4IO The Book of the Hokse. 



"They're running, they're running, Go Hark! 

 Let them run and run on till it 's dark ! 

 Well with them we are, and well with them we'll be 

 While there 's wind in our horses and daylight to see : 

 Then shog along homeward, chat over the fight. 

 And hear in our dreams the sweet music all night, 

 Of— they're running, they're running. Go Hark!" CHARLES KlNGSLEY. 



STAG-HUNTING. 



Stag-hunting in feudal times was the exclusive privilege of royalty and of nobility. Wild 

 deer abounded in tlie forests and woods that have long since been disforested to make way 

 for corn and grazing farms. The hounds used were slow and deep-mouthed ; they were 

 set on in relays, in likely places for the deer to pass, by foresters learned in woodcraft. 



" The hart," says Nicholas Cox, " hath his season in summer, and when the hinde's 

 begins the chase of the hart is over; that is to say, the hart fifteen days after midsummer 

 till Holy Rood day, when the chase of the hinde beginneth, and lasteth till Candlemas." But 

 this is not the modern practice — the season of the Devon and Somerset Stag-hounds commences 

 about tlie 15th August, and ends on the iSth October, after which hind-hunting commences. 



The fallow deer was also hunted in enclosed parks, across which rides were cut for the 

 hunters, such as ms^y still be seen in the forests of France and Germany. The game when 

 driven to bay was slain by a stroke of the hunting-knife, or a shot from the hand of the 

 most noble person present. 



In 1748 the Duke of Cumberland (of Culloden fame) was Ranger of Windsor Park, and 

 lived at Cranbourne Lodge when not on active service. He was a constant attendant on 

 tlte Royal stag-hounds, which hunted on Tuesdays and Saturdays from Holy Rood Day 

 (September 25) till Easter week. The herd of red deer in Windsor Forest amounted at 

 that time to about twelve hundred head, which were replenished occasionally with deer 

 taken from the New Forest in Hampshire. It was the duty of the yeomen prickers, in 

 liveries of scarlet and gold, with French horns slung round them, to single out from the 

 herd the quarry for the daj-'s diversion. As soon as he had been separated from his 

 companions the hounds were laid on — powerful animals of the old stag-hound breed, not 

 fox-hounds entered to deer, but the true yellow pie, very sonorous in note, and having the 

 character of the blood-hound in shape. The country was then an immense tract of open 

 heaths, growing nothing but broom and gorse, with here and there impassable bogs and 

 sheets of water, dirty and deep, and at all times a most distressing country for horses. 

 When the deer was pulled down and killed, those persons who intended to run their horses 

 for the king's guineas at Ascot had to apply to the huntsman for qualification tickets 

 that they were well up with the hounds at the kill. At the close of the season 1751-52 

 his royal highness ran his chestnut gelding Button for the plate at Ascot, for horses that 

 had been up at the death of a leash of stags in Windsor Forest during the previous season. 

 But it was iittle likely that a horse fitted to carry the Duke's great weight to the end of 

 a long, jading run should shine as a racer, and, of six competitors in the race. Button was 

 the last.* 



"I was at Ascot Heath in King George the Third's time, from 1810 to 1S13, under 

 Wctherall. at Chivey Down Lodge, (Tommy Coleman of St. Albans). At that time the 



• Bailx's Magazine, May, 1S76. 



