badger-worthy

Updated: May 14, 2025

Or, if that were really too slight a thing for the observation of an average sportsman, surely he must recollect the dying away of the hounds' voices, as the woodland passes engulfed them, whether it were Brendon or at Badger-worthy, or any other place; how they brushed through the narrow forest paths, where the ashes were already golden, while the oaks still kept their sombre green, and the red leaves and berries of the mountain-ash showed bright beneath the dark forest aisles; and how all of a sudden the wild outcry before them seemed to stop and concentrate, thrown back, louder and louder as they rode, off the same echoing crag; till at a sudden turn of the road there stood the stag beneath them in the stream, his back against the black rock with its green cushions of dripping velvet, knee-deep in the clear amber water, the hounds around him, some struggling and swimming in the deep pool, some rolling and tossing and splashing in a mad, half- terrified ring, as he reared into the air on his great haunches, with the sparkling beads running off his red mane, and dropping on his knees, plunged his antlers down among them, with blows which would have each brought certain death with it if the yielding water had not broken the shock.

Charles Kingsley - Prose Idylls, New and Old