songs of foxhunting
Does Your Hunt Have a Song?
Belvedere Hounds drawn by D.T. CarlisleContinuing with our musical theme—songs of foxhunting—does your hunt have a song? Mine does. Yours could, too.
Somewhere around fifty years ago, the late Alexander Mackay-Smith, MFH found himself confined to the hospital with a broken leg from a hunting accident. With time on his hands, he set about composing a hunting song for his hunt. He took the music and theme of a popular hunting song, “Reynard the Fox,” and rewrote the lyrics using well-known places, features, and people from the Blue Ridge Hunt.
Plagiarism? Of course not! Virtually all the traditional hunting songs we know are retreads of even more ancient English and Irish nursery songs or folk tunes with hunting lyrics set to them.
If you have a poet in your hunt, give him or her our new CD, Songs of Foxhunting, and download the hunting songs—music and lyrics—from the website. Ask your lyricist to choose one of the tunes and rewrite the lyrics to memorialize a great hunt, to honor a special member, or to sing the praises of a revered Master.
What? No Music?
Edwin Hall
I wasn’t fortunate enough as a child to have horses or to be from a horsey family. However, we lived in rural Cleveland County, North Carolina, where a great many people had horses. Being the son of the local Baptist minister, I knew everyone in the community, and, between the ages of eight and thirteen, I was allowed to ride the horses of various church members. At the age of ten or so, I distinctly recall telling Carl DeBrew that I wanted to foxhunt when I grew up. I lived next door to Carl’s wonderful grandparents, who had a true family farm. They enriched my childhood more than any other people, including my own grandparents. Mr. Lee and Miss Carey DeBrew treated me like one of their own grandchildren, and I was allowed to ride their mule anytime I wanted (when it was not working!). Carl had two horses and was great about letting me ride them.
Songs of Foxhunting—Country Style
Karen Myers photo
Foxhunting songs with a purely American accent! Would you like to hear a sample? Download lyrics and the MP3 audio file and listen to Coyote Line by Edwin Hall—authentic Americana. If you have the lyrics in your hand and the music playing, you won’t be able to resist joining in on the chorus! Coyote Line is just one of ten songs in Ed Hall's CD, Meeting in the Morning, available now in our Bookstore.
Also available as promised is a new CD production of Alexander Mackay-Smith's The Songs of Foxhunting---a collection of twenty traditional songs, including John Peel; Here’s a Health to Every Sportsman; Drink Puppy, Drink; The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night; and many more favorites. There’s too much joy in singing to let those old songs fade away. Not only have they been sung for hundreds of years, but most of them are based on lyrics from the hunting field put to even older English and Irish music. In short, they’re ancient. But let's go back to Ed Hall and his country music.
New From FHL: Music, Lyrics, and Audio Downloads
Before TV, video games, and texting, foxhunters used to entertain themselves with stories, poems, and songs. Foxhunting families would often break into song at the table after dinner, and windows rattled at many a hunt breakfast with songs of foxhunting.
My good friend Caroline Treviranus Leake remembers impromptu songfests at the dinner table led by her step-father, the late Alexander Mackay-Smith. The entire family—mother Marilyn and sisters Denya and Leslie—would join in. Caroline remembers those times with the greatest of pleasure—times of togetherness, good cheer, and shared enjoyment.
