The Medieval Boar and its Haslets
Editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight routinely gloss the term hastlettez (1. 1612) as referring to a pig's inner organs — its intestines, entrails, offal or suchlike — an interpretation that is sanctioned by both the OED and MED. This paper argues that this widely accepted understanding of the Gawain-poet's word is based on anachronistic, later evidence, and that a particularised hunting sense, current in England in the fourteenth century, is far more apposite to the context in which it occurs in Gawain. Since neither the OED nor the MED (nor even the AND) reflects this hunting sense, the evidence for its existence, and how it was used, is here considered in detail. Occurrences of the word in contemporary prose hunting treatises, such as William Twiti's L'Art de venerie (written in Anglo-Norman), The Craft of Venery and the Tretyse off Huntyng (both in Middle English), are compared with analogous evidence in the verse Boke of Huntyng. The relevant passages in these sporting manuals are examined in depth, so that other difficult or disputed words that have a bearing on the matter can be clarified, leaving no doubt as to the meaning of ME hastelet(s) in these contexts, and thereby also casting fresh light on the likely meaning of the word in Gawain
Article, 2010
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 111, 20100101, 355
2010