FOX-HUNTING.
(Vol. viii., p. 172.)
As no answer to the Query on "Fox-hunting" has yet appeared in "N. & Q.," I venture to send the following extracts from an article in the Quarterly Review, March 1832, on "The Management of Hounds and Horses," by Nimrod. It appears that "the first public notice of fox-hunting" occurs in the reign of Richard II., who gave permission to the Abbot of Peterborough to hunt the fox:
"In Twice's Treatise on the Craft of Hunting, Reynard is thus classed:
'And for to sette young hunterys in the way
To venery, I cast me fyrst to go;
Of which four bestes be, that is to say,
The Hare, the Herte, the Wulf, and the wild Boar:
But there ben other bestes, five of the chase,
The Buck the first, the seconde is the Do;
The Fox the third, which hath hard grace,
The ferthe the Martyn, and the last the Roe.'
"It is indeed quite apparent, that until at most a hundred and fifty years ago, the fox was considered as an inferior animal of the chase; the stag, buck, and even hare, ranking before him. Previously to that period, he was generally taken in nets or hays, set on the outside of his earth: when he was hunted, it was among rocks and crags, or woods inaccessible to horseman: such a scene in short, or nearly so, as we have drawn to the life in Dandie Dinmont's primitive chasse in Guy Mannering. It is difficult to determine when the first regularly appointed pack of hounds appeared among us. Dan Chaucer gives the thing in embryo:
'Aha, the fox! and after him they ran;
And eke with staves many another man.
Ran Coll our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerlond,
And Malkin with her distaff in her hond.
Ran cow and calf, and eke the very hogges,
So fered were for the barking of the dogges,
And shouting of the men and women eke,
They ronnen so, hem thought her hertes brake.'
"At the next stage, no doubt, neighbouring farmers kept one or two hounds each; and, on stated days, met for the purpose of destroying a fox that had been doing damage to their poultry yards. By and bye, a few couple of strong hounds seem to have been kept by the small country esquires or yeomen who could afford the expense, and they joined packs. Such were called trencher hounds, implying that they ran loose about the house, and were not confined in kennel."
These are but short extracts, but they comprise the whole of what is said on the first origin of fox-hunting. The rest of the article treats of the quality and breed of horses and hounds.
Frederick M. Middleton.