And sometimes the hounds and the hunters shall pass above him and beside him and he will not stir. For although he be a foolish beast he has many ruses and treasons to help himself. He runneth wondrous fast, for when he starts from his lair he will go faster than a brace of good greyhounds. They haunt thick coverts of wood, or thick heathes, and sometimes in carres (marshes) and commonly in high countries or in hills and valleys and sometimes in the plains. The kids are kidded with pomeled[63] (spotted) hair as are the hind calves. And as a hind's calf of the first year beginneth to put out his head, in the same wise does he put out his small brokes[64] (spikes) ere he be a twelvemonth old. He is hardeled[65] but not undone as a hart, for he has no venison that men should lay in salt. And sometimes he is given all to the hounds, and sometimes only a part. They go to their feeding as other beasts do, in the morning and in the evening, and then they go to their lair. The roebuck remains commonly in the same country both winter and summer if he be not grieved or hunted out thereof. [63] From the old French _pomelé_. [64] See Appendix: Roe. [65] See Appendix: Hardel. CHAPTER VI OF THE WILD BOAR AND OF HIS NATURE A wild boar is a common beast enough and therefore it needeth not to tell of his making, for there be few gentlemen that have not seen some of them. It is the beast of this world that is strongest armed, and can sooner slay a man than any other. Neither is there any beast that he could not slay if they were alone sooner than that other beast could slay him,[66] be they lion or leopard, unless they should leap upon his back, so that he could not turn on them with his teeth. And there is neither lion nor leopard that slayeth a man at one stroke as a boar doth, for they mostly kill with the raising of their claws and through biting, but the wild boar slayeth a man with one stroke as with a knife, and therefore he can slay any other beast sooner than they could slay him. It is a proud[67] beast and fierce and perilous, for many times have men seen much harm that he hath done. For some men have seen him slit a man from knee up to the breast and slay him all stark dead at one stroke so that he never spake thereafter. [66] In spite of the boar being such a dangerous animal a wound from his tusk was not considered so fatal as one from the antlers of a stag. An old fourteenth-century saying was: "Pour le sanglier faut le mire, mais pour le cerf convient la bière." [67] Proud. G. de F., p. 56, _orguilleuse_. G. de F., p. 57, says after this that he has often himself been thrown to the ground, he with his courser, by a wild boar and the courser killed ("et moy meismes a il porté moult de fois à terre moy et mon coursier, et mort le coursier"). They go in their love to the brimming[68] as sows do about the feast of St. Andrew[69], and are in their brimming love three weeks, and when the sows are cool the boar does not leave them[70].