Foxhunting in Ireland is a jewel with many facets–humor, beauty, thrills. And, as a fine jewel shimmers in the light, the recollections of an Irish foxhunting holiday shimmer in the memory.
Nothing in the literature of foxhunting really prepares the visitor for the incredible beauty of hounds in full cry sweeping toward the ruins of an ancient castle skylined in the fading light of a November afternoon. Or for the sheer terror of looking between a horses ears at a ten-foot drop on the far side of a double bank with a six-foot ditch at the bottom.
There are other things the literature does not prepare you for. Remember the pictures you have seen of a meticulously attired hunt field sweeping toward a beautifully turfed Irish bank? What those pictures don’t show is that, on the top of that bank, is a thick hedge that, chances are, you are going to have to make a hole in. Here, a machete would be a much more appropriate hunting appointment than wire-cutters.
Lacking the machete, the next most effective means you have of making a hole in that hedge (besides a stout heart, that is) is your hard hat. So, spurring the while, you lower your head and bull through. Of course, your head down, you don’t know just what is on the other side of the hedge, or even where the other side of the bank drops off.
Having more or less gotten through the hedge, and having some natural curiosity about where the other edge of the bank is, you look up to see what’s coming.
A tree limb is, that’s what. About a foot in front of your face.
Aside from the hedge you never see in the pictures, there is another unexplainable mystery about Irish banks. Invariably, after your trusty hireling has launched himself (and you) off the top of the bank, you see that the level of the field you are jumping into is three feet lower than the one you just jumped out of.
It takes a better geographer than I to understand the undoubted fact that one spends the day jumping drop fences, yet the hack back to the trailer at the end of the day is not the uphill Alpine scramble you somehow expect.
One last word about Irish banks: If you’ve never jumped them before, there will doubtless be a self-congratulatory moment during that long-awaited first run when you check your mount briefly, jam your hat more securely back on your head, and say “Whew! That’s the biggest drop I’ve ever ridden.”
Don’t worry. In just a few minutes it will be the second biggest.
All this talk of banks, ditches, and hedges raises the question in the prudent fox-hunter’s mind: “Fine. But where am I going to find the Pegasus it would obviously take to carry me, no better rider than I should be, over these Himalayan obstacles?”
The answer is that Pegasus is readily available for about $25 a day, including his transportation to and from the meet. Some of the hirelings are, of course, better than others. But the hired horse you have obtained through a reliable stable that won’t get you through the day is rare. The tack supplied you may be something else again. Even if you are indifferent to the discomfort of the straight-forked, straight-skirted saddle with which Pegasus likely comes equipped, have a look at the condition of the billets before you blithely step aboard. Forewarned is forearmed.
One of the first things a visitor to an Irish pack will notice is that, by American standards, Irish hounds run virtually mute. Only when they are actually closing for the kill does their full cry produce the kind of hound music that is such a joy to American foxhunters.
An American pack with so little voice would have been irretrievably lost in the woods fifteen minutes after the first run started. But, when all is done and when, homeward bound, you are likely to be reflecting that the most valuable things you bring back with you are not listed on the manifest you will hand the friendly Stateside customs officer, and take up no room in your hopelessly overstuffed luggage.
They are the vignettes stored up in mind’s eye: The vine-grown castle ruin atop a furze-covered knoll near Adare, which, on a memorable day, produced no less than three foxes for Lord Daresbury’s fine Limerick hounds.
The fallen-down gazebo which spoke mutely of grander days in County Meath, and around which foxes seem to run in concentric but ever-widening circles.
The day with the Galway Blazers when the four o’clock fox obligingly took you on an unforgettable run, through fields of Emerald green in the fading brilliance of the sunset of a stormy day, your Pegasus rising to the stone walls of Galway with an ease and rhythm that put joy in your heart.
And, finally, the day with the Scarteen Black and Tans that ended with the Master, silhouetted against the sunset, crawling about atop a castle wall overgrown with an impenetrable thicket of bush and briar where, hounds testified, the fox had returned to his lair.
