Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers - American Hilltop Fox Chasing (Hardcover)


Around a campfire in the woods through long hours of night, men used to gather to listen to the music of hounds' voices as they chased an elusive and seemingly preternatural fox. To the highly trained ears of these backwoods hunters, the hounds told the story of the pursuit like operatic voices chanting a great epic. Although the hunt almost always ended in the escape of the fox-as the hunters hoped it would-the thrill of the chase made the men feel "that they [were] close to something lost and never to be found, just as one can feel something in a great poem or a dream." Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers offers a colorful account of this vanishing American folkway-back-country fox hunting known as "hilltopping," "moonlighting," "fox racing," or "one-gallus fox hunting." Practiced neither for blood sport nor to put food on the table, hilltopping was worlds removed from elite fox hunting where red- and black-coated horsemen thundered across green fields in daylight. Hilltopping was a nocturnal, even mystical pursuit, uniting men across social and racial lines as they gathered to listen to dogs chasing foxes over miles of ground until the sun rose. Engaged in by thousands of rural and small-town Americans from the 1860s to the 1980s, hilltopping encouraged a quasi-spiritual identification of man with animal that bound its devotees into a "brotherhood of blood and cause" and made them seem almost crazy to outsiders.

R602
List Price R745
Save R143 19%

Or split into 4x interest-free payments of 25% on orders over R50
Learn more

Discovery Miles6020
Mobicred@R56pm x 12* Mobicred Info
Free Delivery
Delivery AdviceOut of stock

Toggle WishListAdd to wish list
Review this Item

Product Description

Around a campfire in the woods through long hours of night, men used to gather to listen to the music of hounds' voices as they chased an elusive and seemingly preternatural fox. To the highly trained ears of these backwoods hunters, the hounds told the story of the pursuit like operatic voices chanting a great epic. Although the hunt almost always ended in the escape of the fox-as the hunters hoped it would-the thrill of the chase made the men feel "that they [were] close to something lost and never to be found, just as one can feel something in a great poem or a dream." Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers offers a colorful account of this vanishing American folkway-back-country fox hunting known as "hilltopping," "moonlighting," "fox racing," or "one-gallus fox hunting." Practiced neither for blood sport nor to put food on the table, hilltopping was worlds removed from elite fox hunting where red- and black-coated horsemen thundered across green fields in daylight. Hilltopping was a nocturnal, even mystical pursuit, uniting men across social and racial lines as they gathered to listen to dogs chasing foxes over miles of ground until the sun rose. Engaged in by thousands of rural and small-town Americans from the 1860s to the 1980s, hilltopping encouraged a quasi-spiritual identification of man with animal that bound its devotees into a "brotherhood of blood and cause" and made them seem almost crazy to outsiders.

Customer Reviews

No reviews or ratings yet - be the first to create one!

Product Details

General

Imprint

University Of Texas Press

Country of origin

United States

Series

Jack & Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture

Release date

October 2010

Availability

Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available.

First published

October 2010

Authors

Dimensions

229 x 155 x 25mm (L x W x T)

Format

Hardcover - With dust jacket

Pages

262

ISBN-13

978-0-292-72302-3

Barcode

9780292723023

Categories

LSN

0-292-72302-4



Trending On Loot