IRISH HUNTERS.
"An' niver laid an iron to the sod!" was a metaphor I once heard used by
an excellent fellow from Limerick, to convey the brilliant manner in
which a certain four-year-old he was describing performed during a
burst, when, his owner told me, he went clean away from all rivals in
his gallop, and flew every wall, bank, and ditch, in his stride.
The expression, translated into English, would seem to imply that he
neither perched on the grass-grown banks, with all four feet at once,
like a cat, nor struck back at them with his hind legs, like a dog; and
perhaps my friend made the more account of this hazardous style of
jumping, that it seemed so foreign to the usual characteristics of the
Irish horse.
For those who have never hunted in Ireland, I must explain that the
country as a general rule is fenced on a primitive system, requiring
little expenditure of capital beyond the labour of a man, or, as he is
there called, "a boy," with a short pipe in his mouth and a spade in his
hand. This light-hearted operative, gay, generous, reckless,
high-spirited, and by no means a free worker, simply throws a bank up
with the soil that he scoops out of the ditch, reversing the process,
and filling the latter by levelling the former, when a passage is
required for carts, or cattle, from one inclosure to the next. I ought
nevertheless to observe, that many landlords, with a munificence for
which I am at a loss to account, go to the expense of erecting massive
pillars of stone, ostensibly gate-posts, at commanding points, between
which supports, however, they seldom seem to hang a gate, though it is
but justice to admit that when they do, the article is usually of iron,
very high, very heavy, and fastened with a strong padlock, though its
object seems less apparent, when we detect within convenient distance on
either side a gap through which one might safely drive a gig.
It is obvious, then, that this kind of fence, at its widest and
deepest, requires considerable activity as well as circumspection on a
horse's part, and forbearance in handling on that of a rider. The animal
must gather itself to spring like a goat, on the crest of the eminence
it has to surmount, with perfect liberty of head and neck, for the
climb, and subsequent effort, that may, or may not be demanded. Neither
man nor beast can foresee what is prepared for them on the landing side,
and a clever Irish hunter brings itself up short in an instant, should
the gulf be too formidable for its powers, balancing on the brink, to
look for a better spot, or even leaping back again into the field from
which it came.
That the Irishman rides with a light bridle and lets it very much alone
is the necessary result. His pace at the fences must be slow, because it
is not a horse's nature, however rash, to rush at a place like the side
of a house; and instinct prompts the animal to collect itself without
restraint from a rider's hand, while any interference during the second
and downward spring would only tend to pull it back into the chasm it is
doing its best to clear.
The efforts by which an Irish hunter surmounts these national
impediments is like that of a hound jumping a wall. The horse leaps to
the top with fore-and-hind feet together, where it dwells, almost
imperceptibly, while shifting the purchase, or "changing," as the
natives call it, in the shortest possible stride, of a few inches at
most, to make the second spring. Every good English hunter will strike
back with his hind legs when surprised into sudden exertion, but only a
proficient bred, or at least, taught in the sister island, can master
the feat described above in such artistic form as leads one to believe
that, like Pegasus, the creature has wings at every heel. No man who has
followed hounds in Meath, Kilkenny, or Kildare will ever forget the
first time, when, to use the vernacular of those delightful countries,
he rode "an accomplished hunter over an intricate lep!"
But the merit is not heaven-born. On the contrary, it seems the result
of patient and judicious tuition, called by Irish breakers "training,"
in which they show much knowledge of character and sound common sense.
In some counties, such as Roscommon and Connemara, the brood mare
indeed, with the foal at her foot, runs wild over extensive districts,
and, finding no gates against which to lean, leaps leisurely from
pasture to pasture, pausing, perhaps, in her transit to crop the sweeter
herbage from some bank on which she is perched. Where mamma goes her
little one dutifully follows, imitating the maternal motions, and as a
charming mother almost always has a charming daughter, so, from its
earliest foalhood, the future hunter acquires an activity, courage, and
sagacity that shall hereafter become the admiration of crowded
hunting-fields in the land of the Saxon far, far away!
