Fox Hunting in Ireland 247 



large head and ragged hips ; while there is, occasionally, a real 

 good looking one, the majority have little to boast of in that 

 particular. His motto seems to be, handsome is that handsome 

 does, and on that ground he shines supreme. His mother is 

 generally seven-eighths, fifteen-sixteenths or thirty-one thirty- 

 seconds thoroughbred, his cold blood coming through carty 

 farm mares, to which he sometimes throws back in some one 

 particular, perhaps such as in the feet or head. Sometimes he 

 looks very carty behind and breedy in front, or vice versa, and 

 sometimes he comes out nothing but a weedy thoroughbred; 

 still these are the exception. As the American trotter is the 

 best representative of the character of the American people 

 who produced him, so too has the Irish hunter acquired a char- 

 acter decidedly Irish. He is, in a word, a light-hearted devil- 

 may-care creature that is always ready for a harum-scarum 

 cross-country racket, wliich he thoroughly enjoys. His heart 

 is in the game from start to finish. What he can't jump, he 

 crawls over or smashes through. He is just reckless enough to 

 think notliing of himself, and heedless enough to go where he 

 is sent, regardless of how or in what form he is to land. A 

 cross-country lark suits him to perfection. He is, as the say- 

 ing goes, "Seldom sick and never sorry." With such a char- 

 acter it may be easily understood that the Irish hunter is a 

 born cross-country horse to begin with. 



Now we come to his schooHng. His mother and his 

 "granny," as they say in Ireland, were themselves ridden to 

 hounds by the Irish tenant farmers who owned them. They 

 were mated in the spring, many of them before the hunting 

 season was over, and hunted during the fore part of the fol- 

 lowing autumn. Then they were turned to pasture, where 

 the}^ drop their foals the following spring. In many parts 

 of Ireland the pasture lands were formerly small enclosures 

 of from two to ten acres, and were divided one from the other 

 by sod bank fences, or stone walls, wliich at the present time 



