Courts to Hutches to Courts?

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

I mean; I've sort of grown up with the idea that Courts were used for ferrets in like the medievil days. Ye know; Kings ferrets kept by the Royal Keeper of Ferrets. In some huge, stone built outbuilding, like a pig stye (for those of ye who remember what proper pig stys were like - f***ing excellent ferret courts!).

 

Then, some how / where / when, people seem to have suddenly decided that sticking them into a tiny hutch and feeding them bread and milk was de riggour and a splendid idea. Wonder ferrets, as a creature, ever bloody survived through all that!

 

Now, of course, everyone likes to imagine they're of the elite because they do for their ferrets what everyone used to do, donkeys years ago.

 

Or something like that.

 

Strange. Anybody actually done any proper research into all this? Near as I could ever be arsed to get was noting how that excellent little 'Exchange and Mart Book of Ferrets' spoke of the matter. Only I'm f***ed if I can remember the time scales mentioned or involved in that one

 

Anyway, what's the craic there? Anyone actually know? Like, did the Elizabethans use Courts and the Victorians use hutches and slop? What's the chronology of all that.

 

Nice little project for one of you ferret frenzied data junky types, eh? Sort it out!