Another local novel, found. A rip-roaring historical adventure novel, set in Staffordshire and the Moorlands in the time of the highwaymen and the Jacobite invasion of England in 1745. George Wooley Gough’s The Yeoman Adventurer was published by Putnams in 1917.

The hero is a young self-educated farmer of Staffordshire, who reads the classics and is a keen angler. Apparently fishing features several times in the book, as the author was an angler, and the book opens with an epic battle with a Staffordshire pike. The Spectator review felt the hero to be rather too worthy to be truly enjoyable, and that many of the other characters were rather stereotyped. But the reviewer approvingly noted the brisk modern language used in the book, in contrast to the creaking thee’s and thou’s and wherefore’s usually found in historical novels of the period.

The author (1869-1943) was the son of a Stafford railway worker. Inspired by reading Adam Smith in his youth, he went on to Oxford to study History. He became a Free Trade economist by day, and a historical novelist in the evenings. Born in Stafford town, as a boy of 12 the 1881 Census finds him living at “12 Mill Bank, St. Mary, Stafford”.

“The most stirring and fascinating romance of recent years” (The Daily Graphic, of The Yeoman Adventurer). A New Zealand soldier’s First World War diary entry recorded of The Yeoman Adventurer, “a fine book – one of the best I’ve had lately.”

There’s also a Project Gutenberg edition online, which might be an easier read on the Kindle than the Archive.org version.

He followed this with a sort of 18th century Sherlock Holmes, in The Terror by Night (1923). ‘The Terror’ is an 18th century highwayman/crime-fighter, who sets out in a series of episodes to right various local wrongs and to solve various mysteries. I would assume a Staffordshire setting, but the details are unavailable. This “series of stories that should carry him into the front rank of contemporary novelists” said The Lloyd George Liberal Magazine, to which Gough contributed economics articles. But The Spectator reviewer was less gushing, with “A good example of the period novel with no pretensions beyond amusement”.

Later came the novels My Lady Vamp (1926), and Daughter of Kings (1930). There are no details of these online, but by the sound of the titles they’re likely to be historical novels. It would be interesting to know if the ‘Vamp’ indicates some supernatural vampire element.

The Folk-lore of North Staffordshire, an annotated bibliography. A new 1.4 version with six new additions. 20 pages. Please update any local copies you may be keeping.

Miss Dakeyne, Legends of the Moorlands and Forests of Staffordshire, Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1860.

78-pages, printed in Leek. Retold as reciting verse in the style of the time, with “A Legend of Lud Church” in prose. Staffordshire Poets (1928) was unable to discover her first name, but noted “Her family were silk manufacturers, of Gradbach Mill” and a Country Life article on the district later added that the family had been so since 1780. That may be enough information, for those with access to pay-walled ancestry databases, to identify her by name.

The Reliquary summarised it thus: “The metrical legends are “The Chieftain,” relating to Hugo de Spencer and Sir Swithelm of the Ley, of the time of the Holy Wars [12th-13th century]; “Caster’s Bridge”, a legend of a band of desperadoes [in the Dane valley]; “The Heritage”, a sad tradition relating to an old house; and “Lud Church”, an episode in the Rebellion of 1745.”

Folklore and word-lore sections from: James Buckland, “By The Manifold River”, The Leisure hour: an illustrated magazine, 1896, pages 116-120.

Cast as they are in the sluggish backwater of the current of modern progress and enlightenment, it is not surprising to find that the people of this wild part of the North-east of Staffordshire retain some thing of the false beliefs of their forefathers.

Indeed, I was astonished to discover that superstitions have a much stronger hold upon them than they themselves care to admit. They do not speak openly of these things, and only grudgingly when questioned; but some strange old traditions and stories are still whispered about among many of the least educated of the moorland folk.

That belief of a mermaid who dwells in Black Meer Pool, a dreary tarn on the summit of bleak Morridge, across whose dark waters the night winds howl dismally, is widespread.

Moreover, there are to be found in this district those who talk with awe of the spectral horseman who nightly rides from Onecote Bridge to Four End Roads.

At the dread hour of midnight, when cold breezes are sobbing upon the sterile bosom of the drear moor, this phantom, mounted on a snow-white steed, comes rushing past noiselessly, brushing even the garments of belated wayfarers, as he speeds by, arrow-like, and vanishes into the night.

There is a man living at Betterton who firmly believes that his father once rode upon this apparition. He had lingered long over his cups one night at Onecote, and, setting forth homewards, he was persuaded to accept the offer of a mount from a horseman who appeared suddenly at his side.

