Bright as the sun, clear as the west wind, joyous as the heart of man and hound and horse sounded the horns. There was nothing more in the three verses, there seemed little more in the melody. After a little talk and much laughter and shouting with deep and shrill voices, blowing of horns, cheering, and chiding of steeds, summoning and urging of hounds, they rode away. They climbed the wild hills and saw an angry sea of yet wilder hills in the distance. They descended into the rich vales. They scattered joyfully. They gathered together as joyfully. They feasted until better than any wit or beauty or adventure seemed sleep. Then they slept. Other listeners to the song might think rather of a later hunt assembling before a cheerful Georgian mansion with many windows, and behind one of them a lady playing “Caradoc’s Hunt” on a spinet, and warbling it in Saxon. I thought of such a one as I heard the invisible lady playing at Sparsholt. Others, again, would be content with nothing later than the age of chivalry and the _Mabinogion_. The hunters would all be auburn or yellow-haired young men. They are clad in yellow tunics, green hose, and shoes of parti-coloured leather clasped at the instep with gold. Some carry bows of ivory strung with deer sinews, the shafts of whalebone headed with gold and winged with peacock’s feathers. Others have silver-headed spears of ash-wood coloured azure. All wear whalebone-hafted and gold-hilted daggers and horns of ivory. Their hunting is earnest, though elaborated with much decoration of custom, style, and ceremony. They are men who must go hungry but for the chase. They run or ride to hunt the stag or the boar, and nobly beautiful and blithe look they as they begin to move away from the castle, and their tall, brindled white-breasted greyhounds, wearing collars of rubies, are sporting like sea-swallows from side to side of them. But they may encounter foes instead of quarry; they may kill or be killed by young braves from other borders. So with all the gallantry of dress and harping there is something grim in their going forth; nor is it idle bombast for one among them to ride out carrying only what he calls the mightiest of all weapons--the harp--on which he plays “Caradoc’s Hunt” at the starting.