Now! Then! William Allison (11) witnesses hare-coursing at Cundall

14 February 1863: William Allison (11) witnesses hare-coursing at Cundall

William Allison. 1920. “My Kingdom for a Horse!”. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company. Get it:

Excerpt

Full content pending custom excerpt:

We were not debarred from seeing what we could of field sports at Cundale, and in the following letter to my sister is a singularly crude, not to say brutal, description of my first experience of coursing:

Cundale, 14th February 1863.
I wish you had been here yesterday to see a coursing match. It was such fun. The first two hares the first dog bit one of their legs in two; but falling over in a most insane manner (like Nettle over the cart rut) the second caught the hare.

But the best of all was a man whom we named Wildfire Sampson, he is rather insane at times. He rode about the field on a little pony as hard as he could, all the while shouting and yelling at anybody he came near; didn’t care for any person, if they didn’t choose to get out of the way he’d run over them; sometimes nearly tumbling off: always first down to the place where the hare was being killed. The common expression was “By Gor! here comes Sampson, let me be off!”

A great many hares got away. One ran so far that a dog who was chasing it lay down on the road and couldn’t go any further.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

Cundale, 14th February 1863.
I wish you had been here yesterday to see a coursing match. It was such fun. The first two hares the first dog bit one of their legs in two; but falling over in a most insane manner (like Nettle over the cart rut) the second caught the hare.

But the best of all was a man whom we named Wildfire Sampson, he is rather insane at times. He rode about the field on a little pony as hard as he could, all the while shouting and yelling at anybody he came near; didn’t care for any person, if they didn’t choose to get out of the way he’d run over them; sometimes nearly tumbling off: always first down to the place where the hare was being killed. The common expression was “By Gor! here comes Sampson, let me be off!”

A great many hares got away. One ran so far that a dog who was chasing it lay down on the road and couldn’t go any further.

223 words.