Hardly was he fairly seated behind the mysterious equestrian, when the snow-white steed, with lightning-like rapidity, rose like a bird into the air.

The next thing the poor mortal remembered was being hurled to the bare earth at his own door, where he was found with a bruised body, his face actually deformed by an expression of supernatural horror.

There is a woman too at Warslow who declares that the spectral rider appeared one wild night to’ her father. Swiftly, yet with no sound of clattering hoofs, the phantom sped past her terror-stricken parent; not so swiftly though, but that the latter had time to mark well the bright stirrups and shining buttons of this thing of evil.

In another quarter it was whispered to me that the dreaded spectre had been seen no less recently than last Christmas; but the woman who hinted at this visitation appeared loth to speak of it. So I did not press her for information.

As regards the first two instances, the man and woman alike meet any doubts of their stories with the unanswerable argument that the thing had been seen and sworn to by their fathers, and that if they are not to believe them, who then are they to believe ?

They admit, however, that both “t’ owd uns wur fond o’ a sup o’ yale.”

The notion, also, that any strange or untoward incident is the work of lightning, or the devil, is still rife among those of these moorlanders who rank lowest in the scale of general intelligence.

[The River Manifold goes underground during parts of the year, sinking near Wetton Mill and emerging at Ilam.]

Four years ago a great hissing sound, proceeding from one of the “sinks” at Wetton Mill, was heard by a chance passer-by. In speaking to this man upon the subject, I endeavoured to extract from, him some explanation for so unusual an occurrence.

“‘Lectricity, Oi reckon,” he said ; but, when I asked him how long the noise lasted, he cried, “Oi didna’ wait to see!” In such tones and gestures as left no shadow of a doubt but that he really attributed the cause of the sound to a very different agency than that of electricity.

Some ten years ago a duck was accidentally taken down in the swirl of a “sink.” After traversing the gloomy [underground] course of the Manifold, it reappeared at Ilam in an almost unrecognisable condition. This incident so worked upon the mind of a soft-headed fellow, who lives hard by. That he at length persuaded himself that where a duck went he could go; and he actually fitted out a tub-like boat, laden with candles and provisions, with the object of setting forth upon a voyage of discovery into the cavernous depths of the earth.

Fortunately, before going very far down stream, the crazy boat capsized, and the poor man was nearly drowned — a circumstance which considerably damped his zeal as an explorer. He is still of the opinion, however, that, with a properly constructed craft, the underground passage might be safely made.

One of the Moorlands underground rivers, represented in its diving and surfacing on a 1622 map by a man.

[…]

No iron rails [railways] have as yet taken the place of high roads, and new ideas reach them but slowly. In consequence, the belief that “t’ owd fashont ways are t’ best” still obtains amongst them, and they exhibit, in their ways of speaking and acting, much that is primitive and pleasant. The rude picturesqueness of their whitewashed cottages is but an outward presentment of the old-world aspect within. In some instances the pump which supplies the house hold with water stands in the centre of the kitchen; while in every sitting-room there hang from the walls rows of fire-irons and quaint old-time steel and brass utensils — all bright and clean. “Grand-feyther’s and Grandmother’s” warming pans, covered with snow-white cases of crochet-work, keep company with the “slice” and “spriddle” — instruments used in baking “pikelets” and a species of oatcake which forms the staple food of the people of the district. Upon the shelves there is usually a generous display of pewter plates and antique crockery, while old oak furniture — valuable, too, some of it — is plentiful. Everywhere in the cottages of these moorlanders there is a homelike air of cosiness and comfort.

Boys skating on the frozen river, an illustration accompanying “By the Manifold River”, The Leisure Hour, 1896.

Newly online, recordings of Mythmoot V talks, on YouTube. Including an excellent hour with Tom Shippey, “The Hero and the Zeitgeist”. Plus (not on the YouTube playlist) a 90 minute round-table discussion on Tom’s new book, Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings (Reaktion, 2018).

Exposing a fraudulent astrologer in England, circa the 1670s.

The hero Hudibras wants advice on how best to woo a widow, but first he needs to assure himself the astrologer is ‘the real thing’. The astrologer has got some false information about Hudibras, by a roundabout route, and he feeds the information back to Hudibras in the guise of a supposed astrology reading. Thus the hero knows the astrologer to be a fraud. Hudibras holds them at bay with his sword, while his squire goes to fetch a constable. Illustration for Hudibras.

I’m pleased to see that Burslem now has a horse shop. The Equine Emporium is open now in Queen Street, Burslem.

