EPPING FOREST. 37 



to sit until he saw his guests served. With his usual gal- 

 lantry towards the fair sex, he admitted them into a 

 participation of the favours conferred upon their male 

 relations ; sending to the lady mayoress and her sisters, 

 the aldermen's wives, two harts, six bucks, and a ton of 

 wine, with which, we are told, they made merry in 

 Drapers' Hall.* 



The Epping Hunt was long entirely discontinued, as 

 it had for many years become a mere pretext for a holiday 

 to all the idle, dissolute, vagabond ish people of London. 

 In fact, there was no hunt. A deer was carted about from 

 one public-house to another, the spectators gazing at the 

 deer, and the deer gazing at the spectators, and the 

 keepers drinking ale and eating beef until they could 

 neither drink nor eat any more, when the stag was turned 

 out and was soon captured, and the hunt was over. But 

 the day's sport was not over ; for there was always an 

 ' adjournment,' after the running down of the stag, which 

 resulted in late suppers, parabolical movements homewards, 

 and dreadful headaches in the morning. The following 

 graphic account of a modern Cockney sport we give from 

 the Illustrated London News. 



" The Epping Hunt, on Easter Monday, brings back 

 many recollections of the good old days of suburban sports, 

 when the Nimrods of the metropolis went forth, as in the 

 earlier days of Chevy Chase, 



' To hunt the deer with hound and horn,' 



and gathered in hosts as numerous in Epping Forest as 

 did the borderers of Northumberland on the warlike 

 frontiers of Scotland. Fortunately the sportsmen of the 

 metropolis were not so pugnacious, or at least not so blood- 

 thirsty, as their northern predecessors ; for though it must 

 be admitted that on more occasions than one the pleasures 



* Fabian, 



82806 



