CHAPTER IX. 



BOBBIE DAWSON. 



Having now come to a period when the Bilsdale pack as 

 a Hunt was practically extinct, it may be advisable to hark 

 back to the connection Bobbie had with it. In Dawson, 

 we had a man who was perhaps officially connected with 

 hounds and with hunting for a longer period than any of 

 his contemporaries had been before, and most likely longer 

 than any one will be again. We seem somehow to have 

 entirely lost the genus, to " have gitten out o' t' breed," 

 as we say in Yorkshire, of men who week in and week out 

 followed hounds, not as a pleasure — though, of course, 

 it was the greatest joy of their lives — but as a sort of habitual 

 duty. With their mothers' milk they drank in that love 

 of the chase which grew and matured, was fostered and 

 encouraged, till the lad, an ardent follower of the pack, found 

 himself a man riding to hounds one or two days a week, 

 just as on other days, less auspicious, he brought home his 

 horses from the field, fothered them, and then entered the 

 thatched farmstead with its blazing turf fire, for his dinner. 

 We are more or less creatures of habit, and hunting was 

 facile princeps amongst the habits of these dalesfolk a 

 generation ago. It is hard to eulogise or even explain this 

 remarkable love of the sport which they had engrafted in 

 their natures. Perhaps the recitation of the quiet enthusi- 

 asm of Bobbie Dawson will best serve the purpose. I 

 remember the first time I saw the veteran as though it was 

 yesterday. Mr. C. E. Mills, of Tanton Hall, a fellow-member 

 of the committee of the Bilsdale Hounds, had more than once 

 suggested that I should break the isolation of the dale and 

 interview the old hunt characters, only one of whom is now 

 living. I was at the time busy with a history of the Cleveland 

 Hunt and another sporting book, and was loth to take on 