Picture: the Hanley to Burslem Horse-bus.

If you’ve ordered my new book on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, many thanks. The book should have arrived by now. It’s just a side-project from my big Tolkien book, but I hope it’s found interesting. Anyone writing scholarship on Gawain in future will surely need to read it. Below is a bonus colourised picture of the Wetton Mill cave which I didn’t have to hand when making the book. Although the same cave is abundantly illustrated by other pictures in the book, along with some rare ones of its melded companion-in-literature which is located ‘around the corner’ at Redhurst Gorge.

So… I’ve now identified Wells’s original for the character of The Time Traveller in my 2017 book H. G. Wells in the Potteries: North Staffordshire and the genesis of The Time Machine, and a near-perfect local candidate for the writing of Gawain in my 2018 Strange Country: Sir Gawain in the moorlands of North Staffordshire. An investigation. The third and final big ‘Midlands literary mystery’ to crack is earendel and Tolkien, and that’ll be my next book unless I get distracted again. The book is already very well advanced, but with something so huge it needs to be paced properly. I’m considering a two-volume edition.

Uttoxeter to Macclesfield, filmed on 8mm colour cine film by John Collins in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Including a rare angle on Alton Castle, seen from the railway below, at about 2:00 minutes.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWHQHzOLQcE?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Below are some of Cedric Price’s conceptual drawings for the £80m “Potteries Thinkbelt” across North Staffordshire, which he proposed in the mid 1960s. The aim was to make some productive use of the old railway lines, then being closed wholesale by Labour’s despised Dr. Beeching. We also had commercial mineral and mining railway lines which were expected to become disused. More widely in the UK, it was imagined from about 1965 that advanced education might be one substitute for declining heavy industry.

While Price had some local connections and thus local knowledge, having been born in Stone and taking his first job in Burslem after leaving school, his plans on returning to the city were almost laughably radical. A sort of ‘travelling university campus’ was proposed. This would have used the former rail lines of the Potteries to provide a new 20,000-student university for North Staffordshire, a place which Price labelled “a disaster area” (New Society, No. 192, 1966). Others thought the same. The Labour government minister Dick Crossman visited Stoke and instantly decided it was a “huge, ghastly conurbation” that should be “evacuated” and not have a penny invested in it. Countless billions, he mused, would never restore the ghastly collection of “slag heaps, pools of water, old potteries, deserted coal mines”. From the 1950s to the 2000s Labour’s doctrine was that of “managed decline”, something that was still having an effect in the city as recently as the brutal mass demolition of Middleport in the 2000s.

But back in the 1960s Price mused that, if the city could not be saved, perhaps the students could. He proposed four types of uber-modern student housing and classrooms-on-rails, all shuttling students of hard science and engineering around the Potteries, inside newly designed rail-car types named ‘Capsule’, ‘Crate’, ‘Battery’ and ‘Sprawl’. These units would be hermetically sealed, with no windows and with artificial atmospheres, to prevent contact with the dismal city outside. Their trains would be serviced from thirty new custom-built railheads and sidings around the Potteries. The structures would “hot-house” students and staff, forcing them into “new living patterns”. Inflatable structures were also rather hazily mentioned, presumably bouncy-castle style entertainment pods.

At the corners of this sprawling ‘rail university’ there would be connection hubs with airports, motorways, mainline rail stations. The humdrum local planners at the City Council would only be permitted to build around the network once everything was in place.

Apparently Price’s proposals were made partly in response to the way in which the leafy new university at Keele had ‘shut itself off’ from the Potteries, and was widely seen as being unconcerned with local people and the needs of the city’s industries. The dispersed nature of the Thinkbelt also fitted nicely into the way that the city council required that all towns be equally serviced, so as not to alienate any voters.

Needless to say, the Thinkbelt was never built. Price departed Stoke for the failing city of Detroit, USA, to propose that their city build a ‘Think Grid’. Stoke’s City Council later dabbled with another ‘grand idea’ proposal, this time around the fledgling 1990s Internet, called WorldGate. That, too, failed to materialise.

Over 30 years later, the Potteries did something rather more sensible with its old mineral railway lines. In opposition to certain rather rotund Councillors who openly claimed that ‘no-one cycles in Stoke, it’s too hilly’, the dynamic new Mayor Mike Wolfe quietly championed bicycle routes. The city successfully paved many of the old rail lines to provide over a hundred miles of off-road bicycle paths (map: North | South). Instead of being imprisoned in sealed pods, the city’s youngsters were to be out in the open air of an increasingly green city.

