A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.
We shall never hear again
On the fell or in the plain
John Crozier's 'Tally-ho!'
Never see him through the rain
And the sun, with might and main
Follow on from crag to crag, while the hounds give tongue below.
Dark the valley east and west,
Clouds are on Blencathra's crest.
The hunter home has gone:
And the Squire they loved the best
Now is carried to his rest—
Eighty years has Death the huntsman followed hard—the
chase is done.
But I think I see him stand—
Rough mountain-staff in hand,
Fur cap and coat of grey—
With a smile for all the hand
Of the sportsmen in the land,
And a word for all the merry men who loved his 'Hark-away!'
Last hunter of your race!
As we bear you to your place,
We forget the hounds and horn,
But the tears are on our face,
For we mind your deeds of grace,
Loving-kindness late and early shown to all the village-born.
'It's a dark daay for Threlkett is this un, hooiver! T'ald Squire's gone doon!—girtest Master of t' dogs i' Cummerland sin Jwohn Peel I'se warrant him—an' a gay tiff aid feller an' aw. Deeth has hoaled him at last; but what, he'd bin runnin' gaame fer mair nor eighty year noo. He's bin at Maister-o-hunt job langer nor ony man i' t' whoale counttry, I suppoase, has t' aid Squire. It's sixty-fowr year or mair sin he took t' horn. Eh, my! bit what a heart he hed! Kindest-hearted man i' these parts—niver wad let a nebbor-body want for owt if he thowt he cud dea good by lendin' a hand, and pertikler fond o' t' barns; school children was fit to be mad wid him on treat-daays. And why what, he gat scheul-hoose builded, and laid doon a hoondred poond fer Parish Room, let alean gevin site i' t' village. It's a dark day fer Threlkett, I'se telling ye, and dogs hes lost best friend and t' foxes t' warst enemy they've ivver hed here-aboot.'
We were standing by the Druid's Circle on Castrigg Fell, and as the old yeoman spoke to me I looked across the valley to the great buttressed height of Blencathra—blacker to-day beneath, by reason of the slight snow covering on its summit, and saw in its grove of larches the white house, half-farm, half-mansion, whence the oldest Master of the Hunt, in Britain, had gone for his far journey. Never again would the men who follow the hounds pass through the gate of the Riddings, with the fox and the hound carved in stone on either side of them, to be met and to be greeted by the cheery old Squire on hunting days; never again, after a long day's hunt, would they repair to the Farrier Inn or to the Salutation Inn, mid-village, to wait the coming of the Master 'ere they all 'howked in' to the 'tatie-pot' he had provided them.