FOOTLOOSE FOOD - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 145

societies around the world in which people eat rats - yet there are a great many rats in the
world. 4 Animals which are not sought after for food not infrequently become pests, so their
consumption by a minority is tolerated or even welcomed - in the UK rabbits are now in
this category.
In some cases different species of animal competing for a resource will represent the in-
terests of different groups. The double satisfaction of dining on revenge can be seen in this
glimpse of 19th century Africa: 'The Tswana people of South Africa recognized their poor
by their reaction to the appearance of locusts. Whereas the rich were appalled lest the lo-
custs ate the grass needed by their cattle, the poor who had no cattle rejoiced because they
could themselves eat the locusts.' 5
However it may be the livestock of the wealthy who are raiding the fields of the poor. In
medieval England, pigeons flew out daily from the dovecotes of the manor to feast on the
peasants' corn, bringing their nutrients back to deposit on the floor of the dovecote - and
the rabbits from the Lords' warren's cropped their grass. In the 18th century the deer of the
Crown forest estates grazed, and had a right to graze, on the crops of neighbouring small
farmers.
But the scales can be tipped back in favour of the poor. 'Most of all did it rejoice the
farmer's heart to slay secretly for his own pot one of the legion of privileged birds from
the dovecote,' suggests Trevelyan. 6 And an 18th century victim of royal deer incursions in
Winkfield, Berkshire, was reported as saying:
I know how to resent and how to revenge it, which every farmer knows too … and
this is the true reason why game in all forests is so very scarce, and why, probably,
some resolute people take an insufferable liberty to kill the deer. 7
For centuries the poor and landless of Britain fought a running battle with landowners
over the right to hunt and eat the beasts and fowl that moved back and forth over the
wealthy's estates. The battle culminated in the Black Act of 1723 which made 50 offences
punishable by execution and which was not repealed until 1827, when it was judged to be
of greater benefit to send the most spirited elements of the peasant class to the antipodes
rather than hang them. Landowners stocked their woods with 'tame and docile birds, whose
gay feathers sparkled among the trees before the eyes of the half-starved labourers break-
ing stones on the road for half a crown a week.' 8 The war was won by the landowners, who
maintained ownership rights over the wild animals and birds found on their land, but, des-
pite the executions and the transportations, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Innumerable peasants
improved the diet of their families and neighbours by poaching, and often did so with the
open approval of their community. Poaching as a subsistence activity faded out in Britain
in the 20th century when food started to become cheap, even for the poorest sector of the