Every so often I will post bits from my research anf notes that did not make it into my book Marsh Fen and Town, South Lincolnshire and Beyond.
Man has observed wild birds and hunted wildfowl and waders for years with migrations recorded as early as Jeremiah in the Old Testament:
"The stork in the sky knows the time to migrate, the dove the swift and the wryneck know the season of return.". Jeremiah 8.7
So too has the hunting of birds been described in literature, even in the most basic form that many of us will be familiar with, the children 's nursery rhyme:
"There was a little man, and he had a little gun,
And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead,
He saw a little duck, upon a little brook,
And he shot him right through the head, head, head."
Similarly an anonymous Suffolk ditty refers to the large punt guns that wildfowlers often used:
"Come, come! My brave boys
Though rarely well done
Show them the way
You fire the great gun!"
The poet Ted Hughes described the punt-gunner this:
"Tis now the fowler mans his little bark,
Equipped with gun, and dog of sturdiest strain,
Prepared to weather the relentless blast
To deal destruction 'mid the feathered train."
Wildfowlers are great observers of their quarry. The respect of a wildfowler for his quarry is seen in the poetry of Henry Coleman Folkard, a well-known wildfowler of the 19th century:
"How silly the wild duck and widgeon appear
To be lured in decoy by the pranks of an ape!
But crafty the Pochard, which cunningly dives
And beats under water a certain escape."
The romanticism of wildfowling is seen together with the violence that follows:
"Quick flashing thunders roar along the flood
And three lie prostrate, vomiting their blood!
The fourth aloft on whistling pinions soared;
Prone drops the bird amid the dashing waves,
And the clear stream his glossy plumage laves."
Alexander Wilson
The final result of the sport of wildfowling is a traditional meal as seen in Southey's Lines to a Goose:
"But this I know, that thou art very fine,
Seasoned with sage, with onions and port wine."
Comments