Literature

The Dun Bull Hotel, 1920Here are Chapters 8 to 10 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life is bringing you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you have enjoyed the previous installments. There is one more installment to follow, which will complete the manuscript. Excerpt from Chapter 8 “A man walked over the pass from Kentmere to play the piano at each shepherds meet. He wore a fancy waistcoat with pockets. After two days of playing the piano, he ran out of money he’d earned for his efforts, so on the third morning he set off to walk home again. When he reached the top of the Nan Bield pass, he sat down to have a smoke, feeling in his waistcoat pocket for tobacco, he found half a sovereign, so he returned to the Dun Bull for another two days.” Connect with the author by clicking here. (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.) Posted February 10, 2012... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

Here is Chapter 7 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life brings you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you have enjoyed the previous installments. Excerpt from Chapter 7Visitors to Mardale Shepherd’s Meet—and they came from all parts of England, from Kent to Newcastle—are not likely to forget this year’s experience as the weather was of the vilest and stormiest character. Nevertheless this did not deter a large gathering from assembling for this time-honoured institution, and the visitors included many who have attended the gathering for very many years. The Mardale Shepherd’s Meet may be classified in three epochs. There was the ancient period of Mardale, when tradition says its prestige began with the outlaw Hugh Holme who took refuge from a persecuting monarch in a cave, which today bears his name, though the tenant nowadays is generally a fox. The next period may be termed the “Joe Bowman Chapter”, and this is how Mardale has won its popularity. Its giant hills and peculiar mountain solitude have ever had an attraction for lovers of all that is best in nature, but it remained to Joe Bowman and the Ullswater Foxhounds to introduce these charms to the world outside. The writer remembers Mardale Shepherds Meet when, at the height of the proceedings on the Saturday afternoon, the roll would not have exceeded thirty or forty. Nowadays, the motorcars themselves number about a hundred. The next period may be classified as the Manchester Waterworks regime, for the Corporation has secured Mardale’s romantic lake for its supplementary water supply, and the work is to commence next year. When completed it is stated, Mardale Church and the “Dun Bull” will be twenty feet below the surface of the water. Connect with the author by clicking here. (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.) Posted January 26, 2012... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

The Mardale Dam under constructionHere are Chapters 5 and 6 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life is bringing you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you have enjoyed the previous installments. Chapter 5 deals with the construction of the dam that holds back the reservoir which submerged Mardale forever. Chapter 6 returns to the memorable days of Joe Bowman and the Ullswater Foxhounds and the songs that were such a huge part of the after-hunt entertainment at the Dun Bull. Excerpt from Chapter 6After a good days sport, huntsmen, shepherds, visitors, sheep dogs and terriers (hounds were not admitted) all turn towards the Dun Bull for a meal. In the evening, a smoking contest took place. Skelton records, “The main portion of the pack, cast off in the large dining room and every room in the house filled with overflow meetings, or rather concerts” The big room was the focal point, a tray was sent round and money subscribed for the evening’s refreshment. Each individual orders his choice of drink and the chairman pays out of the general pool. Toasts and song follow in quick succession. The chairman selects the singer and everyone is supposed to sing at least one song and there was an element of pride in singing one that had not already been sung that evening. If the song had a good swing or chorus the men got particularly enthusiastic, the shepherds beating the tables with their sticks in time to the tune and the sheep-dogs and terriers howling either in enthusiasm or execration, no man knows which. (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.) Posted January 16, 2012... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

The Windermere Harriers at the Mardale Shepherds Meet, 1899  Here’s Chapter 4 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life is bringing you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you have enjoyed the previous installments. Excerpt from Chapter 4This chapter recalls many of the hunts at Mardale. German Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Lakeland on holiday on a number of occasions from 1895 onward, staying with The Earl of Lowther, then Master of the Quorn in Leicestershire. The Kaiser met Ullswater huntsman Joe Bowman and may have hunted with him, for Bowman family lore has the Kaiser slipping Bowman a five-pound note. Author Beatrix Potter was in Lakeland on one occasion when the Kaiser was due to arrive and wrote the following entry in her diary:  “Tuesday August 15th 1895. We consumed three whole hours waiting to see the Emperor, not very well worth it. I had seen him in London. I think he is stouter. I was not particularly excited. I think it is disgraceful to drive fine horses like that. First came a messenger riding a good roan belonging to Bowness, which we could hear snorting before they came in sight, man and horse both dead-beat. He reported the Emperor would be up in ten minutes, but it was twenty. The procession consisted of a mounted policeman with a drawn sword in a state approaching apoplexy, the red coats of the Quorn Hunt, four or five of Lord Lonsdale’s carriages, several hires and spare horses straggling after them. There were two horses with an outside rider to each carriage, splendid chestnuts thoroughbreds floundering along and clinking their shoes. They were not going fast when we saw them, having come all the way from Patterdale without even stopping at Kirkstone to water the horses, to the indignation of mine host, and an assembly of three or four hundred who had reckoned on this act of mercy. I think his majesty deserved an accident and rather wonder he didn’t have one considering the smallness of the little Tiger sitting on the box to work the break.” (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.)... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

George Whyte-Melville as caricatured in Vanity Fair, 1871You may have noticed that White-Melville and Ogilvie are my favorite poets. These two establish a cadence in their meter that transports me to the field atop a horse, rhythmically pumping his hindquarters and stretching his neck beneath me.

