PRIVATE COURSING 127 



entertaining. The farmer had an idea that he was 

 musical (he once brought us the church choir, whom 

 he had been training to sing the chorus of ' John 

 Peel ' to his solo), and he invariably asked all the 

 local musical talent available. The result was 

 curious in the extreme, for the locals attempted the 

 highest flights, and it used to be a most difficult 

 matter to keep one's countenance when a burly 

 Northumbrian farmer was shouting out in broadest 

 unshackled Doric some such songs as ' When other 

 lips,' or 'Come into the garden, Maud.' The hunt- 

 mg songs went well, but they only came after we had 

 had a dose of the sentimental, and by the musical 

 farmer were evidently thought to be very poor stuff. 

 There was a wonderful speechmaker, too, a lanky 

 village schoolmaster in a tall hat, who used to see the 

 sport on a very small pony, and give us his ideas on 

 what had occurred in an after-dinner speech. He had 

 the most extraordinary flow of language and quota- 

 tion that I ever knew any man to be possessed of, 

 and was very great in chaff, the parson being his 

 especial butt. How such a man ever came to be 

 wasting his sweetness in a tiny Northumbrian hamlet, 

 a dozen miles from a railway, was always a mystery to 

 us ; but there he was, and is to this day as far as I 

 know, for not long since I received from him a tmy 



