Note 8 — III

Page 43.—With blast of the bugle fared forth to the field. The account of each day’s hunting contains a number of obsolete terms and details of woodcraft, not given in full. The meaning of some has been lost, and the minute description of skinning and dismembering the game would be distinctly repulsive to the general reader. They are valuable for a student of the history of the English sport, but interfere with the progress of the story. The fact that the author devotes so much space to them seems to indicate that he lived in the country and was keenly interested in field sports. (Gottfried von Stressbourg’s Tristan contains a similar and almost more detailed description.)