VOCAL HARMONY 



Farmers, in these more strenuous times, are not 

 able to follow the hounds so often or in such 

 numbers as they did in the days to which I am 

 referring, but the old enthusiasm for the sport is 

 far from dying out. When the Bath and West 

 Society met at Newport in 1907 there was the 

 customary State function in the shape of a civic 

 banquet, attended by representatives of both 

 Houses of Parliament and many dignified officials. 

 In the midst of set orations of more or less 

 solemnity, some one hinted that, if a particular 

 nobleman in our midst could be induced to give 

 tongue with " John Peel," it would be something 

 worth listening to. With a good nature, which 

 was appreciated to the full, then and afterwards, 

 the acting president (the present Lord Radnor) 

 responded to the desire expressed, and in a way 

 which amply justified, by the pleasure it gave, 

 this unusual call upon a president's powers. 

 Nobody had ever heard the old song sung better, 

 and the way in which the whole company lent 

 itself to the rendering of the chorus and the final 

 " tally-ho " was a testimony to the enthusiasm 

 which, even in these latter days, the sport could 

 evoke. 



At the farming dinners of the earlier period 

 referred to patriotic and sentimental songs were 

 most favoured after the hunting ones, and, 

 strange to say, there was generally a fair sprink- 

 ling of sea-songs, but you rarely heard a real 

 good old country-side ballad, telling of the common 

 incidents, the sunshine and the storm, of rural 

 life. You had to go elsewhere for these, as Mr. 

 Cecil Sharp, who has done so much to rescue 



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