CHAPTER XV. 



JACK PARKER. 



Having already introduced Jack Parker, whose name is, 

 and ever will be, immortal amongst Yorkshire sportsmen, 

 and particularly in the annals of the Sinnington Hunt, it 

 will be appropriate to say something regarding that worthy. 

 A writer in " Baily," in 1872, gave an excellent character 

 sketch of him : — 



The present huntsman, John, or, as he is more generally called, 

 Old Jack Parker, came in 1850, and is a specimen of the old-fashioned 

 rough-and-ready type of huntsman now but seldom seen. Standing 

 6 feet high or upwards, though an old man, he is as wiry and muscular 

 as ever, and is a sportsman to the back-bone ; to use his own expression, 

 he " comes of a fighting family, and was a bit wild when he was young," 

 and polished off some rum customers, though the licking of a navvy, 

 with whom he fell out at Thirsk Races, and knocked out of time when 

 they subsequently met in a couple of rounds, he considered his greatest 

 coup, and dwells on that mill with the fondest recollections. No 

 quainter bit of a character can be dropped on than when Jack's favourite 

 " Mountain Dew " has mellowed him a little, to hear him fight his 

 battles o'er again. Mr. Digby Cayley has often taken him salmon 

 fishing, as he is quite an expert in all piscatorial matters ; and on one 

 occasion, when wandering by the river-side, at Kelso, he was collared 

 by two keepers as a poacher. Jack submitted like a lamb to her shearers 

 until, after a two miles' walk, his master was reached, when, exclaiming, 

 " There's my master, and I gans neea further ! " he hurled them off. 

 He is a capital shot, and with an old flint gun holds his own at all local 

 pigeon matches, and likes seeing a couple of game-cocks settle their 

 differences as much as he enjoyed a mill himself years ago ; and I shall 

 never forget the enthusiasm with which he expressed his wish to myself 

 that his wife, " Nanny," was present with a couple of red hackles, when 

 we talked the subject over, " just to show you how she can set them." 

 Nanny is as game as her lord and master, and a few years ago would 

 ride Jack's horse round en cavalier, when he was not inclined for the 

 job, and gather the hounds from their different quarters. She always 

 does up the nags after hunting — latterly, I believe, assisted by her 

 daughter, who, at one time, delighted in nothing more than giving Tip, 

 by Duncan Dhurras, a gallop, and warmly remonstrated with her 



