lo Silk and Scarlet. 



reached me. One of them, a mare, I forget her 

 name, gets to my knee, but never no farther. They 

 wanted to chair me round the town ; but I says, '* /'// 

 have 7ione of that, Fm not a Parliament man^ it may 

 do well enough for such likes as them /" I thought 

 they'd have killed me with drink ; every one wanting 

 to stand. An apple's a grand thing to bite when 

 you're very much beat after a race. I had rode those 

 heats for Mr. Lorraine Smith, at Leicester. I wasn't 

 prepared, never knew I was to ride till I got there. I 

 was all but fainting in the weighing-house. There 

 was a doctor or two wanted to be on with brandy- 

 and-water, and all that ; but I says, " Bring me an 

 apple ;'' and I bites it and comes round entirely. He 

 didn't write all the Billesdon Coplow song, did Mr. 

 Lorraine Smith. They say Mr. Bethell Cox, of Quor- 

 ley wrote part ;* he was such a queer old boy, with 

 one hand ; one day he forgets, and he unscrews the 

 false one while he is dancing a quadrille, and it comes 

 off while a lady were holding it ; she were sore afraid, 

 poor thing. 

 T ,, I know'd Jem Mason well. He used 



Jem Mason, . , :^ ^^ _,. . , 



to be at the Dove House, at Pmner, with 

 Tilbury, when he was a lad. I'll be bound he wouldn't 

 be above fifteen when he first rode up from Stilton 

 there. The whole place was laid out with fences, and 

 a race course. They tell me the railway cuts clean 

 across it now, somewhere nigh the Pinner Station. 

 Tilbury had as many as two hundred hunters at one 

 time. Lots of them came down here ; Captain 

 Fairlie's Wing was one of them. He mounted Count 

 Sandor, did Tilbury ; him that Mr. Ferneley drew all 

 those pictures of. I mind Jem first rode The Poet 

 in the St. Alban's Steeple-chase. The boys at Har- 

 row rigged him out, and talked about nothing else for 



* From inquiries we have made, we believe there is no doubt that 

 Mr. Lowth, son of Robert Lowth, Bishop of London, wrote the whole. 