Further reading:

* An architecture for the new Britain : the social vision of Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and Potteries Thinkbelt, Columbia University PhD thesis, 2003.

* Cedric Price : Potteries Thinkbelt, Routledge, 2007.

* The evolution engine: Organicism, ecology, cybernetics and Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, Buffalo University PhD thesis, 2012.

* Cedric Price : Works 1952–2003, AA Publications, 2018.

So far as I can tell, the response of the people of the Potteries to such proposals has not been collected.

What Price had to work with. The local rail structure as it existed 1964-65.

A December ride, hare-hunting with the Buxton and Peak Forest Hunt. By Edward Bradbury, published in his book In the Derbyshire highlands (1881).

“I think the girls have gone mad,” was the Old Lady’s remark as every room at Limecliffe Firs seemed to resound with silvery shouts of “Hark forrard!” “Tally-ho!” “Yoicks!” “Hey, ho, Chevy!” And other exclamations, ecstatic but inexplicable, peculiar to the vocabulary of huntsmen.

It was a December evening preceding a meet of the Buxton and Peak Forest Harriers. The Young Man was to join the hunt. It had also been arranged that the two young ladies and the present writer should drive to the scene of action in the pony carriage.

This had not been settled without some protest from the prudent Old Lady. She remembers the gloom of a certain grey November day in the years agone when the dangers of the chase were personally illustrated at Limecliffe Furs. But a broken limb has not diminished the Young Man’s ardour. It was amusing to hear the animated logic with which he overcame the opposition of the solicitous Mother of the Gracchi. [i.e.: the ideal of the Ancient Roman matron]. His arguments were founded on both moral and physical grounds.

“A run with the harriers” he contended “promotes health, fosters courage, requires judgment, teaches perseverance, develops energy, tries patience, tests temper, and exercises every true virtue. It is recreation to the mind, joy to the spirits, strength to the body. To be a good huntsman was to be a fine manly fellow: a ‘muscular Christian, ‘if you like, but a ‘muscular Christian’ as was Charles Kingsley, the patentee of the phrase. Fishing teaches patience; but just look, my nephew, at the number of moral lessons inculcated by hunting. Care and diligence are required ‘to find’. ‘Look before you leap’ was an aphorism of practical wisdom derived from Nimrod and not Solomon; while ‘Try Back’ was another phrase which might be wisely applied to daily life.

‘Try Back’ when an obstinate hound misleads a pack, and it is found that the trail so diligently sought is hopelessly lost. ‘Try Back’ renews hope and rewards perseverance. ‘Try Back,’ then, in the larger field of life, with its vexations, disappointments, lost chances, and broken hopes. If led into error, ‘Try Back;’ if success is denied thee in that wearisome up-hill toil, ‘Try Back;’ baffled, blighted, broken-on-the-wheel, ‘Try Back.’ Is thy trust betrayed, and thy love false ? Then ‘Try Back.’ There ia a false scent somewhere; a mistake has been made at some critical juncture, so ‘Try Back,’ and a second quest shall give thee splendid recompense.”

There was much more of this eloquent hunting homily, which threw such a glamour of sentiment over hares and horses and harriers that the Old Lady, fond of sermons, gradually relented in her scruples. She finally surrendered when she heard that hunting the hare took precedence of fox hunting, since the fox did not afford half so much genuine sport, and while the flesh of the former was delicious, that of the latter was so much filthy vermin.

I cannot go the length of giving the hunting of the High Peak a place before that of the Quorn Country; but the wild picturesqueness of Derbyshire, with its loose stone walls and steep mountain declivities, imparts a charm and an excitement to the sport which is unknown to the red-coated horsemen of the monotonously flat fields of Leicestershire. The wonder is that Buxton in the winter season does not become as much a hunting centre as Melton Mowbray or Market Harbro’. There are three packs of harriers of established reputation, meeting twice or thrice a week within easy distance of the popular watering place. The Dove Valley Harriers that answer the wild “Tally-Ho!” in the picturesque landscape watered by the Dove. The High Peak Harriers that have their meets either at Parsley Hay, a Wharf on the High Peak line of railway; or Newhaven, a solitary hostelry at the meeting of several roads and a famous house enough in the coaching days; or at Over Haddon, by the Lathkill Dale. And the Buxton and Peak Forest Harriers, which generally start from Peak Forest, or from Dove Holes, and pursue the rough and romantic countryside historically famous as the hunting ground of kings.