But whereas in many parts of Ireland improved agriculture denies space
for the unrestrained vagaries of these early lessons, a judicious system
is adopted that substitutes artificial education for that of nature. "It
is wonderful we don't get more falls," said one of the boldest and best
of lady riders, who during many seasons followed the pilotage of Jem
Mason, and but for failing eye-sight, could sometimes have gone before
him, "when we consider that we all ride half-broken horses," and, no
doubt, on our side of the Channel, the observation contained a great
deal of truth. But in this respect our neighbours show more wisdom. They
seldom bring a pupil into the hunting-field till the elementary
discipline has been gone through that teaches him when he comes to his
fence _what to do with it_. He may be three, he may be four. I have seen
a sportsman in Kilkenny so unassumingly equipped that instead of boots
he wore wisps of straw called, I believe, "_sooghauns_" go in front for
a quarter of an hour on a two-year old! Whatever his age, the colt shows
himself an experienced hunter when it is necessary to leap. Not yet
_mouthed_, with unformed paces and wandering action, he may seem the
merest baby on the road or across a field, but no veteran can be wiser
or steadier when he comes within distance of it, or, as his owner would
say, when he "challenges" his leap, and this enthusiast hardly
over-states the truth in affirming that his pupil "would change on the
edge of a razor, and never let ye know he was off the Queen's high-road,
God bless her, all the time!"
The Irishman, like the Arab, seems to possess a natural insight into the
character of a horse; with many shortcomings as grooms, not the least of
which are want of neatness in stable-management, and rooted dislike to
hard work, except by fits and starts, they cherish extraordinary
affection for their charges, and certainly in their dealings with them
obviously prefer kindness to coercion. I do not think they always
understand feeding judiciously, and many of them have much to learn
about getting horses into condition; but they are unrivalled in teaching
them to jump.
Though seldom practised, there is no better system in all undertakings
than "to begin with the beginning," and an Irish horse-breaker is so
persuaded of this great elementary truth that he never asks the colt to
attempt three feet till it has become thoroughly master of two. With a
cavesson rein, a handful of oats, and a few yards of waste ground behind
the potato-ground or the pig-styes, he will, by dint of skill and
patience, turn the most blundering neophyte into an expert and stylish
fencer in about six weeks. As he widens the ditch of his earthwork, he
necessarily heightens its bank, which his simple tools, the spade and
the pipe, soon raise to six or seven feet. When the young one has
learned to surmount this temperately, but with courage, to change on the
top, and deliver itself handsomely, with the requisite fling and
freedom, on the far side, he considers it sufficiently advanced to take
into the fields, where he leads it forthwith, leaving behind him the
spade, but holding fast to the corn, the cavesson, and the pipe. Here he
soon teaches his colt to wait, quietly grazing, or staring about, while
he climbs the fence he intends it to jump, and almost before the long
rein can be tightened it follows like a dog, to poke its nose in his
hand for the few grains of oats it expects as a reward.
Some breakers drive their pupils from behind, with reins, pulling them
up when they have accomplished the leap; but this is not so good a plan
as necessitating the use of the whip, and having, moreover, a further
disadvantage in accustoming the colt to stop dead short on landing, a
habit productive hereafter of inconvenience to a loose rider taken
unawares!
