Riding Recollections, 5th ed. Part 6

When business really begins, men are apt to express in various ways their intention of taking part. Some use their eyes, some their heels, and some their flasks. Do you trust your brains, they will stand you in better stead than spurs, or spectacles, or even brandy diluted with curacoa. Keep your attention fixed on the chase, watch the pack as long as you can, and when those white specks have vanished into s.p.a.ce, depend on your own skill in woodcraft and knowledge of country to bring you up with them again. Above all, while they are actually in motion, distrust the bobbing hats and spots of scarlet that you mark in a distant cl.u.s.ter behind the hedge. What are they but the field? and the field, if it is _really_ a run, are pretty sure to be _out of it_.

The first flight you will find very difficult to keep in view. At the most it consists of six or seven hors.e.m.e.n riding fifty or a hundred yards apart, and even its followers become so scattered and detached that in anything like an undulating country they are completely hidden from observation. If you _do_ catch a glimpse of them, how slow they seem to travel! and yet, when you nick in presently, heaving flanks, red faces, and excited voices will tell a very different tale.

Trotting soberly along, then, with ears and eyes wide open, carefully keeping down wind, not only because the hounds are sure to bend in that direction, but also that you can thus hear before you see them, and take measures accordingly, you will have ridden very few miles before you are gladdened by the cheerful music of the pack, or more probably a tw.a.n.g from the horn. The scent is rarely so good as to admit of hounds running for thirty or forty minutes without a check; indeed, on most days they are likely to be at fault more than once during the lapse of half an hour, when the huntsman's science will be required to cast them, and, in some cases, to a.s.sist them in losing their fox. Now is your time to press on with the still undefeated hack. If you are wise you will not leave the lanes to which I give you the credit of having stuck religiously from the start. At least, do not think of entering a field unless the track of an obvious bridle-road leads safely into the next.

A man who never jumps at all can by no possibility be "pounded," whereas the easiest and safest of gaps into an inclosure may mean a bullfinch with two ditches at the other end.

Perhaps you will find yourself ahead of every one as the hounds spread, and stoop and dash forward with a whimper that makes the sweetest of music in your ears. Perhaps, as they swarm across the very lane in which you are standing, discretion may calmly open the gate for valour, who curses him in his heart, wondering what business he has to be there at all.

There is jealousy even in the hunting-field, though we prefer to call it keenness, emulation, a fancy for riding our own line, and I fear that with most of us, in spite of the kindly sympathies and joyous expansion of the chase, "_ego et praeterea nihil_" is the unit about which our aspirations chiefly revolve.

"What is the use?" I once heard a plaintive voice lamenting behind a blackthorn, while the hounds were baying over a drain at the finish of a clipping thirty minutes on the gra.s.s. "I've spoilt my hat, I've torn my coat, I've lamed my horse, I've had two falls, I went first, I'll take my oath, from end to end, and there's that d--d fellow on the coffee-coloured pony gets here before me after all!"

There are times, no doubt, when valour must needs yield the palm to discretion.

Let us see how this last respectable quality serves us at the other and n.o.bler extremity of the hunt, for it is there, after all, that our ambition points, and our wishes chiefly tend.

"Are you a hard rider?" asked an inquiring lady of Mr. Jorrocks.

"The hardest in England," answered that facetious worthy, adding to himself, "I may say that, for I never goes off the 'ard road if I can help it."

Now instead of following so cautious an example, let us rather cast overboard a superfluity of discretion, that would debar us the post of honour we are fain to occupy, retaining only such a leavening of its virtue as will steer us safely between the two extremes. While the hounds are racing before us, with a good scent, in an open country, let our gallant hunter be freely urged by valour to the front, while at the same time, discretion holds him hard by the head, lest a too inconsiderate daring should endanger his rider's neck.

