When each horse wore a crupper

When each horse wore a crupper

When each horse wore a crupper, each squire a pigtail,
Ere Blue Cap and Wanton taught greyhounds to scurry,
With music in plenty oh, where was the hurry?

But it is more than eighty years since Blue Cap and Wanton ran their race over Newmarket Heath, which for speed has never been excelled by any modern hounds.

And it is a curious fact, that although Somerville, the author of The Chase, died in 1742, his poem contains as clear and correct directions for fox-hunting, with few exceptions, as if it were written yesterday. So that the art must have arrived at perfection within sixty or seventy years. In the long reign of George III. the distinction between town and country was much broken down, and the isolation in which country squires lived destroyed. Packs of hounds, kept for the amusement of a small district, became, as it were, public property. At length the meets of hounds began to be regularly given in the country newspapers.

Fonte: Tamming Horses