All on the Irish Shore

All on the Irish Shore

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Title: All on the Irish Shore Irish Sketches
Author: E. Somerville and Martin Ross
Illustrator: E. Somerville
Release Date: September 27, 2005 [EBook #16766]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE IRISH SHORE ***

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[Illustration: "ROBERT TRINDER, ESQ., M.F.H." _A Grand Filly._]

All on the Irish Shore
Irish Sketches
By
E.OE. Somerville and Martin Ross
Authors of
"Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.," "The Real Charlotte" "The Silver
Fox," "A Patrick's Day Hunt" etc., etc.
With Illustrations by E.OE. Somerville
SECOND IMPRESSION
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay
1903

CONTENTS.
THE TINKER'S DOG
FANNY FITZ'S GAMBLE
THE CONNEMARA MARE
A GRAND FILLY
A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIRACLE
HIGH TEA AT MCKEOWN'S

THE BAGMAN'S PONY
AN IRISH PROBLEM
THE DANE'S BREECHIN'
"MATCHBOX"
"AS I WAS GOING TO BANDON FAIR"

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"ROBERT TRINDER, ESQ., M.F.H."
"A SILENCE THAT WAS THE OUTCOME PARTLY OF
STUPIDITY, PARTLY OF CAUTION, AND PARTLY OF LACK OF
ENGLISH SPEECH"
"MR. GUNNING WAS LOOKIN' OUT FOR A COB"
ROBERT'S AUNT
THE BLOOD-HEALER
"THE GREY-HAIRED KITCHEN-MAID"
SWEENY
"MUSHA! MUSHA!"
"CROPPY"
A HIERARCH OF HORSE-DEALING

THE TINKER'S DOG

"Can't you head 'em off, Patsey? Run, you fool! run, can't you?"
Sounds followed that suggested the intemperate use of Mr. Freddy
Alexander's pocket-handkerchief, but that were, in effect, produced by
his struggle with a brand new hunting-horn. To this demonstration
about as much attention was paid by the nine couple of buccaneers
whom he was now exercising for the first time as might have been
expected, and it was brought to abrupt conclusion by the sudden charge
of two of them from the rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from
under him as irresistibly as chain shot and being puppies, and of an
imbecile friendliness they remained to lick his face and generally make
merry over him as he struggled to his feet.
By this time the leaders of the pack were well away up a ploughed field,
over a fence and into a furze brake, from which their rejoicing yelps
streamed back on the damp breeze. The Master of the Craffroe Hounds
picked himself up, and sprinted up the hill after the Whip and Kennel
Huntsman--a composite official recently promoted from the stable
yard--in a way that showed that his failure in horn-blowing was not the
fault of his lungs. His feet were held by the heavy soil, he tripped in the
muddy ridges; none the less he and Patsey plunged together over the
stony rampart of the field in time to see Negress and Lily springing
through the furze in kangaroo leaps, while they uttered long squeals of
ecstasy. The rest of the pack, with a confidence gained in many a
successful riot, got to them as promptly as if six Whips were behind
them, and the whole faction plunged into a little wood on the top of
what was evidently a burning scent.
"Was it a fox, Patsey?" said the Master excitedly.
"I dunno, Master Freddy: it might be 'twas a hare," returned Patsey,
taking in a hurried reef in the strap that was responsible for the support
of his trousers.
Freddy was small and light, and four short years before had been a
renowned hare in his school paper-chases: he went through the wood at
a pace that gave Patsey and the puppies all they could do to keep with
him, and dropped into a road just in time to see the pack streaming up a

narrow lane near the end of the wood. At this point they were
reinforced by a yellow dachshund who, with wildly flapping ears, and
at that caricature of a gallop peculiar to his kind, joined himself to the
hunters.
"Glory be to Mercy!" exclaimed Patsey, "the misthress's dog!"
Almost simultaneously the pack precipitated themselves into a ruined
cabin at the end of the lane; instantly from within arose an uproar of
sounds--crashes of an ironmongery sort, yells of dogs, raucous human
curses; then the ruin exuded hounds, hens and turkeys at every one of
the gaps in its walls, and there issued from what had been the doorway
a tall man with a red beard, armed with a large frying-pan, with which
he rained blows on the fleeing Craffroe Pack. It must be admitted that
the speed