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Thus have we made a circuit of the famous Curragh and visited 

 nearly, if not quite, all its training stables. My three companions 

 agree with me that a more enjoyable drive, or a round of calls more 

 pleasant to make, would indeed be diflBcult to find, while no more 

 hospitable or agreeable hosts coald be found anywhere than the 

 trainers residing on the Curragh of Kildare. 



Our lots are cast in pleasanter times than those of the old folk. 

 My old grandmother used to relate thrilling accounts of dark 

 deeds committed on the Curragh, when the high road from the south of 

 Ireland to Dublin lay across it between the towns of Kildare and 

 Newbridge. The bleak and dreary waste was then the scene of 

 many a robbery committed by Redmond O'Hanlon, Freney, and other 

 notorious highwaymen. When journeying from Mooresfortto Dublin, 

 as my grandparents did annually to spend the winter in the metropo- 

 lis over a hundred years ago, they always broke the journey at Carlow, 

 so that their old carriage might rumble across the Curragh in day- 

 light. Upon one occasion they were more than a fortnight on the 

 road, having been snowed up, and such-like delays were often experi- 

 enced by travellers in those days. 



As I said before, the stablings at the Curragh are, in many instances, 

 precisely as they stood nearly a century ago. Of course, therefore, 

 there are now to be seen the veritable stalls in which our great horses 

 were located during their running period, and where they stood 

 while transmitting to posterity the very best and stoutest blood that 

 is to be found in the Stud-book of to-day. 



Reverencing as I do everything that has history attached to it, 

 particularly if it pertains to sport, I visit with infinite pleasure 

 those old places whenever I get the chance. Thioking, perhaps, that 

 my readers might like to hear something of these great racehorse pro- 

 genitors and where they were located, I shall tell of a few, but I shan't 

 weary them with lengthened pedigrees or performances which have 

 been so often published, and which can, with some trouble, be traced 

 in our old Racing Calendars. 



Sir Hercules, by Whalebone, out of Peri, was foaled in the north of 

 Ireland, in 1826, and was, as everyone knows, the sire of Irish Bird- 

 catcher and Faugh-a-ballagh, also of the great steeplechase mare 

 Brunette. I am not sure, but I think he was called after the cele- 

 brated wit of his day, Sir Hercules Langrishe of Knocktopher Abbey. 

 At all events, early in the thirties he was the property of Lord Langford, 

 and stood at Summerhill, co. Meath, and I think he stood for a time 

 somewhere at the Curragh. 



-, Guiccioli, in about 1828, was bought by Mr. Robert J. Hunter, and 

 was stabled for some years at Turf Lodge, but it was at Brownstown, 

 when the property of Mr. George Knox, that she became the 

 dam of Birdcatcher in 1833, of Faugh-a-ballagh in 1841, and of 

 Connaught Ranger in 1842, the latter being by Harkaway and the 

 others by Sir Hercules. Guiccioli, by Bob Booty, out of Flight, was 

 bred in about 1823 by either Mr. Martin Joseph Blake of Galway, or 