I was pleased to learn from the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Sirs Stephen and Lee, that Whyte-Melville, being a gentleman of means, “devoted all the earnings of his pen...to philanthropic and charitable objects, especially to the provision of reading rooms and other recreation for grooms and stable boys in hunting quarters.”

This poem has long been a favorite of mine. Whyte-Melville, having been a major in the cavalry and having devoted his life to foxhunting, was an able horseman, I'm certain. Yet though he was thrown out this day, he expresses his admiration for the rider who left him in the dust.

Ullswater huntsman Joe BowmanHere’s Chapter 3 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life is bringing you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you enjoyed the previous installments. Excerpt from Chapter 3:As I was sitting at tea in the Dun Bull the dogs barked and ran furiously into the road. “Dogs is likely coomin’,” said the servant lass, and in another moment Joe Bowman the well-known huntsman of the Ullswater pack and a couple of hounds entered the kitchen. “Git oot wilt tha,” he cried, and the dogs disappeared like a flash of lightning, then taking his huntsman’s cap off, the stout-built man with the sturdy determined look and close-cut moustache, a man whose face had been weathered into mahogany with a touch of colour in the stain, bowed to the company and was soon at home with us all. (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.) Posted December 14, 2011... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

Picking out the straysHere’s Chapter 2 of The Mardale Hunt by Ron Black. Through the courtesy of the author, Foxhunting Life is bringing you the entire book in installments every two weeks. You are free to download the book to your computer. We hope you enjoyed the first installment. “As long as there are sheep on the fells, there’ll be a Mardale Meet. I’m good for a few more yet….” (Isaac Cookson on the occasion of his sixty-first attendance in 1952)  (To access downloads of previous installments, click here.) Posted December 1, 2011... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

Brand New, First Edition (1974), signed by the author

“Foxhunting and music are as inseparable as bread and butter, whether it be the music of hounds, of the horn, or of ‘John Peel,’” wrote the late Alexander Mackay-Smith in the preface to his book The Songs of Foxhunting.

Mackay-Smith spent ten years collecting the music, the lyrics, seventy-seven illustrations, and the background and color behind twenty songs that foxhunters have loved to sing for over two centuries. The book was published in 1974 by the American Foxhound Club.

Through the courtesy of Mrs. Mackay-Smith, Foxhunting Life is proud to offer a limited number of brand new, first edition, signed-by-the-author copies directly from our Bookstore.

Author Ron BlackOnce upon a time there was a village—now submerged under a man-made lake—in the Mardale valley in the English Lake District. The occupants of the village were shepherds who tended their sheep high on the rugged fells surrounding the valley. Each year they would meet to exchange strayed sheep, and from these humble beginnings The Mardale Shepherds Meet—best-known of all the meets of the Lakeland Fell foxhound packs—began. Foxhunting Life, through the courtesy of author Ron Black, is pleased to bring you Installment I of The Mardale Hunt, the first book ever written about this famous meet. It is being published here in a series of instalments which you are free to download as PDF files. “I am a native Lakelander,” writes Black, “the fourth generation to follow hounds, with ancestors who stood on the cold tops at dawn, moved the heavy Lakeland stone to free trapped terriers, and also carried the horn on occasions….Hunting will not come back in the foreseeable future, perhaps not at all, but for three hundred years hunting and the church were the central thread to many communities. This is a part of the story.” We think you will be moved by this touching account of life, loss, and hunting in the Lakeland fells. Posted November 21, 2011... This content is for subscribers only.Join NowAlready a member? Log in here

Author Ron Black...In the north-eastern corner of the English Lake District there is a valley known as Mardale. This secluded valley contains a lake, under which rest the remains of a submerged village. The occupants of the village were shepherds who tended the local sheep high on the unforgiving fells surrounding the valley. Once a year they would meet to exchange strayed sheep, and from these humble beginnings The Mardale Shepherds Meet—best-known of all the meets of the Lakeland Fell foxhound packs—began.

It is often said that the origin of the meet is “older than the memory of man.” The introduction of the Ullswater Foxhounds increased the popularity of the meet, which soon attracted a much larger following than just the local shepherds. In the evening a public house called The Dun Bull was the venue for song and laughter. In time, The Mardale Shepherds Meet achieved worldwide fame.