THE BILSDALE HUNT. 53 



which Miss Katherine Duncombe relates in her Badminton 

 article, to which reference has already been made, is as 

 interesting as any I have heard, insomuch as it gives one an 

 insight into the character of the sportsmen under notice. 



An anecdote told in the hunt is worth relating. It was at one 

 time under the management of two men, called Tate and Leng. One 

 Saturday afternoon, after a good run, these two worthies found them- 

 selves in the vicinity of the market-town of Stokesley. It happened 

 to be market day, and here the two remained for some hours, to rest 

 and bait their horses, and refresh the inner man. After drinking a 

 stirrup cup they started home about midnight. It was a bright, 

 moonlight night, and as they passed a covert called Hoggarth (sic 

 Hoggett's) Wood, hounds got on to the line of a fox. The two men 

 joined in the hunt, nothing loth, and eventually the fox was run into 

 and killed between two and three o'clock on Sunday morning, the 

 men having galloped for over two hours across some of the roughest 

 country in England. 



Speaking of Sunday reminds me that within the memory 

 of some of the old dalesfolk, the fixtures of the hunt for the 

 coming week were announced with the other notices from 

 the pulpit on Sundays in Biledale, by no means the least 

 interesting portion of the service to many. Records of 

 sport are vague in the extreme during the period the pack 

 was under the dual control of Tate and Leng, though it 

 seems they had wonderful runs, for then there were no jet 

 and alum workings, which have since spoiled many a good 

 gallop. Scent does not lay on the shale tips, and so soon as 

 a fox is pressed on the Cleveland side of the country, where 

 " jetting " and alum working was at one time quite an 

 industry, he pops into an old working. They are so numerous 

 and there are so many badgers on the hills (one would 

 regret to see the number less), that it is next to im- 

 possible to stop them all. The names of the two families 

 seem to disappear with the severance of the connection by 

 death or old age of the two worthies mentioned. Leng's 

 name occurs in the account of the last stag hunt the Bilsdale 

 ever had — probably after a stag which had strayed from 

 Buncombe Park, where for long a large number have been 

 bred, the wild character of the enclosure on the Wass side 



