[Royal Military College, Sandburst.] Printed handbill poem titled ‘The Staff College Drag Hunt Song. / By Major M. Churchill, 2/Northampton Regiment, / Master, S.C.D.H., 1885-86’.

The present item is excessively scarce: there is no record of it on either OCLC WorldCat or JISC. The Staff College Drag Hunt at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, was established in 1869 as a private pack which drag-hunted twice a week in the area surrounding Camberley, and after more than a hundred and fifty years, the hunt still rides. 1p, 12mo. Text enclosed in rules with decorative corners. In fair condition, lightly worn and spotted, with traces of stub and mounting on blank reverse. Titled: ‘The Staff College Drag Hunt Song. / By Major M. Churchill, 2/Northampton Regiment, / Master, S.C.D.H., 1885-86, / Music from Mr. F. Cotton’s “Forty Minutes.” ’ Seven numbered four-line stanzas and the following chorus: ‘Then let us drink drag-hunting boys, and pass the bottle round, / Drink to the horse, the fox of course, a bumper to the hound; / And let us toast our farmers as a right good jolly sort, / When you haven’t time for hunting then, the Drag is rattling sport.’ First stanza: ‘The gallant steed by nature made companion for the hound, / Will give us great enjoyment as o’er the fields we bound; / There’s nothing like fox-hunting, and some might say the stag, / But when you can’t get either, then there’s nothing like the Drag.’ The fourth stanza notes that ‘many a Staff aspirant has saluted mother earth’. There are also references to the Staff College, Tangley Park and Easthampstead Park. The final stanza gives a toast to ‘our Secretary’s health’, as ‘He’s the proper sort of fellow to instruct the R. M. C.’ See image