84 England's oldest hunt. 



Possibly, if caustic, the criticism was correct, at any rate it was what the 

 old fellow thought. He once went to see Mr. H. Johnstone's (now 

 Sir H. Meyuell Fitzherbert's) hounds, and I am told gave an almost 

 Jorrocksonian lecture on hound breeding. " That's a niceish byctch," he 

 would say, "bud yon ugly dayvel spoils t'leeak ov t'lot." If I remember 

 rightly, on the very occasion upon which he called some of the hounds 

 " ugly day vols," they made a collection for him, and he walked home 

 from near Pickering that night. He did more than hunt for his fame 

 as a sportsman, he was, in his day, a famous cricketer and a good shot ; 

 whilst he played no small part at the little race meeting which was held 

 at Stokesley years ago, and claimed support from almost the whole of 

 the North Riding. Thus he was a man of many parts, and though he 

 might be somewhat phlegmatic, still his life is not without its moral 

 and its lesson. Whatever Bobbie Dawson's hand found to do he did it 

 for the credit of the sport and the fair sporting reputation of the dale 

 in which he lived. Patriotic to a degree, he was also faithful — synony- 

 mous as the two terms may seem there is an added meaning. Neither 

 age nor change of times and contemporaries, nor little misunderstandings, 

 nor lack of means and foxes, estranged Bobbie Dawson from his first 

 love — the Bilsdale Hounds. Full of years then has he died, dying as 

 he lived, with the talk of foxes and of fox-hunting, and with an ex- 

 hortation to the good woman who had nursed him in his last illness, 

 to bring up her little lad, one of the very few that the old man had ever 

 cared for or taken any notice of, as a fox-hunter, the moral, as the 

 outstanding feature of his long life, therefore, was his faithfulness 

 born of a love for the sport which we in these degenerate days cannot 

 understand. 



On one occasion the author was accompanied by Mr. 

 Howard Pease into Bilsdale to see old Dawson. I intro- 

 duced him, and Robert ere long was addressing him as 

 " Pease," and asking him if he was a " good hunter," and 

 what pack he followed. Mr. Pease, shortly after his visit, 

 sent me the following impression of the character : — 



Shrunken, withered, and ancient, Bobbie Dawson was, it seemed, 

 still the tireless sportsman of an old out-of-the world dale, for though 

 80 years or more of age he still remembered with boyish keenness all 

 the great days and mighty runs he had participated in during the many 

 years of his arduous life. He had hunted with tireless avidity the 

 hare and the fox, and even upon occasion an old witch, who, he said, 

 had given them a rare run at night, changed into the shape of a long- 

 legged yellow hare. He was the true type of the old-fashioned sports- 

 man ; of one who lives for that particular aspect of life in a way that 

 is not known now-a-days, when the desire of change or of excitement 



