Blue Birdseye Stock Ties: They’re Back!
Karen Ewbank is ready for cubhunting in her blue birdseye stock tie.
Back in early May we ran a story titled “The Blue Birdseye Stock Tie: A Smashing Style from the Past.” The story, about a little-known, mostly forgotten, yet very attractive and traditional item of foxhunting attire, turned out to be our best-read story of the entire spring season!
We thought it would be fun to bring the blue birdseye stock tie back into the hunting fields of the twenty-first century, and many of you agreed. So we researched the fabric, purchased a few yards, and launched its rebirth at the Virginia Foxhound Show at the end of May. It was a hit!
Here then, is a reminder: our informal season is only weeks away. If you’d like to start the season sporting one of your own, click here!
Downton Abbey Conclusion Will Air Foxhunting “Issue”
By now most of us have heard (and shed tears) that the upcoming season of Downton Abbey will conclude the five-year series. The final season promises to resolve all those Grantham family dramas that have captivated viewers in 250 countries. Through a single family, we have witnessed the British aristocracy and its seemingly inviolate traditions […]
Sheep May Safely Graze
Sheep May Safely Graze, L.M. Clancy, 2015, 423 pages, paperback, $14.95, available at AmazonIrish sporting artist Liam Clancy has expanded his repertoire. He’s written a novel.
While foxhunting, prodigious drinking, and sex are well-handled ingredients of Clancy’s story—which takes place mostly in Ireland and England—those ingredients are only a framework upon which hangs a larger story of people, relationships, and the times. Our times: the Millennial, hunt sabs, the pathos of the hoof and mouth epidemic, the runup to the hunting ban, the dagger thrust into the heart of the English countryside by a government focused elsewhere.
If the publishing industry were not in turmoil, as it has been for the last decade at least, and if publishers would give first-time novelists half-a-chance, Clancy’s book could well replace titles by authors with household names that now occupy undeserved spots on the Best Seller lists. His dialog crackles, and his characters are wholly-formed individuals that you will care greatly for. Think of Maeve Binchy on steroids.
Fanciful Fibs and Other Sins
Photo by Karen MyerSome Foxhunting Life readers have already seen this opinion piece, published more than a year ago. While it attracted a number of comments for which I’m grateful, the message hasn’t, and of course never will reach everyone. So after having seen a new batch of newspaper articles from around the country, containing cringe-worthy quotes by foxhunters attending Opening Meets this season, I’m obliged to re-publish my argument. If it reaches another pair of eyes or ears and changes the mind attached, it will be worthwhile!
As Pogo once famously said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” I think of that bit of comic strip philosophy whenever I hear foxhunters attempt to con the public or distance themselves from the truth about our sport.
Will Ersland’s Style
Hunters Moon by Will Ersland, courtesy of Cindy Piper, MFH, Long Lake Hounds (MN) Someone once told Will Ersland, “The horses and people in your paintings have great action—even when they’re standing still!”
Ersland sees himself as a visual journalist. “My paintings record a moment in time,” he says. “They are cropped the way I see the action, and each brush stroke is laid down with confidence and purpose based on my academic background and decades of drawing and painting.”
Ersland’s use of short, flat, planar brush strokes to highlight rounded shapes strikes me as an effective and unique element of his style.
“My style is dictated by the medium—acrylic paints—which dry very fast,” he explained. “I don’t even try to blend them. Instead, I build up form by starting with the darkest values and layering on the lightest values, usually following the form of the object with my brush strokes.
The Second Whip
Illustration by Gilbert HollidayOver he goes, with a crash and a rattle,
Hound couples clinking, ’gainst saddle and thigh;
Over he goes, and the light of the battle
Gleams like a spark in his eager young eye.
Twigs of the hawthorn fly backward together,
Meeting again with an ominous swish;
Over he goes, landing light as a feather,
One with his horse and quick as you’d wish.
Kinds and condition of fences don’t matter,
Straight as a ramrod he rides at them all;
Over he goes with a bang and a clatter,
Knocking loose stones off the top of the wall.
Captain Ronnie Wallace, MFH: A Huntsman Like No Other
Captain Ronnie Wallace with hounds while Master of the Heythrop / Oil portrait by Michael Lyne
Captain Ronnie Wallace, MFH was the undisputed dean of British foxhunting and a frequent and popular visitor to the U.S. He was a genius in the art of venery and in his uncanny breeding sense. He was arguably the English breeder most influential in the development of today’s modern English foxhound.
It’s been thirteen years since Captain Wallace died in an automobile accident at age eighty-two, yet whenever hunting conversation turns to amazing feats of hound work performed by a superb huntsman, I’m reminded of an astonishing story that illustrates Wallace’s supremacy.
Scottish National Party Delays Attempt to Relax Hunting Ban
In a reversal of expectations, the Scottish National Party (SNP) has threatened to oppose the pro-hunting effort to relax a key provision of the Hunting Act in England. The SNP move appears to doom chances of passage. As Foxhunting Life reported last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron, a former foxhunter, decided not to test […]
Lady Anne Hemphill (1929–2015)
Lady Anne Hemphill (nee Ruttledge) passed away this week at Craughwell Nursing Home in County Galway. An elegant and friendly lady, with a pleasant greeting for everyone, she will be remembered as one of the most accomplished Field Masters for the Galway Blazers, a role she filled with style for fifteen seasons.
I remember hunting in Oranmore when Michael Dempsey was huntsman, and as he drew the last covert at the Rifle Range in near darkness, hounds found immediately and we were away. Lady Anne leading the field came down in a narrow lane when her horse slipped. Deciding to stop and help we got a glimpse of her hand barely visible over the wall waving us on as she was trying to extricate herself from under her horse, saying,” Go, on, go on, don’t mind me, enjoy yourselves!”
A Plan to Modify England’s Hunting Act
With Prime Minister David Cameron now leading a majority government, pro-hunting Conservatives are looking to him to make good on his pledge to bring a free vote to the floor in Parliament to repeal the despised Hunting Act of 2002. Despite his majority, however, Cameron is loath to risk a free vote. Too many members […]