224 



a higher status, and with his epoch commenced the evolution 

 which resulted in the Sinnington becoming one of the crack 

 hunts in Yorkshire. Ere very long, the hounds were so suited 

 to the country that the Master was not afraid of the first and 

 most critical hounds men in the world seeing them. Indeed, 

 with commendable pride in them, and a desire, too, to show 

 them sport, he welcomed strangers, and few Masters were 

 more anxious that they should have a good time. No day was 

 too long for him, and wonderful was the sport they had in 

 these " the good old days " of fox-hunting. It is a matter 

 for regret that through want of opportunity (his time was so 

 fully occupied ), he only wrote down the accounts of red-letter 

 days, one or two of which he has been kind enough to let 

 me copy. Mr. Parrington did not keep a journal of the doings 

 in the Sinnington country as he had done in the Cleveland. 

 As Jack Parker could neither read or write, he did not. 

 Hence, it is impossible to recounb some of even the 

 most famous gallops. They were many, and some 

 of them still live in the memory of those who still 

 hunt by the fire when the wind blows keen, and the 

 trees are shorn of their leaves as winter approaches. I have 

 found it an unsatisfactory business, however, procuring 

 runs from those who have no data beyond their own memories. 

 Unintentionally, a story told many times gradually deviates 

 in substance and in fact. The obstacles grow bigger, the 

 pace becomes faster, and the distance and time longer. 

 That the sport in Mr. Parrington's mastership was of first- 

 rate order there is no doubt. He sends me an interesting 

 account of his first and one or two subsequent days with 

 the Sinnington as Master. 



The season was opened on October 14, 1879, with a fixture at 

 Bonfield Gill, a narrow ravine between Bilsdale and Bransdale, so 

 isolated, by- the- way, that they have a local couplet, " Gan to Bonfield 

 Gill — where the Lord niwer was na nivver will." A cub was found 

 here, and quickly pulled down, after which an old fox was found, which 

 went over the " rig " into Bransdale as far as Stork House, when he 

 turned right-handed over Rinlgate Moor to Piethorn, then right across 

 the moor to Bilsdale, and to ground in a free stone quarry, near Spout 

 House. We tried two local terriers to bolt our fox, but neither would 



