English Surnames: Their Sources and SignificationsBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
English Surnames: Their Sources and Significations
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, English; Names, Personal -- English
‘Fewter’ and ‘Futter,’[230] however, seem to be the only relics we now
possess of this once important care. Such names as ‘John le Berner’ or
‘Thomas le Berner,’ common enough in old rolls, must be distinguished
from our more aristocratic ‘Berners.’ The _berner_ was a special
houndsman who stood with fresh relays of dogs ready to unleash them if
the chase grew heated and long. In the Parliamentary Rolls he is termed
a ‘yeoman-berner.’ Our ‘Hornblows,’ curtailed from ‘Hornblower,’ and
simpler ‘Blowers,’ would seem to be closely related to the last, for the
horn figured as no mean addition by its jubilant sounds to the
excitement of the chase. He who used it held an office that required all
the attention he could bring to bear upon it. The dogs were not
unleashed until he had sounded the blast, and if at any time from his
elevated station he caught sight of the quarry, he was by the manner of
winding his instrument to certify to the huntsman the peculiar class to
which it belonged. In the Hundred Rolls we find him inscribed as
‘Blowhorn,’ a mere reversal of syllables. Of a more general and
professional character probably would be our ‘Hunters,’ ‘Huntsmans,’ and
‘Hunts,’ not to mention the more Norman ‘John le Venner’ or ‘Richard
Fenner.’ It may not be known to all our ‘Hunts’ that theirs, the shorter
form, was the most familiar term in use at that time; hence the number
that at present exist. We are told in the ‘Knight’s Tale’ of the—
Hunte and horne, and houndes him beside;
while but a little further on he speaks of—
The hunte ystrangled with the wilde beres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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