SHOWERS OF HOT COPPERS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 20

SHOWERS OF HOT COPPERS

ANCIENT WELSH CUSTOM An old custom was indulged in in the ancient town of Beaumaris (North Wales), when the Anglesey Hunt rode in after their sport with the hare. Riders and hounds paraded the streets and a surging crowd scrambled for hot coppers cast from the balcony of the Bulkeley Arras Hotel by the patroness of the hunt ball, which was concluded at night. The copper coins, three pounds worth of them, had been wanned to a tingling heat in one of the great ovens of the spacious hotel which, with the adjoining Town Hall, was virtually given over ,to tho Hunt revellers, as will happen again. The patroness, Miss Pamela Hayes, with whom was the Comptroller, Sir Michael Duff Assheton-Smith, of Vaynol Park, Miss Meyrick, who is Master of the Hunt, and other leading members. showered the coins from the banking house shovel lent for the occasion, and there was great laughter and shouting and much good-humoured scrimmaging as the coppers were scattered right and left. Many prominent Anglesey residents joined in the fun, but the Grammar School boys and a number of gipsy children were among the most energetic. Those 'who caught coins from the first throw transferred them from hand to hand as though they were inconveniently hot, but there was no repetition of the cries and lamentations that were heard on this anniversary some years ago, when an overzealous servant, having taken his instructions too literally, made of this hunt money hot copper indeed.

-/The Anglesey Hunt goes back to the year 1757, but when this business of casting hot coppers to the crowd started nobody seems to know. It has probably be done for a hundred years. I was told it is on record that on the occasion of the first hunt revels the music, was charged at 5/-. Ou this occasion town band playing “John Peel” headed the hunt procession. A feature was the number of women riders, and there were children mounted on ponies, including a dark-skinned young gipsy who rode with an easy grace. / They had excellent sport on this day of mellow sunshine. .Scent was good, and a rousing run ended in a kill. There are now no foxes in Anglesey, nor is there stag hunting there any more, and there are people who will tell you that even the harriers are not what they were. "The young men and women are not taking to hunting,” one,old follower said, “and there is nothing like the , enthusiasm there once was.” But Anglesey, tvhere the last leaves are golden, showed us a line hunting picture those who wero in green will be dancing in a hall hung with portraits of former masters and comptrollers who iu their day danced at the hunt ball. ~