Foxhunting in Ireland is a jewel with many facets–humor, beauty, thrills. And, as a fine jewel shimmers in the light, the recollections of an Irish foxhunting holiday shimmer in the memory.
Nothing in the literature of foxhunting really prepares the visitor for the incredible beauty of hounds in full cry sweeping toward the ruins of an ancient castle skylined in the fading light of a November afternoon. Or for the sheer terror of looking between a horses ears at a ten-foot drop on the far side of a double bank with a six-foot ditch at the bottom.
There are other things the literature does not prepare you for. Remember the pictures you have seen of a meticulously attired hunt field sweeping toward a beautifully turfed Irish bank? What those pictures don’t show is that, on the top of that bank, is a thick hedge that, chances are, you are going to have to make a hole in. Here, a machete would be a much more appropriate hunting appointment than wire-cutters.
Lacking the machete, the next most effective means you have of making a hole in that hedge (besides a stout heart, that is) is your hard hat. So, spurring the while, you lower your head and bull through. Of course, your head down, you don’t know just what is on the other side of the hedge, or even where the other side of the bank drops off.
Having more or less gotten through the hedge, and having some natural curiosity about where the other edge of the bank is, you look up to see what’s coming.
A tree limb is, that’s what. About a foot in front of your face.
Aside from the hedge you never see in the pictures, there is another unexplainable mystery about Irish banks. Invariably, after your trusty hireling has launched himself (and you) off the top of the bank, you see that the level of the field you are jumping into is three feet lower than the one you just jumped out of.
It takes a better geographer than I to understand the undoubted fact that one spends the day jumping drop fences, yet the hack back to the trailer at the end of the day is not the uphill Alpine scramble you somehow expect.
One last word about Irish banks: If you’ve never jumped them before, there will doubtless be a self-congratulatory moment during that long-awaited first run when you check your mount briefly, jam your hat more securely back on your head, and say “Whew! That’s the biggest drop I’ve ever ridden.”
Don’t worry. In just a few minutes it will be the second biggest.
All this talk of banks, ditches, and hedges raises the question in the prudent fox-hunter’s mind: “Fine. But where am I going to find the Pegasus it would obviously take to carry me, no better rider than I should be, over these Himalayan obstacles?”
The answer is that Pegasus is readily available for about $25 a day, including his transportation to and from the meet. Some of the hirelings are, of course, better than others. But the hired horse you have obtained through a reliable stable that won’t get you through the day is rare. The tack supplied you may be something else again. Even if you are indifferent to the discomfort of the straight-forked, straight-skirted saddle with which Pegasus likely comes equipped, have a look at the condition of the billets before you blithely step aboard. Forewarned is forearmed.
One of the first things a visitor to an Irish pack will notice is that, by American standards, Irish hounds run virtually mute. Only when they are actually closing for the kill does their full cry produce the kind of hound music that is such a joy to American foxhunters.
An American pack with so little voice would have been irretrievably lost in the woods fifteen minutes after the first run started. But, when all is done and when, homeward bound, you are likely to be reflecting that the most valuable things you bring back with you are not listed on the manifest you will hand the friendly Stateside customs officer, and take up no room in your hopelessly overstuffed luggage.
They are the vignettes stored up in mind’s eye: The vine-grown castle ruin atop a furze-covered knoll near Adare, which, on a memorable day, produced no less than three foxes for Lord Daresbury’s fine Limerick hounds.
The fallen-down gazebo which spoke mutely of grander days in County Meath, and around which foxes seem to run in concentric but ever-widening circles.
The day with the Galway Blazers when the four o’clock fox obligingly took you on an unforgettable run, through fields of Emerald green in the fading brilliance of the sunset of a stormy day, your Pegasus rising to the stone walls of Galway with an ease and rhythm that put joy in your heart.
And, finally, the day with the Scarteen Black and Tans that ended with the Master, silhouetted against the sunset, crawling about atop a castle wall overgrown with an impenetrable thicket of bush and briar where, hounds testified, the fox had returned to his lair.
