A FOXHUNTING JOURNAL 47 



THE BOBBERY PACK 



Andy Hartigan's dead and gone 



Over the hills and further yet, 



But he drank good port and his red face shone 



Like a cider apple of Somerset. 



Ten strange couples o' hounds he had — 

 ? "Gaunt" old brutes that had hunted fox 

 Back in the days when Noah was a lad, 

 Touched in the bellows and gone at the hocks — 



Hounds he'd stole from a Harrier pack, 

 Hounds he'd borrowed an' begged an' found, 

 Grey an' yellow an' tan an' black, 

 Every conceivable kind o' hound. 



He called them "harriers," and a few 

 Were harriers — back when the world began — 

 But they were n't particular where they drew 

 An' they were n't particular what they ran. 



I mind him once of a bygone morn, 

 Ruddy an' round on his flea-bit horse, 

 Twangin' a note on his battered horn 

 An' cappin' them into the Frenchman gorse. 



They pushed a brown hare out of her form 

 An' swung on her line with a crash of tongues: 

 But a vixen crossed an' her scent was warm, 

 So they ran her, screechin' to burst their lungs. 



They ran her into my lord's demesne, 

 Where my lady's fallows were grazing free; 

 They picked a stag and followed again, 

 Singing like souls in ecstasy. 



They chased the stag up over the ridge 

 With lolling tongues an' with heaving flanks; 

 They lost him down by the Cluddah bridge, 

 But killed an otter on Cluddah's banks. 



They had no shape an' they had no style; 

 Their manners were bad and their morals slack; 

 They were noisy, but wonderful versatile, 

 Andy Hartigan's bobbery pack. 



