Saddle room songs and hunting ballads

Chapter 9: OVER PASTURE, PLOUGH AND FELL.

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About This Book

A collection of short poems and ballads celebrating fox hunting, racing, and stable life in the countryside. The verse alternates exuberant hunt choruses and breathless race scenes with quieter, nostalgic pieces about an empty loose-box, an old saddle being sold, and a cab horse's recollections. Multiple voices—riders, whippers-in, grooms, and onlookers—convey camaraderie, sport, and affection for horses using lively rhythms, onomatopoeic calls, and direct narrative detail. Overall the poems register the pleasures and rituals of country sport alongside wistful memory and affectionate portraiture of animals.

OVER PASTURE, PLOUGH AND FELL.

When the rain clouds o’erhead hover,

And the hounds are in the covert,

And the fox has broken eastwards,

Can’t you hear the first whip yell?

That’s the time for joy and mirth, sir,

Cramming hat and tightening girth, sir,

And it’s I’m for dashing eastward

Over pasture, plough and fell.

Finest run I ever knew, sir,

See they’re running now to view, sir,

Now they have him, Oh, by Jove! sir,

But the mare has gone right well!

They have killed the old Red Rover,

Now his last long race is over,

Tho’ a dozen times he beat us

Over pasture, plough and fell.