I may just add, that in addition to the hand-guns, I meet with other instruments of like kind mentioned in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, demy hags,… - Joseph Strutt

Yet, we are well assured that learning did not form any prominent feature in the education of a young nobleman during the Saxon government: it is notorious, that Alfred the Great was twelve years of age before he learned to read; and that he owed his knowledge of letters to accident, rather than to the intention of his tutors. A book adorned with paintings in the hands of his mother, attracted his notice, and he expressed his desire to have it: she promised to comply with his request on condition that he learned to read it, which it seems he did; and this trifling incident laid the groundwork of his future scholarship.

The people of Sybaris, a city in Calabria, are proverbial on account of their effeminancy; and it is said that they taught their horses to dance to the music of the pipe; for which reason, their enemies the Crotonians, at a time when they were at war with them, brought a great number of pipers into the field, and at the commencement of the battle, they played upon their pipes; the Sybarian horses, hearing the sound of the music, began to dance; and their riders, unable to manage them as they ought to have done, were thrown into confusion, and defeated with prodigious slaughter. This circumstance is mentioned by Aristotle; and, if not strictly true, proves, at least that the teaching of animals to exceed the bounds of action prescribed by nature was not unknown to the ancients.

If a gentleman, or an inferior thane, killed a stag in the king's forests, he was degraded from his rank; if a ceorl, or husbandman, committed the same offence, he was reduced to slavery; and if a slave killed one, he suffered death. Magistrates were appointed, in every county, or shire, to put these laws in execution, and under them were appointed inferior officers or gamekeepers, whose province it was to apprehend the offenders.