Wiktionary
n. (plural of fewmet English)
Wikipedia
Fewmets are the feces of a hunted animal, by which the hunter identifies it.
Fewmets is a medieval English hunting term derived from the Old English, with the intimation that these droppings are the only hint of the animal's presence; that the creature itself has yet to be seen.
T. H. White's novel The Once and Future King makes reference to the "Beast Glatisant", or Questing Beast, constantly hunted by King Pellinore who uses its fewmets not only to track the beast, but to monitor its condition and state of health. White describes how the medieval huntmaster would wrap in leaves the spoor of the animal he was stalking, carrying this package stored in his hunting horn. This part of his job served two vital purposes:
Firstly, even if the noble sponsor of the hunt and his equally exalted guests were sufficiently skilled huntsmen to keep up with the hounds, it would have been beneath his dignity to dismount and examine the condition of the spoor to ascertain how close the hunted animal was. He would be shown the excrement, to ascertain from its condition how close the prey might be; but the physical task of retrieving the droppings would be left to the huntmaster—a skilled functionary, but also a commoner. Secondly, in the event that the patron was not knowledgeable about woodcraft, the fewmets served as the huntmaster's bona fide. They were physical evidence that there was in fact an animal out there to be caught—and that the sponsor of the event and his noble friends were not being led in a merry and altogether pointless chase around the woods by a malicious or ignorant bumpkin.In fantasy fiction and role playing games, fewmets are the droppings of dragons or other mythical creatures. Dragon fewmets are often the source of gunpowder in such books and games, allowing black-powder weapons into the fantasy genre.
Usage examples of "fewmets".
His job was to clean the stud stalls and bathe the big male dragons: dust and fewmets, fewmets and dust.
Jakkin knew that Slakk and Errikkin would use this time to clean the stall, raking out the old fewmets, patting down the dust, settling new straw for bedding.
Either way and old Likkam would have Jakkin back spreading fewmets on the weed and wort patches for a month.
LOST COUNT after the sixth fight, but he could hear, overhead, the pit cleaners circling noisily, gobbling up old fewmets with their iron mouths.
He came out of his stance with a splattering of dust and fewmets, stopped, then charged again.
Federation, rebels, senators-the whole lot could rot in fewmets as far as he was concerned.
And trainers, linked with their dragons, often chose to eat crouched amid the fewmets and dust.
A few moments of glory in the Pit, then back to the dust and fewmets again.
The best-beloved tall tales swapped at night in the nursery revolved around the legendary Fewmets Ferkkin, who had tried to breed a totally clean dragon, a dragon that took in at one end but never gave out at the other.
Each day the carts were emptied into the wort patches, the combination of fewmets and straw being the finest fertilizer available on the planet.
You could talk to him about os and argos, suet and grease, croteys, fewmets and fiants, but he only looked polite.
The Questing Beast and King Pellinore put their heads together and sent some of their most perfect fewmets, all wrapped up in the green leaves of spring in a golden horn with a red velvet baldrick.