MR O'CONNOR HENCHY, 1846- 1847 



Crabapples and currants, cooks, cowboys and 



cods 

 The knowing coves giving and taking the odds. 

 These and of rum 'uns a very large stock 

 I met at the races last week at Kilcock. 



To anyone knowing the sort of company that 

 assembles at Sportsmen's Races in Ireland to-day 

 it will be obvious that the character of that com- 

 pany has little changed since the year 1833. 



Although there is mention from very early times 

 of horse racing on the Curragh of Kildare it was 

 at such local meetings as these that the steeple- 

 chasing in Ireland, which we know to-day as a 

 vigorous and popular institution, took its origin and 

 attained its first development, and that early 

 development was, I think, much assisted by the 

 presentation of a cup by the Kildare Hunt to be 

 run for annually at these local meetings. The first 

 official record of this cup, " The Kildare Hunt 

 Steeplechase; Two miles over a sporting country," 

 is for the year 1837, when it was won by a horse 

 named Zephyr, owned by Mr Lynch. But Mr 

 Robert Kennedy informs me that the first Kildare 

 Hunt Cup was won by Mr Thomas Cramer 

 Roberts. He cannot recollect the year, but as it 

 was during the Viceroy alty of Lord Normanby, 

 which began in 1835, it must have been in that year 



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