And there is another favourite written by Harper, one of the roadmen in the neighbourhood; while Woodcock Graves' immortal ditty, 'D'ye ken John Peel?' is never better sung than at the annual dinner of the Blencathra Hunt. I am standing at the Druids' Circle and looking across at Naddle. In the hollow of {200} the ridge is the school of S. John's-in-the-Vale. I remember that the old Squire, John Crozier, got his first learning at that school; and that some years after a poet of more than local fame, John Richardson, became its schoolmaster. He, too, immortalised the Blencathra Hunt, and one of his best songs will, for many years to come, echo the 'tally-ho!' of the late Master of the Hunt: 'The hunt is up, the hunt is up; Auld Tolly's in the drag; Hark to him, beauties, git away, He's gone for Skiddaw Crag. Rise fra ye'r beds, ye sleepy-heads, If ye wad plesser know; Ye'r hearts 't will cheer, if ye bit hear John Crozier's "Tally-ho!"' That last line calls us back to the man who has carried on, to a century's ending, the Mastership of the pack his father gave him in charge. [Illustration: A NORTH COUNTRY NIMROD.] As a lad of 18, John Crozier was already well known as a keen sportsman, as good with his rod in the becks and rivers here about, as he was with his father's hounds, and fond of wrestling as he was of hunting. At that day the pack numbered only six couples. They were kept at the farms all through the {201} year, and were trained to meet at the sound of the Master's horn. The old Squire would often tell how he would stand on Kiln Hill, blow a blast, and watch the beauties racing across the meadows to his call. John Peel, in those days, was still hunting on the other side of Skiddaw, and John Crozier remembered the last time he saw him was under Wanthwaite Crags, where, after a long day's run, he invited the old veteran, who was on his white pony, to come home to supper. 'Nay, nay, John,' said Peel, 'I'se freetened o' gettin' neeted (benighted),' and so went back on his way to Ruthwaite supperless. 'But I'll see thee again,' he added--who knows they may again have met. The first thing the young Master did was to improve the breed of his hounds, and this he accomplished by getting a strain from John Peel's kennels. How much of Ruby, 'Ranter, Royal, and Bellman, so true,' spoken of in the song, still runs in the blood of the Blencathra pack, I know not. Other strains since then have been introduced, but a hardier pack never breasted a mountain side, and there is not one of them who would not carry on the line himself, if his fellows failed, to the death. {202}