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THE YNYSFOR HUNT By B. DEW ROBERTS. Mae ceiliog bach y Wyddfa yn canu ar y bryn, A hwyaid Aberglaslyn yn nofio ar y llyn, Mae gwyddau Hafodgaregog yn gwaeddi'n glir ac iach, A "miwsig" helgwyn 'nysfor ar ol y llwynog bach.1 The little cock of Snowdon is crowing from the brake, The ducks of Aberglaslyn are swimming on the lake, The geese of Hafodgaregog are cackling loud and shrill, And the music of the Ynysfor hounds is heard upon the hill. THAT music has haunted Snowdon and the surrounding mount- ains since 1765, when John Jones, son of Thomas Jones, rector of Trawsfynydd, and Jane, daughter of William Williams of Brondanw, Llanfrothen, began to hunt the pack which success- ive generations of his family have owned and hunted until the present day. For any privately owned pack to have so long a history is remarkable. The many packs hunting in this part of North Wales during the late eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries commonly had short but merry lives. There was a "Carnarvon Hunt" in 1782; a notice in the Chester Chronicle for Friday, 6th December, of that year desired the members to meet their Comptroller "on the evening of the 17th inst. at the King's Head, in Carnarvon. N.B.-Balls as usual."2 Hounds were kept at Nanhoron in 1829; and the annual "Hunt Day" at Llanystumdwy was followed by convivial celebrations at Plas-hen in the Majora Canamus CUp.3 This occasion was 1 Mr. E. Morgan Humphreys, writing in the Liverpool Post for 26th October, 1933, quotes Carneddog's Cerddi Eryri for the statement that these lines were written by Owen Gruffydd of Bwlch Gwernog, Nanmor, in May, 1799. I am indebted to him, and to the Editor, for permission to use this information. 2 W. H. Jones, Old Karnarvon, p. 90. 8 See Mr. E. Alfred Jones's article on "Two historic Welsh Cups" (Y Cymmrodor, Vol. XLIV). An entry for 1859 in the book of "Names of the Gentlemen that have drank the Hollow Tooth at Nanhoron" reads "Colonel Edwards birthday. This day 30 years took the hounds to Foel Fawr to meet Birthday party."