It was the latter pack that the Young Man had elected to follow on the morning after that December evening when the house was alive with silvery echoes of the hunting field. The weather had during the past week or two attested that there was something radically wrong with the Zodiac; but on that night, as we looked out from the glow and warmth of the room, the air was keen and clear; the moon shone with an intense white electric light; the roofs glittered in the cold radiance; every detail of architecture was revealed in a sharp relief that made the shadows ebony in their deepness; the gas lamps burned with a dirty yellow; but there was not enough frost to affect the morrow’s enjoyment.

A grey morning follows that glistening night.

“The meet is at Dove Holes at twelve”.

The mist lies thick upon the hills. The meet is at Dove Holes at twelve; and the Young Man, with the snow of sixty winters in his beard, seems part of his chestnut cob as he rides in black coat, green vest, and corduroys, by the side of our pony carrriage. Raw and cold is the dull ride across Fairfield Common [now on the northern edge of Buxton]; but we have foot warmers in the conveyance, and quite a panoply of soft shawls; while it makes one feel quite snug and warm to contemplate the sealskin of Somebody and the furs of Sweetbriar.

Presently the sun warms the grey fog until the country seems to float in a golden mist; a mellow amber light, such as [the painters] Turner and Claude Lorraine loved to introduce in a poetic atmospheric effect.

There is animation at Dove Holes. A score or more well-mounted horsemen make picturesque patches against the ridges of sombre hills; there are one or two farmers on well ribbed-up horses; there is a lady, well-known to the county as a bold rider, on a sturdy grey mare that is pawing with impatience to charge the stone walls; there is an old gentleman with the gout in a bath-chair, who is anxious to witness the “throw off; ” there are one or two carriages and antiquated gigs; while the number of camp-followers on foot show how potent is the spell of sport among all classes when “the Horn of the Hunter is heard on the Hill.” The keen harriers are with the huntsman, Joe Etchells, the men and boys on foot are grouped around, and take an intelligent interest in the preliminary proceedings. There is the Judge Thurlow look of wisdom on canine countenances, solemn in its sagacity. Presently the Master is seen riding along the road from Buxton, with other well-known members of the Buxton and Peak Forest Hunt. Somebody, who regards everything from what Thackeray called “a paint pot spirit,” [one who thinks in pictures] talks of the hunting groups [in the art of] of Wouvermann, and the horses and hounds of Eosa Bonheur.

Sweetbriar is intently silent : but she makes, nevertheless, a very pretty element in the picture.

And now, behold! The first quest is successful, and cavalry and infantry are instantly scattered in picturesque disorder. It is a picture full of movement; and the broken undulating features of the country, with broad valleys and bold hills, show it up in all its artistic charm. The present hare, however, soon succumbs, and the hounds are thereby “encouraged.” And now the wiry Master of the Pack gives the order for a second quest. The cry comes that another hare has “gone away !” She is in full flight; the alert hounds follow in swift pursuit; this time the chase grows exciting.

People who derive their notion of Puss from Cowper’s hares have an attractive lesson in natural history prepared for them by a hunt with the harriers. [Cowper was a poet who famously reared tame hares]. The celerity of the mountain hare is only exceeded by its subtlety, which exceeds even the cunning of Master Reynard [the fox]. The intellect of the hunter and the instinct of the hounds are taxed to the uttermost by the shifts and doubles and dodges of their ” quarry.” The buck hare, now, after making a turn or two about his “form,” will frequently lead the hunt five or six miles before he will turn his head. But madam is more wily. She delights in harrassing and embarrassing the hounds. She seldom makes out end-ways before her pursuers, but trusts to sagacity rather than speed. See ! Now she is off and the harriers are in hot pursuit. Riders are spurring their horses up the slope. A good run at last, we say. The harriers are well-nigh their prey. Puss sees the intervening distance lessening; for a hare, mark you, like a rabbit, looks behind; and suddenly she throws herself with a jump in a lateral direction and lies motionless. The manoeuvre is a success. The hounds fly past deceived by the diplomatic twist. They pull up at last exasperated.

The scent is lost.

“These ‘ill ‘ares is as fawse as Christians,” says a beefy-faced country man, with steaming breath.

Pedestrians appear to have an advantage over the horsemen. Only at intervals comes the wild and thrilling cross-country “charge of the light brigade,” the spurred galop that belongs to stag or fox-hunting.

The rest is made up of occasional spurts and pauses, for the hare’s flight is made in circles. The infantry can thus keep the cavalry in constant sight. Sometimes, indeed, they have better chances than the mounted Nimrods.

