_Oyez, à Beaumont_ (in Twici: _Oyez, a Beaumont le vaillaunt que il quide trover le coward od la courte cowe_): "Hark to Beaumont the valiant, who thinks to find the coward with the short tail."
_La douce, la il ad este sohowe_: "Softly, there--here he has been," if the place where the hare has pastured is seen.
_Illoeques, illoeques_: "Here, here," if the hounds hunt well on the line (_see_ Appendix: Illoeques).
_Ha sy toutz, cy est il venuz arere, so howe. Sa cy a este so howe. Sa cy avaunt_: "Here, he has gone back. Here he has been. Forward there." When the hare has doubled.
_La douce amy, il est venuz illoeques, sohowe_: "Softly, friend, he is here." When the hounds hunt well in fields or arable land.
_La douce, amy, la est il venuz (pur lue segere sohow)_: "Softly, friend, here he has come to seat himself" (Mid. Eng., _sege_--a seat. Latin, _sedere_).
_La douce, amy, la il est venuz (pur meyndir)_: "Here he has been to feed" (_meyndir_, from Latin _manducare_, _mandere_).
The bracketed part of the last two cries are given in the MS. of Twety and Gyff., and the following are only in the "Master of Game":--
_Le valliant oyez, oyez who bo bowe_, and then, _Avaunt, assemble, assemble, war war, a ha war_, for running riot. _How assamy assamy so arere so howe bloues acoupler._
On seeing the pricking or footing of the hare: _Le voye, le voye_ ("The view, the view").
In France, _Tallyho_, or a very similar sounding word, was employed in the early days when the huntsman was sure that the right stag had gone away, whether he only knew it by his slot, &c., or whether he had viewed him.
It was also a call to bring up the hounds when the stag had gone away, and at the end of the _curée_, when the huntsman held part of the entrails of the deer on a large wooden fork, and the hounds bayed it (which was called the _forhu_), the huntsman called out _Tallyho_.
We only find _Tallyho_ in comparatively recent English hunting literature and songs--never, so far as I am aware, before the late seventeenth century, and it does not occur at all constantly until the eighteenth century. Neither Turbervile nor Blome nor Cox, in their books on the various chases, mention such a word, though we find instruction to the huntsman to say "Hark to him," "Hark forward," "Hark back," and "To him, to him"; besides the inevitable "So how sohow." Neither in Twici, "Master of Game," "Boke of St. Albans," Chaucer, or Shakespeare can we find an invigorating _Tallyho_. It would almost appear as if it were a seventeenth century importation from across the Channel, which is quite possible, for Henry IV. of France sent in that century three of his best huntsmen, Desprez, de Beaumont, and de Saint-Ravy, to the Court of King James I. to teach the royal huntsmen how to hunt the stag in the French way, English Court hunting having degenerated into coursing of stags within the park palings.