IN COUNTY TIPPERARY 267 



looking the boieen, and very soon entered the boreen 

 itself, but not at all as I wished. Several strong briar sap- 

 lings had twisted themselves in a knot round my horse's 

 forelegs, and flung him saddle downwards on to these com- 

 fortless cobble-stones. (Elliman's Embrocation. Friend 

 Sturgess, please note.) I have long ago learned to hate 

 jumping into a road of any description ; and many a good 

 sportsman has found to his cost that a high road is most 

 dangerous ground. (1 call to witness Captain Gordon- 

 Mackenzie, still sadly crippled at Market Harboro'.) But a 

 boreen, I am inclined to think at this moment, is the nastiest 

 road of all. 



There might have been some ill-fate abroad that day, 

 for casualties overtook the greater proportion of our little 

 field. If insignificant in result, they were to some extent 

 alarming ; and, in one painful instance, sorely funny. No 

 one would laugh, or be moved to anything but intense 

 anxiety, on seeing a lady caught by her habit and pommel. 

 But, taking another instance, all the respect due to seni- 

 ority, all the courtesy demanded by recent and kindly 

 acquaintance, all the self-restraint that intercourse with 

 the world should teach the most graceless trifier — all 

 these will at times give way, and merriment yield un- 

 restrainedly to a sense of the ridiculous. I shall put 

 it, no doubt, so that you will not be tempted to laugh. 

 You will see no fun in it. But then you did not see the 

 old black horse tread his way along the lofty bank beside 

 the bubbling stream till he had climbed above what must 

 have been a waggonload of dead material (boughs of trees, 

 thorns, &c.) brought there to form a barricade across the 

 little " river." You did not see the bank crumble beneath 

 his weighty footfall, or mark him crushing the debris into 

 the brook bottom ; still less did you see the climax — his 

 rolling over on his side upon the crackling boughs, and so 

 depositing his rider, back downwards, in the cool stream, 

 boots and spurs lodged upwards on the thorns, and head 

 supported only by the trickling water. The old horse 

 righted himself and walked out. The horseman couldn't, 

 for all that he kicked, and explained, and denounced ; 

 until the second whip, engaged at the moment in recover- 



