This song exemplifies the way a single word change can take a song out of one set of cultural experiences into another, from one set of understandings into another context.

I first heard this from Geordie Hanna while I was writing the notes for the Topic Record on which he sang it. It's a song, like almost all Irish hare hunting songs, about local men, on foot, each with their own, usually one but occasionally two, dogs. It's a song of a day on foot. The story behind one such song, the Granemore Hare, has a visiting hunt walk twenty miles to hunt over 'the green fields round Tassagh' and back again in the same day. But these men had no horses, these were not 'riders to hounds', this was like the north English fell packs, on foot, up hill and round again.

In such a situation, I've always thought that the line made most sense: "There came a huntsman passing by" though sometimes Geordie did sing, "There came a huntsman riding by". I don't know why - a slip of the tongue or a slip of the mind?

But, as I began by saying, there's a gulf between the words - a gulf of class, of wealth, of behaviour, of situation, and of topography - hunting on horseback doesn't go up hills, through boulders hidden by bracken; it's a 'sport' for open fields and rolling hills.

Passing: riding - it's a singers' choice but, in this case I think you're choosing a lot more than a word; but you're free to choose - I have!