THE CASHELMORE HOUNDS. 1 67 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE CASHELMORE HOUNDS. 



More than a hundred years have elapsed since the 

 tuneful notes of the Cashelmore Hounds were first 

 heard in the far-west of the county of Cork. 



" In years long numbered with the things that were 

 Before the flood, a jolly pair, 

 Jack Beamish and his huntsman bold, 

 Jack Bouig, man of slender mould, 

 With cheery sound of hound and horn, 

 Awaked the echoes in the morn ; 

 And with their dogs of Irish blood, 

 The hare and fox alike pursued." 



This pack was established in the last century, but 

 at what precise time it is now impossible to say. It 

 is a well-known fact, stated by Nimrod and other 

 sporting writers, that the pursuit of the deer was the 

 first hunting The hare then came to be hunted, 

 probably when the supply of deer ran short, and the 

 fox last of all — in fact fox-hunting, pure and simple, 

 is of very modern introduction — the fox being looked 

 upon, as no doubt he is, a perfectly worthless animal 

 when captured, and our wise forefathers having an 

 eye to the utile as well as the dulce^ liked to have 

 some good by their day's work. The fox at that 

 time was destroyed as a nuisance and vermin, rather 

 than preserved as he is at present— a run at a fox 



