284 STEEPLE-CIIASIM^. 



having swam his horse through a river to cover his ground. Mr. 

 Melprop arrived within the two hours, having been thrown out by 

 the river. It is considered a masterpiece of performance of the sort, 

 and neither even touched a road but to cross it. Some daring leaps 

 were made without accident. 



Irish sportsmen were in no way behind their English 

 brethren, and in 1819 steeple-chasing is found described (in 

 these early days, unfortunately, it was thought necessary to use 

 slang phrases in writing of sport, an evil that has been too 

 common ever since) as ' a sort of racing for which the Paddies 

 are particularly famous, and in which, unless the rider has 

 pluck and his prad goodness, they cannot expect to get well 

 home.' By this time the all-important question of weight seems 

 to have come up for consideration. In a four- (Irish) mile 

 chase at Dungarvan for a plate of fifty guineas and a sweepstakes 

 of five guineas each, riders carried twelve stone. Another at 

 Lismore was ' a complete tumble-down race.' The winner, Mr. 

 Foley's Brown Bess, fell four times ; the third horse had been 

 down six times. 'In all,' the report says, 'twelve falls, but 

 nobody killed. Betting : even at starting that there would be 

 six falls.' No odds against any of the field of six are quoted. 



' This system of horsemanship, dangerous in the extreme, 

 has become a favourite amusement with the young fox-hunters 

 of the day,' a writer of this period says; and another (1821) 

 sarcastically terms steeple- chasing ' this very rational and con- 

 siderate branch of the tree of sport, perhaps three centuries old, 

 which has been withering neglected and nearly defunct during 

 a long course of years, but has within a late period encountered 

 resurrection, vegetated, bloomed, and budded anew.' The 

 danger of ' hunting church-steeples ' is dwelt upon, and — with 

 good reason — the cruelty of preposterous twenty-mile contests. 

 Oftentimes courses seem to have been chosen mainly for their 

 impracticability, as at Dundee, in 1824, where there was ar- 

 ranged ' one of those sights termed a steeple-chase, from the top 

 of Dundee Law to Kilpurnie Hill, distance seven and a half 

 miles, though the shortest practicable route was nine or ten. 