When he has taught his horse thus to _walk_ over a country, for two or
three miles on end, the breaker considers it, with reason, thoroughly
trained for leaping, and has no hesitation however low its condition, in
riding it out with the hounds. Who that has hunted in Ireland but can
recall the interest, and indeed amusement, with which he has watched
some mere baby, strangely tackled and uncouthly equipped, sailing along
in the front rank, steered with consummate skill and temper by a
venerable rider who looks sixty on horseback, and at least eighty on
foot. The man's dress is of the shabbiest and most incongruous, his
boots are outrageous, his spurs ill put on, and his hat shows symptoms
of ill-usage in warfare or the chase; but he sits in the saddle like a
workman, and age has no more quenched the courage in his bright Irish
eye, than it has soured the mirth of his temperament, or saddened the
music of his brogue. You know instinctively that he must be a good
fellow and a good sportsman; you cannot follow him for half a mile
without being satisfied that he is a good rider, and you forget, in your
admiration of his beast's performance, your surprise at its obvious
youth, its excessive leanness, and the unusual shabbiness of its
accoutrements. Inspecting these more narrowly, if you can get near
enough, you begin to grudge the sums you have paid Bartley, or Wilkinson
and Kidd, for the neat turn-out you have been taught to consider
indispensable to success. You see that a horse may cross a dangerous
country speedily and in safety, though its saddle be pulpy and
weather-stained, with unequal stirrup-leathers, and only one girth;
though its bridle be a Pelham, _with_ a noseband, and _without_ a
curb-chain, while one rein seems most untrustworthy, and the other, for
want of a buckle, has its ends tied in a knot. And yet, wherever the
hounds go, thither follow this strangely-equipped pair. They arrive at a
seven-foot bank, defended by a wide and, more forbidding still, an
enormously deep ditch on this side and with nothing apparently but blue
sky on the other. While the man utters an exclamation that seems a
threat, a war-cry, and a shout of triumph combined, the horse springs to
the summit, perches like a bird, and disappears buoyantly into space as
if furnished, indeed, with wings, that it need only spread to fly away.
They come to a stone-gap, as it is termed; neither more nor less than a
disused egress, made up with blocks of granite into a wall about five
feet high, and the young one, getting close under it, clears the whole
out of a trot, with the elasticity and the very action of a deer.
Presently some frightful chasm has to be encountered, wide enough for a
brook, deep enough for a ravine, boggy of approach, faced with stone,
and offering about as awkward an appearance as ever defeated a good man
on his best hunter and bade him go to look for a better place.
Our friend in the bad hat, who knows what he is about, rides at this
"yawner" a turn slower than would most Englishmen, and with a lighter
hand on his horse's mouth, though his legs and knees are keeping the
pupil well into its bridle, and, should the latter want to refuse, or
"renage," as they say in Ireland, a disgrace of which it has not the
remotest idea, there is a slip of ground-ash in the man's fingers ready
to administer "a refresher" on its flank. "Did ye draw now?" asks an
Irishman when his friend is describing how he accomplished some
extraordinary feat in leaping, and the expression, derived from an
obsolete custom of sticking the cutting-whip upright in the boot, so
that it has come to mean punishment from that instrument, is nearly
always answered--"I did _not_!" Light as a fairy, our young, but
experienced hunter dances down to the gulf, and leaves it behind with
scarce an effort, while an unwashed hand bestows its caress on the
reeking neck that will hereafter thicken prodigiously in some Saxon
stable on a proper allowance of corn. If you are riding an Irish horse,
you cannot do better than imitate closely every motion of the pair in
front. If not, you will be wise, I think, to turn round and go home.
Presently we will hope, for the sake of the neophyte, whose condition
is by no means on a par with his natural powers, the hounds either kill
their fox, or run him to ground, or lose, or otherwise account for him,
thus affording a few minutes' repose for breathing and conversation.
"It's an intrickate country," observes some brother-sportsman with just
such another mount to the veteran I have endeavoured to describe; "and
will that be the colt by Chitchat out of Donovan's mare? Does he 'lep'
well now?" he adds with much interest. "The beautifullest ever ye see!"
