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

she gave in for fear that he might die. She gave in under the condition that her honor
might be retained, in private and public. His appropriately courtly reaction was to fall on
his knees, "with so devout humblesse, With so high reverence, and, as by his cheere, So
lyk a gentil lovere of manere." 85 As often happens, the tercel later found it necessary to
leave for a time. Despite a typically sorrowful leave-taking, in which the falcons
promised faith to each other, the female found herself betrayed.
A particularly interesting aspect of this story is that beyond the fact that the
peregrine falcon describes afin amors love affair, as the telling of her tale proceeds, the
things to which she compares her faithless lover change complexion from animal at the
start to completely human at the finish. At the beginning he is compared to a serpent
waiting for the right time to bite, then, he is a two-faced tiger. Soon afterward he is
compared to several legendary deceitful lovers-Jason, Paris, the biblical Lamech. In
fact, the falcon's lover is such a hypocrite that no deceitful man through the ages would
be "worthy unbokelen his galoche."86 A falcon who wears sandals is certainly a novel
idea. However, at the end of her tale, the female falcon offers up some folk wisdom in
which she really emphasizes the human comparison:
Whan it cam hym to purpos for to reste,
I trowe he hadde thilke text in mynde,
That 'alle thyng, repeirynge to his kynde,
Gladeth hymself;' thus seyn men, as I gesse.
Men loven of propre kynde newefangelnesse,
As briddes doon that men in cages fede.
For though thou nyght and day take of hem hede,
And straw hir cage faire and softe as silk,
And yeve hem sugre, hony, breed and milk,
Yet right anon as that his dore is uppe
He with his feet wol spurne adoun his cuppe,
And to the wode he wole and wormes ete;
'j The Squire's Tale, vv. 544-546.
86 V. 555. Galoche = sandal.