THE WILLEY LONG RUNS.
The Willey Long Runs—Dibdin’s Fifty Miles no Figure of Speech—From the
Clee Hills to the Wrekin—The Squire’s Breakfast—Phœbe Higgs—Doggrel
Ditties—Old Tinker—Moody’s Horse falls Dead—Run by Moonlight.
“Ye that remember well old Savory’s call,
With pleasure view’d her, as she pleased you all;
In distant countries still her fame resounds,
The huntsmen’s glory and the pride of hounds.”
1773.
[Picture: Savory]
THE portrait at the head of this chapter is from a carefully drawn copy
of a painting at Willey of a favourite hound of the Squire’s, just a
hundred years ago.
Dibdin, in his song of Tom Moody, speaks of “a country well known to him
fifty miles round;” and this was no mere figure of speech, as the hunting
ground of the Willey Squire extended over the greater part of the forest
lands we have described. There were fewer packs of hounds in Shropshire
then, and the Squire had a clear field extending from the Clee Hills to
the Needle’s Eye on the Wrekin, through which, on one remarkable
occasion, the hounds are reported to have followed their fox. The Squire
sometimes went beyond these notable landmarks, the day never appearing to
be too long for him.
Four o’clock on a hunting morning usually found him preparing the inner
man with a breakfast of underdone beef, with eggs beaten up in brandy to
fill the interstices; and thus fortified he was ready for a fifty miles
run. He was what Nimrod would have called, “a good rough rider” over the
stiff Shropshire clays, and he generally managed to keep up with the best
to the last;
“Nicking and craning he deemed a crime,
And nobody rode harder perhaps in his time.”
He could scarcely “Top a flight of rails,” “Skim ridge and furrow,” or,
charge a fence, however, with Phœbe Higgs, who sometimes accompanied him.
Phœbe, who was a complete Diana, and would take hazardous leaps,
beckoning Mr. Forester to follow her extraordinary feats, led the Squire
to wager heavy sums that in leaping she would beat any woman in England.
With Phœbe and Moody, and a few choice spirits of the same stamp on a
scent, there was no telling to what point between the two extremities of
the Severn it might carry them. They might turn-up some few miles from
its source or its estuary, and not be heard of at Willey for a week. One
long persevering run into Radnorshire, in which a few plucky riders
continued the pace for some distance and then left the field to the
Squire and Moody, with one or two others, who kept the heads of their
favourites in the direction Reynard was leading, passed into a tradition;
but the brush appears not to have been fairly won, a gamekeeper having
sent a shot through the leg of the “varmint” as he saw him taking shelter
in a churchyard—an event commemorated in some doggrel lines still
current.
Very romantic tales are told of long runs by a superannuated servant of
the Foresters, old Simkiss, who had them from his father; but we forbear
troubling the reader with more than an outline of one of these, that of
Old Tinker. Old Tinker was the name of a fox, with more than the usual
cunning of his species, that had often proved more than a match for the
hounds; and one morning the Squire, having made up his mind for a run,
repaired to Tickwood, where this fox was put up. On hearing the dogs in
full cry the Squire vowed he would “Follow the devil this time to hell’s
doors but he would catch him.” Reynard, it appears, went off in the
direction of the Clee Hills; but took a turn, and made for Thatcher’s
Coppice; from there to the Titterstone Hill, and then back to Tickwood,
where the hounds again ousted him, and over the same ground again. On
arriving at the Brown Clee Hills the huntsman’s horse was so blown that
he took Moody’s, sending Tom with his own to the nearest inn to get
spiced ale and a feed. By this time the fox was on his way back, and the
horse on which Tom was seated no sooner heard the horn sounding than he
dashed away and joined in the chase. Ten couples of fresh hounds were
now set loose at the kennels in Willey Hollow, and these again turned the
fox in the direction of Aldenham, but all besides Moody were now far
behind, and his horse fell dead beneath him. The dogs, too, had had
enough; they refused to go further, and Old Tinker once more beat his
pursuers, but only to die in a drain on the Aldenham estate, where he was
found a week afterwards.
“A braver choice of dauntless spirits never
Dash’d after hound,”
it is said, and to commemorate one of the good things of this kind, a
long home-spun ditty was wont to be sung in public-houses by tenants on
the estate, the first few lines of which were as follows:—
“Salopians every one,
Of high and low degree,
Who take delight in fox-hunting,
Come listen unto me.
“A story true I’ll tell to you
Concerning of a fox,
How they hunted him on Tickwood side
O’er Benthall Edge and rocks.
“Says Reynard, ‘I’ll take you o’er to Willey Park
Above there, for when we fairly get aground
I value neither huntsmen all
Nor Squire Forester’s best hound.
“‘I know your dogs are stout and good,
That they’ll run me like the wind!
But I’ll tread lightly on the land,
And leave no scent behind.’”
Other verses describe the hunt, and Reynard, on being run to earth,
asking for quarter on condition that
“He will both promise and fulfil,
Neither ducks nor geese to kill,
Nor lambs upon the hill;”
and how bold Ranter, with little faith in his promise, “seized him by the
neck and refused to let him go.” It is one of many specimens of a like
kind still current among old people. An old man, speaking of Mr. Stubbs,
for whom, he remarked, the day was never too long, and who at its close
would sometimes urge his brother sportsmen to draw for a fresh fox, with
the reminder that there was a moon to kill by, said,
“One of the rummiest things my father, who hunted with the Squire,
told me, was a run by moonlight. I’m not sure, but I think Mr.
Dansey, Mr. Childe, and Mr. Stubbs, if not Mr. Meynell, were at the
Hall. They came sometimes, and sometimes the Squire visited them.
Howsomeever, there were three or four couples of fresh hounds at the
kennels, and it was proposed to have an after-dinner run. They dined
early, and, as nigh as I can tell, it was three o’clock when they
left the Hall, after the Beggarlybrook fox. Mind that was a fox,
that was—he was. He was a dark brown one, and a cunning beggar too,
that always got off at the edge of a wood, by running first along a
wall and then leaping part of the way down an old coal pit, which had
run in at the sides. Well, they placed three couples of hounds near
to this place in readiness, and the hark-in having been given, the
gorse soon began to shake, and a hound or two were seen outside, and
amongst them old Pilot, who now and then took a turn outside, and
turned in, lashing his stern, and giving the right token. ‘Have at
him!’ shouted one; ‘Get ready!’ said another; ‘Hold hard a bit, we
shall have him, for a hundred!’ shouted the Squire. Then comes a
tally-ho, said my father, and off they go; every hound out of cover,
sterns up, carrying a beautiful head, and horses all in a straight
line along the open, with the scent breast high. Reynard making
straight for the tongue of the coppice, finds himself circumvented,
and fresh hounds being let loose, he makes for Wenlock Walton as
though he was going to give ’em an airing on the hill-top.
“‘But, headed and foiled, his first point he forsook,
And merrily led them a dance o’er the brook.’
“Some lime burners coming from work turned him, and, leaving Wenlock
on the left, he made for Tickwood. It was now getting dark, and the
ground being awkward, one or two were down. The Squire swore he
would have the varmint out of Tickwood; and the hounds working well,
and old Trumpeter’s tongue being heard on the lower side, one
challenged the other, and they soon got into line in the hollow, the
fox leading. Stragglers got to the scent, and off they went by the
burnt houses, where the Squire’s horse rolled over into a sand-pit.
The fox made for the Severn, but turned in the direction of Buildwas,
and was run into in the moonlight, among the ivied ruins of the
Abbey.”
[Picture: Buildwas Abbey]