HUNTING HORNS AND HUNTING CRIES 



ing sounds worse in the hunting field than dis- 

 cordant horn music, and nothing looks worse than 

 an amateur blowing himself black in the face, and 

 succeeding only in producing horrible noises, as 

 of someone in his death agony. 



Having got hold of a horn that suits you the 

 next thing is to know what calls to blow. At 

 the time ' ' The Master of Game " was written and 

 later, horn-blowing was an art in which hunting 

 people from the nobility downwards prided them- 

 selves. In the old days the ostensible idea of 

 horn music was to enlighten the field as to what 

 was going on, and the majority of the calls had 

 no application to the hounds as far as directing 

 the latter was concerned. The country was then 

 heavily afforested, and woodland hunting was 

 the order of the day. The horn was then used, 

 as Twici says, that " Each man who is around 

 you, who understands Hunting, can know in 

 which point you are in your sport by your blow- 

 ing." The French compassed horn is capable 

 of sounding twelve distinct notes, and on it can 

 be sounded more or less elaborate tunes. The 

 straight horn on the other hand sounds but one 

 note, the different calls being obtained by varying 

 the length and frequency of the note. This can 

 be done of course also with the reed horn, with 

 the exception of the long swelling note to " call 

 hounds away," and for this quite a good sub- 

 stitute can be sounded on the reed instrument. 



The chief sounds on the hunting horn were 

 named as follows : a Mote, a single note, long or 

 short. A recheat consists of four notes blown 

 three times with an interval between each four, 

 thus, " Tararara, tararara, tararara." It was 

 also preceded or followed by a Mote or single note. 

 The stag was the premier beast of chase in those 



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