an a swinging branch would do (Fig. 135).

Gaston Phoebus is known to have been one of the bravest knights of his
time; and, after fighting, he considered hunting as his greatest delight.
Somewhat ingenuously he writes of himself as a hunter, "that he doubts
having any superior." Like all his contemporaries, he is eloquent as to
the moral effect of his favourite pastime. "By hunting," he says, "one
avoids the sin of indolence; and, according to our faith, he who avoids
the seven mortal sins will be saved; therefore the good sportsman will be
saved."

[Illustration: Fig. 134.--"How to allure the Hare."--Fac-simile of a
Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus (Fifteenth Century).]

From the earliest ages sportsmen placed themselves under the protection of
some special deity. Among the Greeks and Romans it was Diana and Phoebe.
The Gauls, who had adopted the greater number of the gods and goddesses of
Rome, invoked the moon when they sallied forth to war or to the chase;
but, as soon as they penetrated the sacred obscurity of the forests, they
appealed more particularly to the goddess _Ardhuina_, whose name, of
unknown origin, has probably since been applied to the immense
well-stocked forests of Ardenne or Ardennes. They erected in the depths of
the woods monstrous stone figures in honour of this goddess, such as the
heads of stags on the bodies of men or women; and, to propitiate her
during the chase, they hung round these idols the feet, the skins, and the
horns of the beasts they killed. Cernunnos, who was always represented
with a human head surmounted by stags' horns, had an altar even in
Lutetia, which was, no doubt, in consequence of the great woods which
skirted the banks of the Seine.

[Illustration: Fig. 135.--"How to take a Cart to allure
Beasts."--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus
(Fifteenth Century).]

The Gallic Cernunnos, which we also find among the Romans, since Ovid
mentions the votary stags' horns, continued to be worshipped to a certain
extent after the establishment of the Christian religion. In the fifth
century, Germain, an intrepid hunter, who afterwards became Bishop of
Auxerre, possessed not far from his residence an oak of enormous diameter,
a thorough Cernunnos, which he hung with the skins and other portions of
animals he had killed in the chase. In some countries, where the Cernunnos
remained an object of veneration, everybody bedecked it in the same way.
The largest