EVOLUTION OF THE PACK. 



123 



an enjoyable function. Chappie Garbutt was there, also Stephen 

 Ainsley. The former said he would commit suicide if the hounds 

 went down ; it was the only bit of " re-creation they got." Steve, 

 too, was quite lively, and sang a number of his interminable hunting- 

 songs — some of them with more than forty verses, said and believed 

 to have been composed by himself, but which peculiarly enough I find, 

 with altered place-names and facts, in the " Badminton Library : The 

 Poetry of Sport," as having been written a century before Stein saw 

 the light. I would not say so for the world, for Bilsdaleites will tell you 

 no one sings like Stein, and no one has such songs to sing either. He 



„**»•*« 



CHAPPIE 



GARBUTT. 



himself telWa story of how at one of the Earl of Feversham's rent audits 

 the then agent asked for " Just forty verses of that song of yours." 

 Steven is on the Committee of the Bilsdale Hunt, and years ago regularly 

 followed the pack on foot, and occasionally on a " gallower." He is a 

 stonemason by trade, of Scotch extraction, and one of a big family. 

 He was born at the quaint old Spout House, kept by his elder brother* 

 and they show you the marks yet on the old stone-mullioned window 

 where the young Ainsleys sharpened their knives prior to sitting down 

 to dinner. Stem once told me that " breedin' will tell, an' a dowter of 

 his had married yan Wheldon, a blacksmith, at Hawnby. Sha used 

 ta be 'at sha wad run whal sha brast efter t' hoonds, an' wad hev hed 

 me keep all t' dogs in t' pack. Ah ewsed ta keep yan reglar i' them 

 daays, an' well sha waited on it " (i.e., attended to it). Chappie 

 recited his poem, which is a regular institution, but which he will not 



*Now deceased, though the license is still held by the family. 



