256 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



bless us" at us, if we forgot it ourselves, lest the 

 old sneezing disease might send us tishooing from 

 her sight. 



The ghostly hunt is a Limerick legend. There 

 is one house through which it is suffered to 

 go twice a year and no servant would stay there. 

 People used to take the place but it was quickly 

 empty again, a cloud of misfortune hanging 

 over it. 



This hunt runs far, for it ends up through the 

 Deer Park at Adare and on into Graigue Wood. 



A carter bringing the hay about two at night 

 and putting up there to shelter from a storm of 

 rain, swears that he heard the hounds in full cry, 

 stayed listening wondering what hounds they 

 could be, and suddenly saw the fox hop over the 

 high Deer Park wall. A fox, but a fox with a 

 terror-stricken tortured human face, while follow- 

 ing close on his heels came a pack of hounds. 

 Hounds with no wistful lean foxhound heads, but 

 the faces of fiends. 



The story of this phantom hunt is firmly 

 credited in the country. Some people tell you 

 they hear the hounds cry in the air, and the hunt 

 sweep by overhead them. 



When a bad misfortune happens such as your 

 best horse dying a philosophical groom remarks 

 that it was a " fright, surely, but maybe it was all 

 for the best, to let the bad luck of the year go 

 with it." 



