Mells Opening Meet 2020  /   Drone photography by Michael Gomez

The history of the Mells Fox Hounds (TN) goes back to a universally known nursery rhyme—“Little Jack Horner.”

Really. Stay with me. This innocent-sounding rhyming couplet is believed to be based upon a sixteenth-century real estate swindle at the highest levels of church and government in jolly old England.*

When “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas pie, he stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum.” Jack’s plum was metaphor for a far dearer prize.