264 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



and until Mount Shannon was purchased and done 

 up a few years ago it stood a melancholy battered 

 house, with glassless windows open for owls and 

 bats or anything else to fly through. 



" Sure there's a curse on it," someone will tell 

 you. There is one big place not far from here, 

 belonging to what the country people in old days 

 called * Great Folk.' Rich, hard drinkers, hard 

 riders, proud men who looked up to no one. One 

 succeeded who was called the wicked — even in 

 these days, and the place was cursed. The old 

 men used to tell you that the Devil goes into the 

 house once every hundred years to be sure that 

 his influence wouldn't be dying out. 



I do not know quite how long ago it is now since 

 his last visit when there was a meet on the lawn. 

 They met at nine in these days and a stranger on a 

 black horse rode up waiting outside. 



They found at once, a fox which ran as if the 

 Devil was at his heels, flying over the hills as far 

 as Caherconlish and then circling round for home. 



The Limerick men were noted for hard riding, 

 but try as they would the stranger was always a 

 field ahead, going easily. Gallop as they would, 

 spur cruelly, yet hounds and the stranger beat 

 them. He was alone when the fox was killed on 

 the lawn in front of the house they had started 

 from. He accepted congratulations gracefully. 

 Now that it was over the hunting men could only 

 find unqualified praise for any man and horse 



