“’Twas a fine hart,” replied Shakespeare, “and no dull and muddy-mettled rascal!” [34]

[Footnote 34:  Hamlet, II. ii.]

“I be fond of a bit of spart like that,” continued Peregrine; “but I never could away with books and larning.  Muddling work, I calls it, messing over books.  Do you care for that kind of stuff, Master Quakespear?”

“I dabble in it when I am away from the country,” was the reply.

Then the Warwickshire man began soliloquising again, somewhat after this manner: 

                                     “’In his brain
     He hath strange places crammed with observation,
     The which he vents in mangled forms.’” [35]

[Footnote 35:  As you Like It vii.]

“Drat the fellow!” whispered Peregrine, turning to the parson, who happened to be riding alongside “I don’t like un, ’e’s so unkit.”

PARSON:  “What makes him talk so, William?”

PEREGRINE (touching his forehead):  “It’s a case; I’ll be bound it’s a case.  ’E’s unkit.”

“Would you mind saying that again, sir,” said the bard, producing a notebook.

Peregrine goes into a fit of giggling, so Shakespeare writes down from memory; whereupon the yeoman makes up to the squire, and says, “Hist, squire, we must ’ave a care; ‘e’s takin’ notes ’o anything we says.  ’Tis my belief ’e’s got to do with that ’ere case of Tom Barton’s they’re makin’ such a fuss and do about at Coln.  We shall all be ’ung for a set o’ sheep-stealing ruffians.”

“Thee be quite right, William,” put in the parson “I thought a’ looked a bit suspicious.  If I was you, squire, I’d clap the baggage into Northleach gaol, and exercise the justice of the peace agin un for an idle varmint.”

“Yet a milder mannered man I never saw,” said the squire.

PARSON:  “Mild-mannered fiddlestick!” Then, raising his voice so that the stranger should get the full benefit, he added, “He’s as mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat!”

Shakespeare hurriedly draws out notebook, and smilingly writes down the parson’s words; then, in perfect good humour, he says: 

“You must excuse me, gentlemen, but I have somewhat of a passion for writing down such sayings as suit my humour, lest I forget what good company I keep.”

SQUIRE (excitedly):  “Let go the hawk, Tom; there’s a great lanky heron risin’ at the withybed yonder.”

And here it is necessary to say something about the methods and language of falconry as practised by our forefathers.

Shakespeare tells us to choose “a falcon or tercel for flying at the brook, and a hawk for the bush.”  In other words, we are to select the nobler species, the long-winged peregrine falcon, the male of which was called a tiercel-gentle, for flying at the heron or the mallard; and a short-winged hawk, such as the goshawk or sparrow-hawk, for blackbirds and other hedgerow birds.  For as Mr. Madden explains, not only does the true falcon, be she peregrine, gerfalcon, merlin, or hobby, differ in size and structure of wing and beak from the short-winged hawks, but she also differs in her method of hunting and seizing her prey.