Phœbe, who was a complete Diana, and would take hazardous leaps, beckoning Mr. Forester to follow her extraordinary feats, led the Squire to wager heavy sums that in leaping she would beat any woman in England. With Phœbe and Moody, and a few choice spirits of the same stamp on a scent, there was no telling to what point between the two extremities of the Severn it might carry them. They might turn-up some few miles from its source or its estuary, and not be heard of at Willey for a week. One long persevering run into Radnorshire, in which a few plucky riders continued the pace for some distance and then left the field to the Squire and Moody, with one or two others, who kept the heads of their favourites in the direction Reynard was leading, passed into a tradition; but the brush appears not to have been fairly won, a gamekeeper having sent a shot through the leg of the “varmint” as he saw him taking shelter in a churchyard—an event commemorated in some doggrel lines still current.
Very romantic tales are told of long runs by a superannuated servant of the Foresters, old Simkiss, who had them from his father; but we forbear troubling the reader with more than an outline of one of these, that of Old Tinker. Old Tinker was the name of a fox, with more than the usual cunning of his species, that had often proved more than a match for the hounds; and one morning the Squire, having made up his mind for a run, repaired to Tickwood, where this fox was put up. On hearing the dogs in full cry the Squire vowed he would “Follow the devil this time to hell’s doors but he would catch him.” Reynard, it appears, went off in the direction of the Clee Hills; but took a turn, and made for Thatcher’s Coppice; from there to the Titterstone Hill, and then back to Tickwood, where the hounds again ousted him, and over the same ground again. On arriving at the Brown Clee Hills the huntsman’s horse was so blown that he took Moody’s, sending Tom with his own to the nearest inn to get spiced ale and a feed. By this time the fox was on his way back, and the horse on which Tom was seated no sooner heard the horn sounding than he dashed away and joined in the chase. Ten couples of fresh hounds were now set loose at the kennels in Willey Hollow, and these again turned the fox in the direction of Aldenham, but all besides Moody were now far behind, and his horse fell dead beneath him. The dogs, too, had had enough; they refused to go further, and Old Tinker once more beat his pursuers, but only to die in a drain on the Aldenham estate, where he was found a week afterwards.
“A braver choice of dauntless spirits never
Dash’d after hound,”
it is said, and to commemorate one of the good things of this kind, a long home-spun ditty was wont to be sung in public-houses by tenants on the estate, the first few lines of which were as follows:—
“Salopians every one,
Of high and low degree,
Who take delight in fox-hunting,
Come listen unto me.“A story true I’ll tell to you
Concerning of a fox,
How they hunted him on Tickwood side
O’er Benthall Edge and rocks.“Says Reynard, ‘I’ll take you o’er to Willey Park
Above there, for when we fairly get aground
I value neither huntsmen all
Nor Squire Forester’s best hound.“‘I know your dogs are stout and good,
That they’ll run me like the wind!
But I’ll tread lightly on the land,
And leave no scent behind.’”
Other verses describe the hunt, and Reynard, on being run to earth, asking for quarter on condition that
“He will both promise and fulfil,
Neither ducks nor geese to kill,
Nor lambs upon the hill;”
and how bold Ranter, with little faith in his promise, “seized him by the neck and refused to let him go.” It is one of many specimens of a like kind still current among old people. An old man, speaking of Mr. Stubbs, for whom, he remarked, the day was never too long, and who at its close would sometimes urge his brother sportsmen to draw for a fresh fox, with the reminder that there was a moon to kill by, said,
“One of the rummiest things my father, who hunted with the Squire, told me, was a run by moonlight. I’m not sure, but I think Mr. Dansey, Mr. Childe, and Mr. Stubbs, if not Mr. Meynell, were at the Hall. They came sometimes, and sometimes the Squire visited them. Howsomeever, there were three or four couples of fresh hounds at the kennels, and it was proposed to have an after-dinner run. They dined early, and, as nigh as I can tell, it was three o’clock when they left the Hall, after the Beggarlybrook fox. Mind that was a fox, that was—he was. He was a dark brown one, and a cunning beggar too, that always got off at the edge of a wood, by running first along a wall and then leaping part of the way down an old coal pit, which had run in at the sides. Well, they placed three couples of hounds near to this place in readiness, and the hark-in having been given, the gorse soon began to shake, and a hound or two were seen outside, and amongst them old Pilot, who now and then took a turn outside, and turned in, lashing his stern, and giving the right token. ‘Have at him!’ shouted one; ‘Get ready!’ said another; ‘Hold hard a bit, we shall have him, for a hundred!’ shouted the Squire. Then comes a tally-ho, said my father, and off they go; every hound out of cover, sterns up, carrying a beautiful head, and horses all in a straight line along the open, with the scent breast high. Reynard making straight for the tongue of the coppice, finds himself circumvented, and fresh hounds being let loose, he makes for Wenlock Walton as though he was going to give ’em an airing on the hill-top.
“‘But, headed and foiled, his first point he forsook,
And merrily led them a dance o’er the brook.’“Some lime burners coming from work turned him, and, leaving Wenlock on the left, he made for Tickwood. It was now getting dark, and the ground being awkward, one or two were down. The Squire swore he would have the varmint out of Tickwood; and the hounds working well, and old Trumpeter’s tongue being heard on the lower side, one challenged the other, and they soon got into line in the hollow, the fox leading. Stragglers got to the scent, and off they went by the burnt houses, where the Squire’s horse rolled over into a sand-pit. The fox made for the Severn, but turned in the direction of Buildwas, and was run into in the moonlight, among the ivied ruins of the Abbey.”
