[73] G. de F., p. 58, says they wind acorns as well or better than a bear, but nothing about winding a man. See Appendix: Wild Boar.
[78] Despiteful or furious deeds. G. de F., p. 60, says that he only trusts in his defences and his weapons ("en sa défense et en ses armes").
He will well run and fly from the sun rising to the going down of the sun, if he be a young boar of three years old. In the third March counting that in which he was farrowed, he parteth from his mother and may well engender at the year's end.[79]
[79] As this is somewhat confused we have followed G. de F.'s text in the modern rendering.
They have four tusks, two in the jaw above and two in the nether jaw; of small teeth speak not I, the which are like other boar's teeth. The two tusks above serve for nothing except to sharpen his two nether tusks and make them cut well _and men beyond the sea call_ the nether tusks of the boar his arms or his files, with these they do great harm, and also they call the tusks above gres[80] (grinders) for they only serve to make the others sharp as I have said, and when they are at bay they keep smiting their tusks together to make them sharp and cut better. When men hunt the boar they commonly go to soil and soil in the dirt and if they be hurt the soil is their medicine. The boar that is in his third year or a little more is more perilous and more swift and doth more harm than an old boar, as a young man more than an old man. An old boar will be sooner dead than a young one for he is proud and heavier and deigneth not to fly, and sooner he will run upon a man than fly, and smiteth great strokes but not so perilously as a young boar.
[80] From the French _grès_, grinding-stone or grinders.
A boar heareth wonderfully well and clearly, and when he is hunted and cometh out of the forest or bush or when he is so hunted that he is compelled to leave the country, he sorely dreads to take to the open country and to leave the forest,[81] and therefore he puts his head out of the wood before he puts out his body, then he abideth there and harkeneth and looketh about and taketh the wind on every side. And if that time he seeth anything that he thinks might hinder him in the way he would go, then he turneth again into the wood. Then will he never more come out though all the horns and all the holloaing of the world were there. But when he has undertaken the way to go out he will spare for nothing but will hold his way throughout. When he fleeth he maketh but few turnings, but when he turneth to bay, and then he runneth upon the hounds and upon the man. And for no stroke or wound that men do him will he complain or cry, but when he runneth upon the men he menaceth, strongly groaning. But while he can defend himself he defendeth himself without complaint, and when he can no longer defend himself there be few boars that will not complain or cry out when they are overcome to the death.[82]