CHAPTER I. 



THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF STEEPLE-CHASING. 



IT is easy enough to understand in what way those cross- 

 country competitions known as Steeple-chases had their origin. 

 As men rode after hounds together a certain spirit of emulation 

 was naturally aroused in them. The question which was the 

 better horse, which the better man, and the extent to which 

 horsemanship could make one animal beat another a little his 

 superior in speed and in powers of fencing, must often have 

 come up for solution ; and the best way to settle the point was 

 obviously to ride over a given distance of country independently 

 of hounds, which might check or run into their fox before the 

 matter was settled. Sportsmen more frequently found occa- 

 sion to gallop over a country together than to go at full speed 

 over level ground ; and admirers of steeple-chasing may there- 

 fore maintain with some show of reason that the former is really 

 the more natural kind of race. It is at least the race in which 

 gentlemen, who have always held their own in the saddle 

 against professional riders, can take the greatest personal 

 interest. 



Steeple-chasing can be traced back as far as the year 1752, 

 and Ireland seems to have been the land of its birth. An old 

 MS. in the possession of the O'Briens of Dromoland records 

 a match run in this year over four and a half miles of country 

 between Mr. O'Callaghan and Mr. Edmund Blake, the course 

 being from the Church of Buttevant to the spire of St. Leger 

 Church. Such matches were probably common enough, but 



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