The nestling or unfledged hawk was called an _eyas_; and in _Hamlet_ (ii. 2. 355) the boy actors, who were becoming popular when the play was written, are sneeringly described as "an aery of children, little eyases." In the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (iii. 3. 22), Mrs. Ford addresses Robin, the page of Falstaff thus: "How now, my eyas-musket! what news with you?" The eyas-musket was the young sparrow-hawk, a small and inferior species of hawk. The word is derived from the Latin _musca_, a fly, and probably refers to the small size of the bird. It is curious that, as applied to the firearm, it has the same origin. The gun was figuratively compared to the hawk as a means of taking birds. Similarly, a kind of cannon used in the 16th century was called a falcon; and another, of smaller bore, was known as a _falconet_. In _Romeo and Juliet_ (ii. 2. 160), when the lover has left his lady and she would call him back, she says:-- "Hist, Romeo, hist! O for a falconer's voice To call this tassel-gentle back again!" The _tassel-gentle_, or _tercel-gentle_, was the male hawk. Cotgrave, in his _French Dictionary_ (edition of 1672) defines _tiercelet_ as "the Tassell or male of any kind of Hawk, so termed because he is, commonly, a third part less than the female." The _gentle_ referred to the ease with which the bird was trained. We find the word _tercel_ in _Troilus and Cressida_ (iii. 2. 56): "The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks in the river"; that is, the female bird is as good as the male. The male bird, however, was seldom used in hawking, on account of its inferiority in size and strength. In descriptions of the sport we find the female pronoun generally applied to the bird. Tennyson in _Lancelot and Elaine_ originally wrote:-- "No surer than our falcon yesterday, Who lost the hern we slipt him at"; but he afterwards changed "him" to "her." The hawk was "hooded," that is, had a hood put over its head, until it was _slipped_, or let fly at the game; and to this we have several allusions in Shakespeare. In _Henry V._ (iii. 7. 121) the Constable, sneering at the Dauphin, says of his boasted valor: "Never anybody saw it but his lackey: 't is a hooded valour; and when it appears it will bate." To _bate_, or _bait_, was to flutter the wings, as the bird did when unhooded. In this passage there is a pun on _bate_ in this sense and as meaning to abate or diminish. In _Othello_ (iii. 3. 260), when the Moor has been told by Iago that Desdemona may be false, he says:-- "If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune."