Andrew Clarke on his neice’s pony, Happy, the latter being the only foxhunter in the photo“As a foxhunter husband, I’ve never heard why it’s called a Hunt Breakfast when it’s usually the afternoon when the hunt breakfast is served,” writes a mystified Andrew Clarke from Ontario.
Surely there are many practicing foxhunters equally mystified by this question. For the answer we turned to our resident etymologist, author-editor Steven Price.
Steve Price
Hunt breakfast is yet another phrase that we borrow from the sport’s Anglo-Irish forebears, says Price. In addition to breakfast being the day’s first meal, the Brits and the Irish use the word to describe a meal eaten after an important daytime event. For example, the luncheon held after a morning marriage ceremony is most commonly referred to as a wedding breakfast. Since nothing would possibly be more important than a morning spent following hounds, the first meal thereafter qualifies as a hunt breakfast.
FHL
One has to consider, also, the English climate and geography to better understand the roots of many traditions born there and adopted here. At Britain’s northern latitudes, morning dawns slowly and late in winter, the hunting season. Foxhunters rising during that protracted daybreak most probably would take to the field directly before eating a formal meal. With breakfast by definition the first meal of the day, their fast would not be broken until hounds returned to kennels.
Reader’s comments are invited!
Posted July 18, 2011