HORNS, HOLLOAS, DOG LANGUAGE 97 



who are not of the Hunt establishment need concern 

 ourselves ; and, like the sounds on the horn, the 

 fewer words of command that hounds have to learn 

 the better. Most huntsmen have some few pet 

 words of their own, some " little language " to their 

 favourites, which concerns us not ; but the ordinary- 

 terms of the chase, as written by Tom Smith and 

 other even older authorities, should, I think, be main- 

 tained, and unorthodox dog-language should not be 

 suffered to creep into general use. 



Whyte-Melville, in his ballad The King of the Kenjiel, 

 which he dedicated to John Anstruther Thomson, was 

 at great pains that the bit of dog-language with which 

 he ended each stanza should be correct ; and his 

 correspondence with Anstruther Thomson on this 

 subject is not the least amusing item in that famous 

 fox-hunter's Reminiscences. 1 notice, by the way, that 

 in the ballad Whyte-Melville prints a term we have 

 been discussing in a manner of his own : — 



" Yo-yooite, Bachelor I 

 Right for a crown 1 " 



It is pleasing, then, I fancy, to all sportsmen to retain 

 the old familiar sounds and usages of the chase and 

 to vary them as little as possible. I have lately been 

 plagued by an inability to understand what a hunt 

 servant meant by the various war-whoops he uttered, 

 and have suffered unnecessary palpitation several times 

 a day through believing he was holloaing a fox away 

 when he was only trying to get hounds out of 

 covert. These strange, weird noises were baneful, 



Sounds, Oentlemen, Please. § 



