/IDastevs of tbe /IDeatb 403 



keenest of sportsmen. It must have been a model hunt 

 to inspire the Saxon bard thus to chant its praises : — 



' No jealousy here mars the charm of a run, 

 No jostling when going, no boasting when done. 

 Good fellows they're all, whether cautious or bold, 

 And kind fellowship reigns thro' the young and the old.' 



But Kilkenny has too much plough and too little 

 pasture to suit the tastes of your modern foxhunter. 



For a brief space the Watsons made the Carlow country 

 famous and fashionable. But its glory faded when Sir 

 John Kennedy lifted Kildare to the place Kilkenny once 

 occupied, and a succession of able masters kept it there, 

 such men as Mr La Touche, Lord Clonmell, Lord Mayo, 

 Baron de Robeck — a galaxy of hunting talent the like to 

 which the records of no other country in Ireland can 

 produce. The Kildare Hunt Meeting and Punchestown 

 Races helped at times to swell the fields to huge pro- 

 portions, and it is an authenticated fact that on one 

 occasion, on an April day, just after Punchestown, there 

 were no fewer than thirteen English Masters of Hounds 

 seen out with the hounds over which Colonel de Robeck 

 now so ably presides. 



Then there were the far-famed Galway Blazers, whose 

 renown was great in the days when that grand sports- 

 man, Mr Burton Parsons Persse of Moyode Castle 

 hunted the country and proved emphatically that he was 

 ' the man for Galway.' 



Whilst all these ' dogs ' were having their ' day ' Meath 

 was 



' In darkness lost — the darkness of the grave,' 



SO far aS' the outside hunting public was concerned. In 

 prehistoric days every squire of any substance kept a 

 few hounds for his personal amusement, and now and 



