Master Simon has continual
disputes with him, as to feeding and training the hawks. He reads to
him long passages from the old authors I have mentioned; but Christy,
who cannot read, has a sovereign contempt for all book-knowledge, and
persists in treating the hawks according to his own notions, which are
drawn from his experience, in younger days, in the rearing of
game-cocks.
The consequence is, that, between these jarring systems, the poor,
birds have had a most trying and unhappy time of it. Many have fallen
victims to Christy's feeding and Master Simon's physicking; for the
latter has gone to work _secundum artem_, and has given them all the
vomitings and scourings laid down in the books; never were poor hawks
so fed and physicked before. Others have been lost by being but half
"reclaimed," or tamed; for on being taken into the field, they have
"raked" after the game quite out of hearing of the call, and never
returned to school.
All these disappointments had been petty, yet sore grievances to the
Squire, and had made him to despond about success. He has lately,
however, been made happy by the receipt of a fine Welsh falcon, which
Master Simon terms a stately high-flyer. It is a present from the
Squire's friend, Sir Watkyn Williams Wynne; and is, no doubt, a
descendant of some ancient line of Welsh princes of the air, that
have long lorded it over their kingdom of clouds, from Wynnstay to the
very summit of Snowden, or the brow of Penmanmawr.
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