Produced by Judith Wirawan, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net REYNARD THE FOX [Illustration: Publisher's emblem] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO [Illustration: Frontispiece: First colored plate _Courtesy Arthur Ackermann and Son, New York_] REYNARD THE FOX BY JOHN MASEFIELD NEW EDITION WITH EIGHT PLATES IN COLOUR AND MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARTON MOOREPARK [Illustration: Ex libris Reynards] New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1919 AND 1920, BY JOHN MASEFIELD. New illustrated edition, October, 1920. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. INTRODUCTION I have been asked to write why I wrote this poem of "Reynard the Fox." As a man grows older, life becomes more interesting but less easy to know; for, late in life, even the strongest yields to the habit of his compartment. When he cannot range through all society, from the court to the gutter, a man must go where all society meets, as at the Pilgrimage, the Festival or the Game. Here in England the Game is both a festival and an occasion of pilgrimage. A man wanting to set down a picture of the society of England will find his models at the games. What are the English games? The man's game is Association football; the woman's game, perhaps, hockey or lacrosse. Golf I regard more as a symptom of a happy marriage than a game. Cricket, which was once widely popular among both sexes has lost its hold, except among the young. The worst of all these games is that few can play them at a time. But in the English country, during the autumn, winter and early spring of each year, the main sport is fox hunting, which is not like cricket or football, a game for a few and a spectacle for many, but something in which all who come may take a part, whether rich or poor, mounted or on foot. It is a sport loved and followed by both sexes, all ages and all classes. At a fox hunt, and nowhere else in England, except perhaps at a funeral, can you see the whole of the land's society brought together, focussed for the observer, as the Canterbury pilgrims were for Chaucer. This fact made the subject attractive. The fox hunt gave an opportunity for a picture or pictures of the members of an English community.