If a man has the luck to be on a good timber-jumper, now is the time to take advantage freely of its confidential resources. If not pulled about, and interfered with, a hunter that understands his business leaps this kind of fence, so long as he is fresh, with ease to himself and security to his rider. He sees exactly what he has to do, and need not rise an inch higher, nor fling himself an inch farther than is absolutely necessary, whereas a hedge induces him to make such exertions as may cover the uncertainty it conceals. But, on the other hand, the binder will usually bear tampering with, which the bar will _not_, therefore _if_ your own courage and your horse's skill tempt you to negotiate rails, stiles, or even a gate--and this last is _very_ good form--sound discretion warns you to select the first ten or fifteen minutes of a run for such exhibitions, but to avoid them religiously, when the deep ground and the pace have begun to tell.

a.s.sheton Smith himself, though he scouted the idea of ever turning from anything, had in so far the instinct of self-preservation, that when he thought his horse likely to fall over such an obstacle, he put him at it somewhat _a-slant_, so that the animal should get at least one fore-leg clear, and tumble on to its side, when this accomplished rider was pretty sure to rise unhurt with the reins in his hand.

Now this diagonal style of jumping, judiciously practised, is not without its advantages at less dangerous fences than the uncompromising bit of timber that turns us over. It necessarily increases the width of a bank, affording the horse more room for foothold, as it decreases the height and strength of the growers, by taking them the way they lie, and may, on occasion, save a good hunter from a broken back, the penalty for dropping both hind legs simultaneously and perpendicularly into some steep cut ditch he has failed to cover in his stride.

Discretion, you observe, should accompany the hardest riders, and is not to be laid aside even in the confusion and excitement of a fall.

This must prove a frequent casualty with every man, however well-mounted, if the hounds show sport and he means to be with them while they run. It seems a paradox, but the oftener you are down, the less likely you are to be hurt. Practice soon teaches you to preserve presence of mind, or, as I may be allowed to call it, discretion, and when you know exactly where your horse is, you can get away from him before he crushes you with the weight of his body. A foot or a hand thrust out at the happy moment, is enough to "fend you off," and your own person seldom comes to the ground with such force as to do you any harm, if there is plenty of dirt. In the absence of that essential to sport, hunters are not distressed, and therefore do not often fall.

If, however, you have undertaken to temper the rashness of a young one with your own discretion, you must expect occasional reverses; but even thus, there are many chances in your favour, not the least of which is your pupil's elasticity. Lithe and agile, he will make such gallant efforts to save himself as usually obviate the worst consequences of his mistake. The worn-out, the under-bred, or the distressed horse comes down like a lump of lead, and neither valour nor discretion are much help to us then.

From the pace at which hounds cross a country, there is unfortunately no time to practise that most discreet manoeuvre called "leading over," when the fence is of so formidable a nature as to threaten certain discomfiture, yet I have seen a few tall, powerful, active men, spring off and on their horses with such rapidity as to perform this feat successfully in all the hurry of a burst. The late Colonel Wyndham, who, when he commanded the Greys, in which regiment he served at Waterloo, was said by George the Fourth to be the handsomest man in the army, possessed with a giant's stature the pliant agility of a harlequin. A finer rider never got into a saddle. Weighing nineteen stone, I have seen him in a burst across Leicestershire, go for twenty minutes with the best of the light-weights, occasionally relieving his horse by throwing himself off, leaping a fence alongside of it, and vaulting on again, without checking the animal sufficiently to break its stride.

The lamented Lord Mayo too, whose tall stalwart frame was in keeping with those intellectual powers that India still recalls in melancholy pride, was accustomed, on occasion, thus to surmount an obstacle, no less successfully among the bullfinches of Northamptonshire than the banks and ditches of Kildare. Perhaps the best rider of his family, and it is a bold a.s.sertion, for when five or six of the brothers are out hunting, there will always be that number of tall heavy men, answering to the name of Bourke in the same field with the hounds, Lord Mayo, or rather Lord Naas (for the best of his sporting career closed with his succession to the earldom), was no less distinguished for his daring horsemanship, than his tact in managing a country, and his skill in hunting a pack of hounds. That he showed less forethought in risking a valuable life than in conducting the government of an empire, we must attribute to his personal courage and keen delight in the chase, but that he humorously deplored the scarcity of discretion amongst its votaries, the following anecdote, as I had it from himself, sufficiently attests.

