182 COYERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



CHAPTER XX. 



WILD STAG-HUNTING. 



Wa"ken, lords and ladies gay. 

 To the green wood haste away 5 

 We can show you where he lies. 

 Fleet of foot and tall of size ; 

 We can show the marks he made 

 When 'gainst the oak his antlers fray'd j 

 You shall see him brought to bay. 

 Waken, lords and ladies gay. 



Had I taken up my pen to write on wild stag-hunting a quarter 

 of a century ago, I should have expected to be looked on as a 

 visionary enthusiast rather than to find readers. Now the case is 

 altered, and hundreds (I may say thousands) have seen the wild 

 red deer bound from his covert on Exmoor ; and this noblest and 

 most ancient of all sports is resuscitated, I hope never again to 

 cease until England has become so cultivated and built over that 

 hunting of every sort is a thing of the past. 



This, in an age devoted to the battue shooting, game driving, 

 and riding regardless of hounds — an age in which each man's 

 aim in sport seems confined to his own personal glorification — is 

 a good and healthy sign — a sign that the love of sport, for sport's 

 sake alone, is not totally extinct amongst us. True, many go to 

 meet the stag-hounds in I^orth Devon with very little idea what 

 they are going out to see ; others go because it has almost 

 become a fashion ; more, again, for a ride and the scenery. By the 



