44 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. 



VI. 



Oh ! then the proud falcon, unloos'd from the glove. 

 Like her master below, play'd the tyrant above; 

 While faintly, more faintly, were heard in the sky. 

 The silver-ton'd bells as she darted on hi<?h. 



VII. 



Then rous'd from sweet slumber, the ladie high born, 

 Her palfrey would mount at the sound of the horn; 

 Her palfrey uptoss'd his rich trappings in air. 

 And neigh'd with deliofht such a burden to bear. 



VIII. 



Vers'd in all woodcraft and proud of her skill, 



Her charms in the forest seem'd lovelier still ; 



The abbot rode forth from the abbey so fair, 



Nor lov'd the sport less when a bright eye was there. 



So sings Mr. Egerton Warburton, favoured of Diana and 

 the Muses, and his spirited verse applies equally to our 

 own Needwood Forest. To those who have waofed the 

 mimic war of the chase over its diverse and undulating 

 surface some account of its history cannot fail to be of 

 interest. It was a part of the ancient Duchy of 

 Lancaster, and, as such, was attached to the Crown. It 

 was twenty-four miles round, and stretched from Tutbury 

 to Abbott's Bromley in one direction, and from Marching- 

 ton to Barton-under-Needwood in another, and it con- 

 tained eight thousand acres. Local tradition gives it a 

 yet wider range, as far as Chartley, in fact, and Cannock 

 Chace. Anyhow, it held forty thousand head of deer, 

 which must have required more than eight thousand acres 

 to support them. The greater part of it consisted of turf, 

 " the best," says an old writer, " that ever I saw for riding 

 and hunting on." And so is what is left of it to-day, to 

 judge from Bagot's Park. Possibly the surface was less 

 hillocky then than now, but it could not have carried a 

 better scent. What fun that old Venison Oak, on which 

 they used to hang the deer for gralloching purposes, in 