While he hunted his own hounds in Kildare, his most constant attendant, though on foot, was a nondescript character, such as is called "a tight boy" in Ireland, and nowhere else, belonging to a cla.s.s that never seem to do a day's work, nor to eat a plentiful meal, but are always pleasant, obliging, idle, hungry, thirsty, and supremely happy. Running ten miles on foot to covert, Mick, as he was called, would never leave the hounds till they reached their kennels at night. Thus, plodding home one evening by his lordship's horse, after an unusually long and fatiguing run, the rider could not help expostulating with the walker on such a perverse misapplication of strength, energy, and perseverance.

"Why, look at the work you have been doing," said his lordship; "with a quarter of the labour you might have earned three or four shillings at least. What a fool you must be, Mick, to neglect your business, and lose half your potatoes, that you may come out with my hounds!"

Mick reflected a moment, and looked up, "Ah! me lard," replied he, with such a glance of fun as twinkles nowhere but in the Irish blue of an Irish eye, "it's truth your lardship's spakin' this night; _'av there was no fools, there'd be sorra few fox-hunters!_"

Let us return to the question of Discretion, and how we are to combine it with an amus.e.m.e.nt that makes fools of us all.

While valour, then, bids us take our fences as they come, discretion teaches us that each should be accomplished in the manner most suitable to its peculiar requirements. When a bank offers foothold, and we see the possibility of dividing a large leap by two, we should pull back to a trot, and give our horse a hint that he will do well to spring on and off the obstacle in accordance with a motion of our hand. If, on the contrary, his effort must be made at a black and forbidding bullfinch, with the chance of a wide ditch, or even a tough ashen rail, beyond, it is wise, should we mean having it at all, to catch hold of the bridle and increase our pace, for the last two or three strides, with such energy as shall shoot us through the thorns like a harlequin through a trap-door, leaving the orifice to close up behind, with no more traces of our transit than are left by a bird!

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Perhaps we find an easy place under a tree, with an overhanging branch, and sidle daintily up to it, bending the body and lowering the head as we creep through, to the admiration of an indiscreet friend on a rash horse who spoils a good hat and utters an evil execration while trying to follow our example. Or it may be, rejoicing to find ourselves on arable land, that actually rides light, and yet carries a scent,

"Solid and tall, The rasping wall"

challenges us a quarter of a mile off to face it or go home, for it offers neither gate nor gap, and seems to meet the sky-line on either side. I do not know whether others are open to the same deception, but to my own eye, a wall appears more, and a hedge less, than its real height at a certain distance off. The former, however, is a most satisfactory leap when skilfully accomplished, and not half so arduous as it looks.

"Have it!" says Valour. "Yes, but very slow," replies Discretion. And, sure enough, we calm the free generous horse into a trot, causing him to put his very nose over the obstacle before taking off; when bucking into the air, like a deer, he leaves it behind him with little more effort than a girl puts to her skipping-rope. The height an experienced wall-jumper will clear seems scarcely credible. A fence of this description, which measurement proves to be fully six feet, was jumped by the well-known Colonel Miles three or four years ago in the Badminton country without displacing a stone, and although the rider's consummate horsemanship afforded every chance of success, great credit is due to the good hunter that could make such an effort with so heavy a man on its back.

The knack of wall-jumping, however, is soon learned even by the most inexperienced animals, and I may here observe that I have often been surprised at the discretion shown by young horses, when ridden close to hounds, in negotiating fences requiring sagacity and common sense. I am aware that my opinion is singular, and I only give it as the result, perhaps exceptional, of my own limited experience; but I must admit that I have been carried by a pupil, on his first day, over awkward places, up and down banks, in and out of ravines, or under trees, with a docility and circ.u.mspection I have looked for from the veterans in vain.