Another “find.” The harriers are now “getting down” to the deceptive turnings of Puss. The wild rush clearly won’t do, they intuitively argue; and so with strange intelligence they resolve to keep themselves in head, and, with nose to ground, determine to checkmate the craft of the game with a responsive craft. They take the trail up with intellectual sagacity. Finding her “doublings” of little use now, Puss makes across a turnip field for the hill.

“She’s for Peak Forest or Sparrow Pit !” is the cry of the crowd. The pack plod up hill. “Hark to Watchman !” “Follow Watchman !” is the hurried command. The lady of the hunt is now neatly leading. Esau follows. The young man is showing his sturdy back to a field of flagging horses. A narrow stream, tumbling between steep banks over rocky boulders, presents itself. Some of the horsemen seek an easier avenue. One, more adventurous, who rides in a long mackintosh coat, takes a “header” in the water. He scrambles out soaked to the skin. “A good job tha ‘ browt thi ‘ macintosh wi ‘ thee!” Says a consoling country friend to the dripping rider as he seeks the bank of the stream.

It is “bellows to mend” before the steep stony summit of Beelow is reached. We can see the white steam from the horses ‘ nostrils. The hare, being able to run faster up hill than down, has the pull over horse and hound. Before the top of the stubborn hill is gained, however, she has a premonition of danger ahead. A sudden turn; and she bounds through a flock of sheep and under the very legs of the horses toiling up the ungrateful ascent. The hounds turn and tear down after the scent in relentless pursuit. A stout farmer comes a crucial cropper over a stone wall. Half of the loose limestone boulders fall over him. ” Oh! Is he hurt?” demands Somebody with startled solicitude, while horse and rider lie together. “Noa, not ‘im; he’s non hurt; ha fell on ‘is yed,” says a sympathetic yeoman at the post of our observation.

Now puss takes the wall, and passes down the road. She skirts the very wheels of our carriage.

We see her startled brown eyes, the long hair about the quivering mouth, the beautiful silky ears thrown back in an agony of strained alertness; the soft colour of her winter fur. Fly past the dogs. Come the hunters. Boys on foot beat galloping horses in their fleetness. There is a wild clamour as the pack pelter down hill. It is irresistible. The excitement is intoxicating. Somebody and Sweetbriar are racing after the pursuers. Even the gouty old gentleman in the bath-chair gets out and hobbles along as if he had lost his head. A woman from a cottage close by rushes out with a frying pan in her hand; among the crowd is a village bootmaker, with his hat off and his apron on. I have known staid tradesmen on similar occasions also take to flight at the thrill of the clear “Tally-ho !” Men, mark you, who are as sedate and phlegmatic as Dutchmen under any other circumstances, and never knew a faster pulse of life.

Lo! The hare doubles again; but the harriers are upon her. We are close by at the finish. Poor Puss utters a death-cry, piercing in its helpless pathos. It is like the sobbing appeal of a child.

Sweetbriar begs for the doomed life to be saved; and the exasperated harriers, eager for blood, are driven off, so that she may have the beautifully shaded coat. But the timid creature is dead, and the frightened eyes are glazed.

When the hunters get together in close company, there are one or two black coats, green vests, and corduroys that are dabbed in dirt, and nearly every horse is blowing, after the sharp burst over the hilly country. Refreshment is in demand at a roadside tavern. The beverage most in favour is a curious alcoholic mixture, very popular among Derbyshire huntsmen, and known as “thunder-and-lightning.”

It is composed of hot old ale, ginger, sugar, nutmeg, and gin. On paper this appears a dreadful draught, worthy of Lucrezia Borgia [a famous poisoner]; but the eagerness with which it is quaffed this December afternoon is practical proof of the inspiring effect of the stirrup-cup on the exhausted Actaeons of the Peak [reference to the mythical hunter of Ancient Greece].

This is the last run of the day, for the short-lived sun is setting in red behind the moorland edges, and the amber mist is deepening into fog. We drive home in the waning light, exhilarated with the stirring incidents of the day. The young Man has much to tell us, as he ambles along by our side, of spirited passages in the hunt which had escaped us, and which sound like an Iliad to our ears.

At Limecliffe Firs to-night we discuss at supper the plump hare of the hunt, whose pitiful cry of pain we heard as it died. And we find that the healthful air, the joyous freedom, the excitement and the exercise of the day, have made us too grossly gastronomical to feel sentimental over devouring our victim.

But why is Sweetbriar absent from the table ?