2o6 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



Ballylennan. This was the same low-lying gorse I had 

 seen in the autumn, beautiful in itself, but amid the wettest 

 and strongest surroundings of any covert of the hunt. So 

 I had been told, and so I soon realised — apart from my 

 rough-and-tumble experiences of a previous visit. But 

 our journey thence to-day was southward and eastward, 

 towards the snow-streaked mountains of Waterford and 

 to the verge of the Kilkenny territory. A very unusual 

 line, they told me ; and one they deprecated almost 

 apologetically as a very " cross " country — " the worst 

 they had, and only taken in of late years by Mr. Burke 

 in order to extend his ground." Well, I can only say 

 that it was all grass, sloppy enough for the first couple 

 of miles to have been a snipe-marsh, but sound under- 

 foot, and improving gradually into first-rate galloping- 

 ground. 



As for the fences, they were, I admit, of a very 

 strange and occasionally somewhat awesome description. 

 But then, as I have already inferred, I am no judge what- 

 ever of what is really the most trying fashion of fence in 

 Ireland. There are many sorts of startling barriers, simple 

 and compound ; and what is daily food in one part of 

 Ireland is dreaded as poison in another. The Irish coun- 

 tries, in fact, differ among themselves (after the manner of 

 their politicians) as widely as from their English neighbours. 

 The only thing for a stranger is to accept the inevitable, 

 do as he sees others do — and make believe, as best he can, 

 that nothing comes amiss. From this point of view alone 

 1 obtrude my personality, supposing myself a type of 

 Englishman in an Irish hunting-field. I must be allowed 

 another momentary digression, merely to note that, 

 wherever an English wanderer finds himself in Ireland, 

 there will he also find sympathy, cordiality, welcome, and 

 assistance. He will be helped out of difficulties, prompted 

 on occasion, never viewed with jealousy, but treated at all 

 times with a sterling good-fellowship of which it would be 

 hard to find the like, the world over. 



Now to Ballylennan's swampy gorse — a fox away (as 

 they said he had been before) to the first twang of horn. 

 We splashed round its precincts, and rode nervously after 



