AND STIRLINGSHIRE HUNT 



"Have at him there, Brilliant/ — good hounds at him there," 

 Cries the Squire, sitting straight on his Hurricane (a) mare ; 



" I'd give half-a-guinea, 



That old Mantalini (b) 

 Had not been left sticking, the devil knows where." 



Still forward the fox ; — on the left Champfleurie, — 



And the badger-earths passed without notice or call : 

 But some fatal signs make it certain to me 



That a few minutes longer must witness his fall. 

 The pace is now dropping, which erst was so hard, 

 He has threaded that hedge-row, and this stable-yard : 

 Whose nag is that there 

 With his tail in the air, 

 And his carcass extended along the green sward ? 



Not just at the Braes, but close on their bounds, 



He meets in the open his glorious death ; 

 The sobbing of steeds, and the panting of hounds, 



Make the music that sweetens his faltering breath : 

 Tom holds him aloft in air, — prouder by far 

 Than a conqueror crown'd with the laurels of war ; 

 While from out the glad group, 

 Wild Murray's (c) who-hoop 

 Has scarce yet died away in the echoes of Mar. 



The point from Drumshoreland to the Braes o' 

 Mar is not much more than four miles, but on 

 turning to the Ordnance Survey map and en- 

 deavouring, from the places mentioned, to trace 



{(() A grey mare, the property of Mr Ramsay of Barnton, so called 



from her rushing propensities. 

 (6) A conceited person who writes foolish verses, so nick-named by 



Mr Ramsay, 

 (c) Well known in the West Lothian Hunt by the appellation of " Tom 



Murray." 



1 Brilliant (1833) by Lord Kelburne's Brusher— Dairymaid (1824). 



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