HISTORY OF THE KILDARE HUNT 



The hounds met in the month of November at 

 the cross Roads of Tipper, and after drawing a 

 neighbouring gorse blank were trotting on through 

 Glending to Troopers Field when from a small 

 unenclosed scrub of hazel a large greyhound fox 

 jumped up almost among the hounds. He proved a 

 mountaineer from Wicklow, for disregarding the 

 adjacent earths and coverts, he made straight for 

 the Wicklow Hills over such a country and at such 

 a pace as flung the whole field with the exception 

 of two, who, being on that day best mounted, and 

 having fortunately been riding in advance of the 

 hounds, got such a start as enabled them to keep in 

 sight. Indeed, though the country was for Ireland 

 open, the hills were so severe that nothing but 

 blood could live through it, and one of these nags 

 was thorough, the other better than three parts, 

 bred. 



He passed Lift'ey Head, and without a check 

 gained the romantic rocks, plantation and water- 

 fall of Pole Ovoca, co. Wicklow, where the river 

 Ovoca, so celebrated by Anacreon Moore,* is pre- 

 cipitated over a high and rugged ridge of rocks, 

 and which was then unusually swollen by a suc- 

 cession of rainy weather. In this plantation on the 

 other side of the Ovoca was the villain's den, and 



* A mistake of the writer's. It is the Liffey that falls through the 

 gorge of Poul-a-Phouca, the Gaelic equivalent of " Devil's Cauldron. ' 

 The waters of the Avonbeg and Avonmore unite near Castle Howard 

 and run through the Vale of Avoca to the sea at Arklow. It is this 

 Meeting of the Waters which is the subject of Moore's well-known 

 poem. 



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