Waken, lords and ladies gay, The mist has left the mountain gray; Springlets in the dawn are streaming, Diamonds on the brake are gleaming, And foresters have busy been, To track the buck in thicket green; Now we come to chant our lay: “Waken, lords and ladies gay.” Waken, lords and ladies gay, To the green-wood haste away; We can show you where he lies, Fleet of foot, and tall of size; We can show the marks he made When ’gainst the oak his antlers frayed; You shall see him brought to bay, “Waken, lords and ladies gay.” Louder, louder chant the lay, “Waken, lords and ladies gay;” Tell them, youth and mirth and glee Run a course as well as we. Time, stern huntsman, who can baulk, Staunch as hound, and fleet as hawk? Think of this, and rise with day, Gentle lords and ladies gay. By the time this lay was finished, Lord Boteler, with his daughter and kinsman, Fitzallen of Harden, and other noble guests had mounted their palfreys, and the hunt set forward in due order. The huntsmen, having carefully observed the traces of a large stag on the preceding evening, were able, without loss of time, to conduct the company, by the marks which they had made upon the trees, to the side of the thicket in which, by the report of Drawslot, he had harboured all night. The horsemen spreading themselves along the side of the cover, waited until the keeper entered, leading his bandog, a large blood-hound tied in a leam or band, from which he takes his name. But it befell this. A hart of the second year, which was in the same cover with the proper object of their pursuit, chanced to be unharboured first, and broke cover very near where the Lady Emma and her brother were stationed. An inexperienced varlet, who was nearer to them, instantly unloosed two tall greyhounds, who sprung after the fugitive with all the fleetness of the north wind. Gregory, restored a little to spirits by the enlivening scene around him, followed, encouraging the hounds with a loud tayout,[*] for which he had the hearty curses of the huntsman, as well as of the baron, who entered into the spirit of the chase with all the juvenile ardour of twenty. “May the foul fiend, booted and spurred, ride down his bawling throat, with a scythe at his girdle,” quoth Albert Drawslot; “here have I been telling him that all the marks were those of a buck of the first head, and he has hollowed the hounds upon a velvet-headed knobbler! By Saint Hubert, if I break not his pate with my cross-bow, may I never cast off hound more! But to it, my lords and masters! the noble beast is here yet, and, thank the saints, we have enough of hounds.” [* _Tailliers-hors;_ in modern phrase, Tally-ho]