IN PURSUIT OF A SWIMMING FOX …
In pursuit of a swimming fox … weather, lore and more from a century ago this week.
What a spell of sparkling clear weather over the past week or more! The spring countryside was bathed in a scintillating bright sunshine with a not a cloud in the sky. It is rare for the Irish weather to hold fine so firmly and for so long and yet curiously almost exactly one hundred years ago the country was blessed with a similar extended spell of exceptionally fine weather.
The Kildare Hunt Notes in the issue of the Kildare Observer dated the 1st of March 1913 include weather references in the hunt day reports for the previous fortnight such as on the Thursday week previous – “The fine weather with a piercing north-east wind …” and on the Saturday previous to publication “ Still the weather was fine”. An indication of the duration of the fine (but cold) weather enjoyed at the end of February 1913 comes via the reference that “On Monday night we had rain for the first time in sixteen days.” The writer recognised the rarity of such benign meteorology “ a truly unusual occurrence in these years.”
The Hunt notes occupied column inches during the hunting season in the Kildare Observer. This was only to be expected given the obsession for hunting which was a hallmark of the county gentry. It seemed as if Sunday was the only day of the week in which a hunt did not take place. Many of Kildare’s country squires and their extended retinues spent the best part of their week on the back of a horse galloping across the county in pursuit of an unfortunate fox. This was also true of British army officers based at Naas and the Curragh who seemed to be able to structure their regimental duties around their hunting timetables.
The hunt meets and subsequent pursuits were chronicled by a correspondent who wrote in a style which gave the reader the sense of being on horseback in the chasing pack as it galloped up hill and down dale across Kildare’s rolling plains.
The report of a Kildare Hunt Meet in the last week of February 1913 is a good example of the genre. We take up the story as the Kildare Hunt pack flushed out a fox from the gorse at Osberstown near Sallins and went in full cry as its quarry made a line across country heading west of Naas. Clearly a fox with a sense of history he ran straight for Jigginstown Castle which our Kildare Observer correspondent writes was “ a noted refuge for the vulpine tribe before the days of gorse coverts if one may rely on history.” Indeed the Observer writer quoted from a publication on Irish hunting history which said that a century earlier again (1814) Jigginstown was a favourite hunting “tryst” and that “many an ardent sportsman spent hours there of a wild winter’s morning seeking shelter beneath the ruins of the unfortunate Earl of Strafford’s (Thomas Wentworth who was beheaded) intended palace, awaiting the return of the varmint to these favourite earths.”
Returning to the chase on that February day in 1913 the versatile fox swam the canal and was making a course for “Coolmoonaun’s wild gorse” (a decoy near Jigginstown) but he was cut off by the hunt and he switched course heading directly into the town of Naas. The following extract from the hunt report gives a vivid picture of a hunt encountering obstacles characteristic of an urban setting: “ At the back of Mrs Young’s place, and with his nose almost up against the old jail wall, he turned to the left and swam the canal and pointed for Oldtown – the wired-up condition of some town allotments completely frustrated the laudable attempt of Major Elliot Lockhart and two others to follow the hounds, almost to Naas Gas Works.” The correspondent writes that he heard later that one of the horsemen swam his horse across the canal – the rider being from one of the “crack Lancer regiments”.
The fox who was possessed of Olympian qualities of endurance – he had run miles and twice swam the canal – continued to lead the pursuers a merry dance. The hunt correspondent in describing the evolution of the pursuit paints a valuable picture of the landscape as it was in 1913 in the terrain between Naas and Sallins. Golfing enthusiasts will be interested in the mention that “in the meantime hounds had run by Co Kildare Golf Links and parallel to the canal by Millbank (Tandy’s) bridge, and then turned into Osberstown again, keeping the Knocks house on the left.”
The Kildare Hunt pack were also capable of taking to the water and the hounds pursued the fox across the Liffey close to a ford at Castlekeeley. In a move which would be considered treacherously dangerous in later times the Hunt crossed and recrossed the main Dublin-Cork railway line and ran parallel to the Liffey by the old covert of Gingerstown to Yeomanstown where they made a small circle of “Messrs Gills luxuriant stud paddocks” and again swam the Liffey to the old breeding earths at Shannon’s Hill at Halverstown where the fox seems to have at last escaped his bloodthirsty pursuers by squeezing into a warren of rabbit holes.
The hunt correspondent clearly breathless himself after a spectacular chase of many miles through urban outskirts and across canal and river wrote: “I have seldom seen a fox who was so fond of swimming.”!And back to our little bit of weather history the fine spell in the last ten days of February 1913 eventually reverted to a more typical Irish outlook – the last sentence in the hunt notes for the week reported: “ The rain came in real earnest on Tuesday night and fell in torrents ….”
Postscript: There is a lot of history between the Irish and the Welsh – and the rugby field is only the small part of it. This Friday, 1st March, is St David’s day, feast of the Welsh saint who has been patron saint of Naas for more than eight centuries and whose association with the town is reflected in the names of St David’s Church of Ireland and the Catholic Church of Our Lady and St David. Series no: 320.
The report of a Kildare Hunt Meet in the last week of February 1913 from Liam Kenny’s popular Looking Back series no. 320
