Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

it is made typically of something that resembles prey, such as two crane's wings tied
together, attached to the end of a two and a half foot long leather thong. Fresh meat is
attached to the lure, and the falconer swings it above his head while calling out to the
falcon in order to get it to return. The lure is used successfully with falcons, but not with
hawks.
In Frederick's time and afterward, his book was not widely read despite its
excellence. When thirteenth and fourteenth-century vernacular treatises are written, they
hearken back to Albert the Great or Adelard, or they invoke several other texts as the
voice of authority: the above-named Guillelmus, another falconer, possibly also attached
to King Roger, called Gerardus, and a legendary but fictitious Indian king, Dancus Rex,
often referred to as the original authority on falconry. Many treatises cite him as their
ultimate source.55
Of the many vernacular treatises on falconry, the only one to survive in Provenqal
is the work, in rhyming couplets, of Daude de Pradas, a thirteenth-century cleric. He was
the canon of the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Rodez, a writer of love lyric, and a practicing
falconer. His work is largely indebted to that of Abelard. He writes of the choosing and
care of goshawks, falcons, sparrowhawks, and merlins. He starts by describing the
physical characteristics of hawks, and which characteristics are to be prized in looking for
a bird; then he describes the different qualities of hawks depending on how they were
captured, as does Brunetto Latini. Daude notes, comprehensively, the different types of
falcons and their favorable characteristics, how to raise and train the birds, how to cast
55 See Giuliano Innamorati, Arte della caccia: testi di falconeria, uccellagione e altre cacce, Vol. 1
(Milano: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1965), 79-80, for an overview of these authors. He also cites an important
work related to this subject that I was unfortunately unable to locate: Gunnar Tilander, Dancus rex,
Guillelmus falconarius, Gerardus falconarius; Les plus anciens traits de fauconnerie de I'OccidentpubliLs
d'apr8s tous les manuscripts connuspar Gunnar Tilander, Lund, 1963.