so there was no natural heir to succeed him. Now, I noted that William Rufus was a fascinating figure because despite the picture painted by the Church scribes, he was actually a very effective military leader. He put down the initial rebellion by the barons. He also ventured into Wales and secured land from the Welsh princes in the border regions. He forced the Scottish king to pay homage to him, so no one threatened him in Britain. But what he really coveted was Normandy. He wanted to rule over both sides of the Channel, as his father had. But his brother Robert had inherited Normandy. In 1091, four years after he became King of England, William Rufus invaded Normandy and he crushed Robert's forces, and he forced Robert to cede part of eastern Normandy to him. The two brothers later made up, but William Rufus still wanted control of the rest of Normandy, and he got his opportunity. In the year 1096, that opportunity came in the form of the First Crusade. Jerusalem had recently fallen to Muslim invaders, and the Pope asked the prominent knights of Europe to come to the near east to liberate the city. Robert decided to join the Crusade, and in 1096, he made plans to head to Jerusalem. But it was going to be an expensive venture, so Robert needed money to fund the forces he intended to take with him. And since he was going to be gone, he needed someone to rule Normandy in his absence. William Rufus was a potential solution to both problems. He had the money to pay for the expedition, and he had the expertise to govern Normandy. So Robert went to his brother, William Rufus, and made him an offer. If William Rufus would loan him 10,000 marks, he could have control of Normandy while Robert was away on the Crusade. But Normandy would revert back to Robert when and if he returned alive. William Rufus thought that was a pretty good deal, and he loaned Robert the money, and Robert headed to Jerusalem, and William Rufus took control of Normandy as well as England. But in order to raise the money to give to Robert, William Rufus had to levy a massive tax on the whole of England. So the resentment against him continued to grow in England. William Rufus now had effective control of both England and Normandy, just what he had always wanted. He then set about recovering the disputed region of Maine in the southwest, and he was able to take it back. So by the year 1100, he ruled over as much territory as his father had, and he actually ruled over a larger area when we consider that he was able to recover Maine for Normandy. So his empire was just as broad and substantial as that of William the Conqueror. But back in England, his lust for power and money had alienated much of the population. As I noted, the Church had already turned against him, and the people resented his taxes and lavish lifestyle. And the nobles also resented those taxes and the many other payments which he demanded. And they also resented the continued expansion of those royal forests. Like his father, William Rufus loved to hunt, and he continued to implement the harsh forest laws. The men who enforced those laws were generally hated and despised. They became almost a law unto themselves. They often acted as judge, jury, and executioner. Literally, sometimes they would accuse a person of poaching the king's deer, and they would punish the offender on the spot, sometimes with execution. The people were expected to contribute to the strict enforcement of the forest laws. If peasants or villagers witnessed someone poaching deer or otherwise violating the forest laws, they were expected to shout as loud as they could to get the attention of the forest officials. Old French had two words that meant to shout or wail. One word was eu, and the other was cre, which survives as the word cry. Both words came into early Middle English, and they were combined into the phrase hue and cry. And the phrase hue and cry has its origins here in the royal forests of England. After the Norman Conquest. It was the term used to describe the ruckus to be raised when people caught an offender in the royal forest. But here's the thing. The people despised those forest restrictions. They had more sympathy for the poachers than the king. So they often turned a blind eye to poachers. When forest officials suspected that laws were being broken, they would hold an inquest. And the surviving records from this period are filled with accounts of villagers and peasants who swore that they knew nothing and recognized nobody. The fact is that the forest officers were a hated class, and the people who got away with poaching the king's deer became local heroes. And this is the background for the legends of Robin Hood that were about to take shape in the 1200s. In fact, one of the earliest ballads about Robin Hood describes him as a poacher who was declared an outlaw for killing the king's deer. Of course, he took refuge in Sherwood Forest, one of the many royal forests established during this period. But before Sherwood Forest became famous in the tales of Robin Hood, there was another famous forest, the New Forest, established by William the Conqueror in the south of England. And that famous forest was starting to become very infamous. One of William the Conqueror's sons had been killed in that forest a few years earlier while hunting. And early in the year 1100, while Robert was still fighting in the First Crusade, his son named Richard went to the New Forest in England to go on a hunting trip. While in the forest, he met the same fate as his uncle. Again, the details are unclear, but the son of Robert of Normandy died while hunting in the New Forest in May of the year 1100. No one knows if Robert received the news of his son's death while he was in Jerusalem, but by this point, the battle had already been won there. The First Crusade was a victory for the European knights, and Robert was making plans for his return to Normandy. But, of course, his brother, William Rufus, was now governing Normandy in his absence. So the big question at this point was whether William Rufus intended to give Normandy back to Robert when he returned. Well, we never got the answer to that question. In August of the year 1100, about one month before Robert returned, William Rufus was back in England. And guess what he decided to do? If you guessed that he went on a hunting trip, you would be correct. In fact, he went to that favorite stomping ground, the New Forest. It was the same place that his brother had died and his nephew had now died a few months earlier. And now William Rufus was about to meet the same fate. His hunting party that day included his younger brother Henry, the one who had received 5,000 pounds of silver when his father Died and had proceeded to count every pound of it. The hunting party also included one of William Rufus's companions, named Walter Tyrrell. As was customary, the hunting party spread out and waited for the rangers to chase a deer across their line of fire. After a period of waiting, a deer suddenly appeared, and Walter Tyrrell took aim at the deer and fired his arrow. But he missed. The arrow struck William Rufus in the chest, and the king reached out and broke off the arrow that was sticking out of his chest. But then he fell to the ground, dead. The historical sources tell us that Tyrrell immediately realized the consequences of what he had done. He headed directly to the coast and crossed over to France. Meanwhile, William Rufus brother Henry also realized the consequences. He was standing there in the forest over his dead brother's body, and he realized that England was now without a king. He also realized that the king had no children, so the next person in line to the throne would be one of the king's brothers. That meant either himself or his brother Robert, who was still in Jerusalem. So Henry didn't hesitate for a second. We are told that he left his dead brother lying on the ground and he headed directly for Winchester. When he arrived in Winchester, he secured the royal treasury. Whoever had control of the treasury had effective control of England. The very next day, Henry was proclaimed as the new king of England. He then headed to London, where he was crowned at Westminster Abbey just three days after his brother had been killed in the hunting accident. But was it an accident? Many historians believe that it wasn't, that it was in fact an assassination. They believed that Henry and Walter Tyrrell were co conspirators. Now, the circumstances are clearly suspicious. The shooter, Tyrrell, immediately fled the country without even attempting to defend himself. And Henry left his brother lying on the ground, headed straight for the treasury to claim the throne. But neither Henry nor Tyrrell were ever formally accused of any wrongdoing. And it's very likely that many in England were happy that William Rufus reign had finally come to an end. Whether it was an accident or an assassination, England now had a new king, Henry, known to history as Henry I. Henry became king in the year 1100. So we're now at the beginning of the 12th century. And this is the century when we can finally start to identify some specific changes that were starting to take place in the language other than the addition of new French words. So next time, we'll look at Henry's life and death. Like his brother Robert, Henry also lost a son to an accident. So he also lacked a clear successor. And his death actually led to a period of civil war known as the anarchy. And that term, anarchy, can also describe the linguistic situation on the ground during that same time period. So next time we'll look at how this period of political and linguistic anarchy led to the emergence of a new type of English. Until then, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast SA.