answers his friend, and nobody who has witnessed the young horse's
performances can dispute the justice of such a reply. It is not
difficult to understand that hunters so educated and so ridden in a
country where every leap requires power, courage, and the exercise of
much sagacity, should find little difficulty in surmounting such
obstacles as confront them on this side of the Channel. It is child's
play to fly a Leicestershire fence, even with an additional rail, for a
horse that has been taught his business amongst the precipitous banks
and fathomless ditches of Meath or Kildare. If the ground were always
sound and the hills somewhat levelled, these Irish hunters would find
little to stop them in Leicestershire from going as straight as their
owners dared ride. Practice at walls renders them clever timber-jumpers,
they have usually the spring and confidence that make nothing of a
brook, and their careful habit of preparing for something treacherous on
the landing side of every leap prevents their being taken unawares by
the "oxers" and doubles that form such unwelcome exceptions to the usual
run of impediments throughout the shires. There is something in the
expression of their very ears while we put them at their fences, that
seems to say, "It's a good trick enough, and would take in most horses,
but my mother taught me a thing or two in Connemara, and you don't come
over me!" Unfortunately the Shires, as they are called _par excellence_,
the Vale of Aylesbury, a perfect wilderness of grass, and indeed all the
best hunting districts, ride very deep nine seasons out of ten, so that
the Irish horse, accustomed to a sound lime-stone soil and an unfurrowed
surface in his own green island, being moreover usually much wanting in
condition, feels the added labour, and difference of action required,
severely enough. It is proverbial that a horse equal to fourteen stone
in Ireland is only up to thirteen in Leicestershire, and English
purchasers must calculate accordingly.
But if some prize-taker at the Dublin Horse Show, or other ornament of
that land which her natives call the "first flower of the earth and
first gem of the sea," should disappoint you a little when you ride him
in November from Ranksborough, the Coplow, Crick, Melton-Spinney,
Christmas-Gorse, Great-Wood, or any other favourite covert in one of our
many good hunting countries, do not therefore despond. If he fail in
deep ground, or labour on ridge and furrow, remember he possesses this
inestimable merit that _he can go the shortest way_! Because the fence
in front is large, black, and forbidding, you need not therefore send
him at it a turn faster than usual; he is accustomed to spring _from his
back_, and cover large places out of a trot. If you ride your own line
to hounds, it is no slight advantage thus to have the power of
negotiating awkward corners, without being "committed to them" fifty
yards off, unable to pull up should they prove impracticable; and the
faculty of "jumping at short notice," on this consideration alone, I
conceive to be one of the choicest qualities a hunter can possess. Also,
even in the most favoured and flying of the "grass countries," many
fences require unusual steadiness and circumspection. If they are to be
done at all, they can only be accomplished by creeping, sometimes even
_climbing_ to the wished-for side. The front rank itself will probably
shirk these unaccustomed obstacles with cordial unanimity, leaving them
to be triumphantly disposed of by your new purchase from Kildare. He
pokes out his nose, as if to inspect the depth of a possible interment,
and it is wise to let him manage it all his own way. You give him his
head, and the slightest possible kick in the ribs. With a cringe of his
powerful back and quarters, a vigorous lift that seems to reach
two-thirds of the required distance, a second spring, apparently taken
from a twig weak enough to bend under a bird, that covers the remainder,
a scramble for foothold, a half stride and a snort of satisfaction, the
whole is disposed of, and you are alone with the hounds.
Though, under such circumstances, these seem pretty sure to run to
ground or otherwise disappoint you within half-a-mile, none the less
credit is due to your horse's capabilities, and you vow next season to
have nothing but Irish nags in your stable, resolving for the future to
ride straighter than you have ever done before.
But if you are so well pleased now with your promising Patlander, what
shall you think of him this time next year, when he has had twelve
months of your stud-groom's stable-management, and consumed ten or a
dozen quarters of good English oats? Though you may have bought him as a
six-year old, he will have grown in size and substance, even in height,
and will not only look, but feel up to a stone more weight than you ever
gave him credit for. He can jump when he is blown _now_, but he will
never be blown _then_. Condition will teach him to laugh at the deep
ground, while his fine shoulders and true shape will enable him, after
the necessary practice, to travel across ridge and furrow without a
lurch. He will have turned out a rattling good horse, and you will never
grudge the cheque you wrote, nor the punch you were obliged to drink,
before his late proprietor would let you make him your own.
