An rare surviving example of an original 18th century musical manuscript for the [hare] hunting song 'Rouse, rouse, jolly sportsman the hounds are all

An rare surviving example of an original 18th century musical manuscript for the [hare] hunting song 'Rouse, rouse, jolly sportsman the hounds are all out', in pen & ink, comprising three staves of music in a six eight time signature in the key of D Major, and twenty five lines of lyrics commencing: 'Rouse, rouse, jolly sportsman the hounds are all out The chace is begun I declare, Come up and to horse, let us follow the rout, And join in the chace of the hare' the words continue, extolling the pleasures of riding to hounds in pursuit of hare by day, and the pleasures of married life by night ... 'Our freedom with conscience is never alarm'd, We are stranger to envy and strife, When blest with a wife we return to her arms, Sport sweetens the conjugal life' mounted in perspex for display purposes; sold together with a copy of The Sporting Magazine for June 1806, including p.143-44 a 'hare's Introductory Letter' of his fate at the dinner table after being hunted by a pack of impudent hounds (2) Rouse, rouse jolly sportsman the hounds are all out, appeared as music and the full three verses of lyrics under poetical essays in Isaac and Edward Kimber's The London Magazine or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, volume 28, January 1769. It was also included in The Universal Songster; Or, Museum of Mirth, Robert Cruikshank's exhaustive collection of English ancient & modern songs published in 3 vols in 1826. Interestingly the song's popular fame was exported to the USA where it was included in The Skylark: or Gentlemen & Ladies' Complete Songster, published in Worcester. Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas Jnr. in 1797 and described as 'A Collection of the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances.' However, as with so many traditional folk songs, the creator remains anon.