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

lower classes are shown to be more practical. This contrast between the idealist and the
practical points of view represents here a class difference that translates in Italy to the
tension between the old aristocracy and the new merchant class, and results in Boccaccio
and others using this birdllove image to illustrate it as well.
Birds of prey act like noble human lovers in another of Chaucer's works. In his
Canterbury Tales, the Squire's Tale includes the story of a falcon who has lost her lover.
Here again one finds falcons practicing fin amors. While the representation of hawks as
courtly lovers is fairly typical, it would be difficult to find literary falcons who act more
human than this one and her faithless lover.
The Squire tells a tale in which an unknown knight comes to the court of
Cambyuskan (Genghis Khan) and bestows gifts. To Cambyuskan's daughter, Canacee,
he gives a ring that endows its wearer with the ability to understand the speech of birds.
When next Canacee walks in the park, she encounters a female peregrine falcone3
perched in a dead tree,84 pecking herself and beating herself with her wings till she
bleeds, while crying piteously. Canacee asks the bird about her grief, all the while
holding her skirt out in case the falcon should faint and fall out of the tree. Before
replying, the falcon does fall out of the tree, unfortunately missing Canacee's lap.
However, Canacee picks her up, and hears her tale. The falcon tells of her cosseted
upbringing, and then of the tercel falcon that lived nearby to whom, after much
persuasion, she gave her love. He later betrayed her, giving his love to a kite, a bird
representative of a lower social status. Before he showed his true colors, he kept all the
rituals involved in "gentillesse of love," she says. He served his lady many years until
83 The terms falcon and hawk are used interchangeably in this tale.
84 he sterility of the tree echoes of course the futility of her love, as the lush garden echoes the fruitfulness
of most birds in Valentine's Day poems.