XXVI 



of the Park diiriog the past two years than I have done since I was a. 

 boy — is that not one private coachman in a hundred drives without the 

 assistance of the r'ght hand, not even when g nng slowly one carriage- 

 after another, and invariably will they pull the right rein out of the-- 

 left hand to get hold of it with the right. With the reins thus held and. 

 the fellow trying to use his whip, see what an exhibitioa he makes of 

 himself I You also see some of them with a rein in each hand same 

 as a coxswain uses the yoke lines from behind. No, no, the English 

 private coachmen don'c drive as well as I thought they d d four or five 

 years ago, but the busmen and hansom cabmen do, and they, as a class,, 

 are the very best drivers in the world. They are also, as a lot, honest, 

 civil, and respectable, but, as I say at p. 219, they are intensely stupid 

 in conversation, and not even a surgical operation would extract wit- 

 f rom or inoculate them with it. So different from our own jolly, jovial 

 Dublin jarvies ! 



Waterford, Dungarvan, and Lismore Coach.— It is not to be- 

 supposed by what I say at p. 223 that the old Dungarvan coach was- 

 badly horsed as a rule, for it was not, but the teams were not to say 

 "handy." And here I shall relate something more about that famous- 

 old coach, the last representative we had of an institution which was 

 in its day probably as famous in Ireland as it was in England, and 

 answered the requirements of the age quite as well as do railways- 

 now ; while, by means of four spanking horses, whose hoofs rattled in 

 time to the clanking bars and ringing pole-chains, a halo of romance 

 surrounded the whole affair, the like of which can never attach itself to- 

 a shrieking locomotive or cumbersome train, much less surround it. 



The Waterford and Lismore road, as far as coaching goes, has- 

 records as remarkable as any in the kingdom. The west of our county 

 from Lismore, through Cappoquin, Dungarvan, and on to Waterford 

 was opened up to the public towards the end of the thirties by 

 Mr. Charles Bianconi, by means of his well-known long cars which- 

 took his name, and to which two, three, or four horses were put- 

 according as the weight-bill required. The firtt man put on the box was 

 Tom Keogh, and from 1837, or perhaps a year earlier, until 1861 he 

 drove the whole way from Lismore to Waterford and back every week 

 day, except from about 1852 to 1858, when he drove only from Dun- 

 garvan and back. The distance from Lismore to Waterford is forty- 

 three miles, and from Dungarvan it is twenty-eight, therefore, for 

 some eighteen years, he drove eighty-six miles a day, and for six years 

 drove fifty-six. 



There were three (perhaps four) stages between Lismore and 

 Waterford, leaving two from Dungarvan, so, allowing that " unicorn '*' 

 was his average team, Tom Kecgh has a record of having driven 

 101,412 horses, with 33,804 changes, 502,052 miles, or more than twenty- 

 times round the world !— a feat which knocks into a cocked hat that 

 of the Guard immortalised in Baibj^ vol. 55, p. 358. " Bian's Car' 



