Lexicon of the Mediaeval German Hunt: A Lexicon of Middle High German Terms (1050-1500), Associated with the Chase, Hunting with Bows, Falconry, Trapping and Fowling

The aims of this Lexicon are threefold. First, it has been designed to throw light on the nature of Mediaeval German hunting terminology. Second, it has been compiled as a contribution to Middle High German lexicography. Third, it is intended as a means of elucidating various important passages in the Middle High German classics, at present obscure in their technical under- and overtones; for the mediaeval nobility were passionate hunters with horse, hound and hawk, and the hunt was poetry in action to them, often colouring their verbal idiom and poetry. All three aims have, I think, been amply fulfilled by Dr. Dalby's completed work. Mediaeval German hunting terminology has been shown to be strictly pragmatic: the esoteric terms which confer such high prestige to-day come not from the mediaeval but from the Baroque hunt, and their metaphors have little or nothing to do with primitive hunting magic, as was once supposed. This great concentration of hunting contexts from mediaeval treatises, poetry and law cannot fail to assist future lexicographers of Middle High German. Various entries in this Lexicon offer new interpretations of literary passages, accounted among the most baffling.