Gold and whisky, in large quantities and judiciously applied, may no
doubt buy the best horses in Ireland. But a man must know where to look
for them, and even in remote districts, will sometimes be disappointed
to find that the English dealers have forestalled him. Happily, there
are so many good horses, perhaps I should say, so few _rank bad ones_,
bred in the country, that from the very sweepings and leavings of the
market, one need not despair of turning up a trump. A hunter is in so
far like a wife, that experience alone will prove whether he is or is
not good for nothing. Make and shape, in either case, may be perfect,
pedigree unimpeachable, and manners blameless, but who is to answer for
temper, reflection, docility, and the generous staying power that
accepts rough and smooth, ups and downs, good and evil, without a
struggle or a sob? When we have tried them, we find them out, and can
only make the best of our disappointment, if they do not fully come up
to our expectations.
There is many a good hunter, particularly in a rich man's stable, that
never has a chance of proving its value. With three or four, we know
their form to a pound; with a dozen, season after season goes by without
furnishing occasion for the use of all, till some fine scenting day,
after mounting a friend, we are surprised to learn that the flower of
the whole stud has hitherto been esteemed but a moderate animal, only
fit to carry the sandwiches, and bring us home.
I imagine, notwithstanding all we have heard and read concerning the
difficulty of buying Irish horses in their own country, that there are
still scores of them in Cork, Limerick, and other breeding districts, as
yet unpromised and unsold. The scarcity of weight-carriers is
indisputable, but can we find them here? The "light man's horse," to fly
under sixteen stone, is a "black swan" everywhere, and if _not_ "a light
man's horse," that is to say, free, flippant, fast, and well-bred, he
will never give his stalwart rider thorough satisfaction; but in
Ireland, far more plentifully than in England, are still to be found
handsome, clever, hunting-like animals fit to carry thirteen stone, and
capital jumpers at reasonable prices, varying from one to two hundred
pounds. The latter sum, particularly if you had it with you in
_sovereigns_, would in most localities insure the "pick of the basket,"
and ten or twenty of the coins thrown back for luck.
I have heard it objected to Irish hunters, that they are so accustomed
to "double" all their places, as to practise this accomplishment even at
those flying fences of the grazing districts which ought to be taken in
the stride, and that they require fresh tuition before they can be
trusted at the staked-and-bound or the bullfinch, lest, catching their
feet in the growers as in a net, they should be tumbled headlong to the
ground. I can only say that I have been well and safely carried by many
of them on their first appearance in Leicestershire, as in other English
countries, that they seemed intuitively to apprehend the character of
the fences they had to deal with, and that, although being mortal, they
could not always keep on their legs, I cannot remember one of them
giving me a fall _because_ he was an Irish horse!
How many their nationality has saved me, I forbear to count, but I am
persuaded that the careful tuition undergone in youth, and their varied
experience when sufficiently advanced to follow hounds over their native
country, imparts that facility of powerful and safe jumping, which is
one of the most important qualities among the many that constitute a
hunter.
They possess also the merit of being universally well-bred. This is an
advantage no sportsman will overlook who likes to be near hounds while
they run, but objects to leading, driving, or perhaps _pushing_ his
horse home. Till within a few years, there was literally _no_ cart-horse
blood in Ireland. The "black-drop" of the ponderous Clydesdale remained
positively unknown, and although the Suffolk Punch has been recently
introduced, he cannot yet have sufficiently tainted the pedigrees of the
country, to render us mistrustful of a golden-coated chestnut, with a
round barrel and a strong back.
No, their horses if not quite "clean-bred," as the Irish themselves call
it, are at least of illustrious parentage on both sides a few
generations back, and this high descent cannot but avail them, when
called on for long-continued exertion, particularly at the end of the
day.
Juvenal, hurling his scathing satire against the patricians of his
time, drew from the equine race a metaphor to illustrate the superiority
of merit over birth. However unanswerable in argument, he was, I think,
wrong in his facts. Men and women are to be found of every parentage,
good, bad, and indifferent; but with horses, there is more in race than
in culture, and for the selection of these noble animals at least, I can
imagine no safer guide than the aristocratic maxim, "Blood will tell!"