Thanks to the publication of the new book about Geordie Hanna I've been inspired to follow the late Fred McCormick's example and learn this song, and I've found it is a real joy to sing. I can't emulate Geordie's own masterful phrasing, but it has such a great tune with words to relish. The book is available from the Geordie Hanna Traditional Singing Society:- Geordie Hanna - The Man and the Songs, by Martin J. McGuinness

I found another precedent to the song besides the one discovered by Jim Dixon ten years ago. It comes from an 1884 American novel Woodbourne - A Novel of the Revolutionary Period in Virginia and Maryland, by Colonel Joseph Mayo.
In Chapter II, set in Virginia in 1775, a horseman witnesses a fox hunt and then hears "a pair of lusty lungs bawling away at a song with a stentorian gusto which set at defiance all the laws of melodious concord
On yonder hill there sits a hare,
        Opressed with sorrow, grief and care,
        Because her prospects are so bare;
                Halloo, boys, halloo!