The TSag Fox 



alternative risk and jumped out apparently into the very 

 mouths of the pack. The horn was at the lips of the master 

 ready to sound the death-call, when the old Fox, keeping his 

 head in crucial moments as only a Fox and a rat know how 

 to keep it, dived under one Hound, jumped over the back of 

 a second, saved himself by showing his fine old teeth to 

 a third, and was away before you could say knife. Back 

 through the wood he flew, and set his head for the open. 

 He was not seen again for eight long miles, when the bitches 

 ran into him in the middle of a large grass field. Now in 

 this run the satisfaction of the kill was not one bit diminished 

 by his having been in the drain. He was given no law. 

 His enemies were not trying to nurse him, but were trying 

 all the time to kill him. The animus of the pursuit was 

 sustained from the very moment he was found. If the 

 Hounds had been withdrawn from the drain, and the Fox 

 bolted and given a chance, there would still have been a 

 run, but it would not have been the real thing. Still less 

 would the illusion have succeeded if a bag had been used. 

 The use of the bag in any shape or form destroys all the 

 romance and spirit of Fox-hunting, and the verse we here 

 present is introduced because it satirises and ridicules a 

 practice which is wholly out of tune with the Sport of our 

 Ancestors. 



Yet the curious thing is that the bag was once used quite 

 seriously in the west country by two masters of Foxhounds 

 whose names stand very high in the lists of sportsmen. 

 Sir Walter Carew and the Rev. John Russell both hunted 



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