Rache

Rache /ˈrætʃ/, also spelled racch, rach, and ratch, from Old English ræcc, linked to Old Norse rakkí, is an obsolete name for a type of hunting-dog used in Britain in the Middle Ages. It was a scent hound used in a pack to run down and kill game, or bring it to bay. The word appears before the Norman Conquest. It was sometimes confused with 'brache', (also 'bratchet') which is a French derived word for a female scent-hound.

In Medieval hunting, in England and Northern Europe, pursuit of the hart or wild boar involved using a 'limer' or 'lyam hound' (a hound handled on a leash or 'lyam') to trace the animal from its footprints or droppings to where it was browsing or lying up. This became known as 'harbouring' the animal. When this had been done the huntsman reported back to his lord, who then brought the pack of raches to chase it down on its hot scent when it had been unharboured, 'rowsed' or 'upreared'. Sometimes pairs of raches were held at strategic points along where the quarry was expected to run, to be uncoupled when the huntsman blew the signal, or when the quarry was seen to come close. The bloodhound was typically used as a limer, and the raches were normally smaller hounds. A lord's pack would include one or two limers to about twenty or more raches.

A king or lord would want to hunt a great stag, a 'hart of ten', or 'warrantable' stag, or a powerful boar, partly for the extra fat it carried when in prime condition in the hunting season, but mostly for kudos.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, bloodhounds announce the presence of a great boar hiding in a thicket, which then rushes out and plays havoc among the raches of the knight's pack.

Not all game was hunted using the leash-hound. Dame Juliana Berners, writing in The Book of Saint Albans (1486) writes (translation):

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