A hunter is turned away at the gate by its owner, gun and hound and all, in a rhyme built around a proper huff of a comeback. Reigate is a real Surrey town, which gives the joke a rooted, English feel.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
A man went a-hunting at Reigate,
And wished to leap over a high gate.
Says the owner, "Go round,
With your gun and your hound,
For you never shall leap over my gate."
About this rhyme
Reigate is a real market town in Surrey. · Text matches: hunter wants to leap the gate, owner refuses, tells him to go round with gun and hound.
Reigate is a real town in Surrey, and this rhyme borrows its name for a small, stubborn joke: a hunter wants to jump a gate, the owner tells him to go round instead, gun, hound and all. It's a place-name rhyme, the kind built to make a real English town sound faintly ridiculous. Read the owner's line with real authority; it's the whole punchline.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition