The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #58033   Message #917786
Posted By: GUEST,Jim Ward
25-Mar-03 - 07:35 AM
Thread Name: 'Innocent Hare' What does 'relope' mean?
Subject: RE: 'Innocent Hare' What does 'relope' mean?
The Sussex County Magazine of February, 1931 gives the texts of some hunting songs collected by one G.B.Shiffner. During the forward he states the songs are "no doubt given in a perverted text owing, I think, to the habit of the rural singer of learning them by rote rather than from the printed word, and the fact that the sense of a sentence troubled him little, so long as the tune pleased him".
'Sportsman Arouse' was noted as a great favourite, and the verse in question is given as

All on the green turf she pants for breath
The huntsman, he shouts out "Tis death!"
Elope! Elope! We have tired our hare!
Wine and beer we will drink without fear
And drink success to the innocent hare.