Perhaps the old horse knows me as well as I know him, and thinks also that he knows best. I am bound to say he never fails me when I trust him, but he likes his head let alone, and insists on having it all his own way. When his blood is really up, and the hero of a hundred fights considers it worth while to put forth his strength, I am persuaded he is even bolder than his junior.

Not only at the fences, however, do we require discretion. There is a right way and a wrong of traversing every acre of ground that lies between them. On the gra.s.s, we must avoid crossing high ridge-and-furrow in a direct line; rather let us take it obliquely, or, if the field be not too large, go all the way round by the headland. For an unaccustomed horse there is nothing so trying as those up-and-down efforts, that resemble the lurches of a boat in a heavy sea. A very true-shaped animal will learn to glide smoothly over them after a season or two, but these inequalities of surface must always be a tax on wind and muscular powers at best. The easiest goer in ridge-and-furrow that we have yet seen is a fox. Surely no other quadruped has nature gifted with so much strength and symmetry in so small a compa.s.s.

Amongst the ploughs, though the fences are happily easier, forethought and consideration are even more required for ground. After much rain, do not enter a turnip-field if you can help it, the large, frequent roots loosen the soil, and your horse will go in up to his hocks; young wheat also it is well to avoid, if only for reasons purely selfish; but on the fallows, when you find a _wet_ furrow, lying the right way, put on steam, splash boldly ahead, and never leave it so long as it serves you in your line. The same may be said of a foot-path, even though its guidance should entail the jumping of half-a-dozen stiles. Sound foothold reduces the size of any leap, and while you are travelling easily above the ground, the rest of the chase, fox and hounds too, as well as horses, though in a less degree, are labouring through the mire.

When your course is intersected by narrow water-cuts, for purposes of irrigation, by covered drains, or deep, gra.s.s-grown cart-ruts, it will be well to traverse them obliquely, so that, if they catch the stride of his gallop, your horse may only get one foot in at a time. He will then right himself with a flounder, whereas, if held by both legs, either before or behind, the result is a rattling fall, very dangerous to his back in the one case, and to your own neck in the other.

Valour of course insists that a hunter should do what he is bid, but there are some situations in which the beast's discretion pleads reasonably enough for some forbearance from its master. If a good horse, thoroughly experienced in the exigencies of the sport, that you have ridden a season or two, and flatter yourself you understand, persistently refuses a fence, depend upon it there is sufficient reason.

The animal may be lame from an injury just received, may have displaced a joint, broken a tendon, or even ruptured an artery. Perhaps it is so blown as to feel it must fall in the effort you require. At any rate do not persevere. Horses have been killed, and men also, through a sentiment of sheer obstinacy that would not be denied, and humanity should at least think shame to be out-done in discretion by the brute. A horse is a wise creature enough, or he could never carry us pleasantly to hounds. An old friend of mine used to say: "People talk about size and shape, shoulders, quarters, blood, bone, and muscle, but for my part, give me a hunter with brains. He has to take care of the biggest fool of the two, and think for both!"

Discretion, then, is one of the most valuable qualities for an animal charged with such heavy responsibilities, that bears us happy and triumphant during the day, and brings us safe home at night. Who would grudge a journey across St. George's Channel to find this desirable quality in its highest perfection at Ballinasloe or Cahirmee? for indeed it is not too much to say that whatever we may think of her natives, the most discreet and sagacious of our hunters come over from the Emerald Isle.

CHAPTER IX.

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 gra.s.s-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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.sive 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 circ.u.mspection 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 s.p.a.ce for the unrestrained vagaries of these early lessons, a judicious system is adopted that subst.i.tutes 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 una.s.sumingly 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, G.o.d bless her, all the time!"