What a spell of sparkling clear weather over the past week or more! The spring countryside was bathed in a\u00a0 scintillating bright sunshine with a not a cloud in the sky. It is rare for the Irish weather to hold fine so firmly\u00a0 and for so long and yet curiously almost exactly one hundred years ago the country was blessed with a similar\u00a0 extended spell of exceptionally fine weather.<\/p>\n
The Kildare Hunt Notes in the issue of the Kildare Observer dated the 1st of March 1913 include weather references\u00a0 in the hunt day reports for the previous fortnight such as on the Thursday week previous \u2013 \u201cThe fine weather with a\u00a0 piercing north-east wind \u2026\u201d and on the Saturday previous to publication \u201c Still the weather was fine\u201d. An indication\u00a0 of the duration of the fine (but cold) weather enjoyed at the end of February 1913 comes via the reference that \u201cOn\u00a0 Monday night we had rain for the first time in sixteen days.\u201d The writer recognised the rarity of such benign\u00a0 meteorology \u201c a truly unusual occurrence in these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hunt notes occupied column inches during the hunting season in the Kildare Observer. This was only to be\u00a0 expected given the obsession for hunting which was a hallmark of the county gentry. It seemed as if Sunday was the\u00a0 only day of the week in which a hunt did not take place. Many of Kildare\u2019s country squires and their extended\u00a0 retinues spent the best part of their week on the back of a horse galloping across the county in pursuit of an\u00a0 unfortunate fox. This was also true of British army officers based at Naas and the Curragh who seemed to be able to\u00a0 structure their regimental duties around their hunting timetables.<\/p>\n
The hunt meets and subsequent pursuits were chronicled by a correspondent who wrote in a style which gave the reader\u00a0 the sense of being on horseback in the chasing pack as it galloped up hill and down dale across Kildare\u2019s rolling\u00a0 plains.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 story as the Kildare Hunt pack flushed out a fox from the gorse at Osberstown near Sallins and went in full cry as\u00a0 its quarry made a line across country heading west of Naas. Clearly a fox with a sense of history he ran straight\u00a0 for Jigginstown Castle which our Kildare Observer correspondent writes was \u201c a noted refuge for the vulpine tribe\u00a0 before the days of gorse coverts if one may rely on history.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed the Observer writer quoted from a publication\u00a0 on Irish hunting history which said that a century earlier again (1814) Jigginstown was a favourite hunting \u201ctryst\u201d\u00a0 and that \u201cmany an ardent sportsman spent hours there of a wild winter\u2019s morning seeking shelter beneath the ruins of\u00a0 the unfortunate Earl of Strafford\u2019s (Thomas Wentworth who was beheaded) intended palace, awaiting the return of the\u00a0 varmint to these favourite earths.\u201d<\/p>\n
Returning to the chase on that February day in 1913 the versatile fox swam the canal and was making a course for\u00a0 \u201cCoolmoonaun\u2019s wild gorse\u201d (a decoy near Jigginstown) but he was cut off by the hunt and he switched course heading\u00a0 directly into the town of Naas. The following extract from the hunt report gives a vivid picture of a hunt\u00a0 encountering obstacles characteristic of an urban setting: \u201c At the back of Mrs Young\u2019s place, and with his nose\u00a0 almost up against the old jail wall, he turned to the left and swam the canal and pointed for Oldtown \u2013 the wired-up\u00a0 condition of some town allotments completely frustrated the laudable attempt of Major Elliot Lockhart and two others\u00a0 to follow the hounds, almost to Naas Gas Works.\u201d\u00a0 The correspondent writes that he heard later that one of the\u00a0 horsemen swam his horse across the canal \u2013 the rider being from one of the \u201ccrack Lancer regiments\u201d.<\/p>\n
The fox who was possessed of Olympian qualities of endurance \u2013 he had run miles and twice swam the canal \u2013 continued\u00a0 to lead the pursuers a merry dance. The hunt correspondent in describing the evolution of the pursuit paints a\u00a0 valuable picture of the landscape as it was in 1913 in the terrain between Naas and Sallins.\u00a0 Golfing enthusiasts\u00a0 will be interested in the mention that \u201cin the meantime hounds had run by Co Kildare Golf Links and parallel to the\u00a0 canal by Millbank (Tandy\u2019s) bridge, and then turned into Osberstown again, keeping the Knocks house on the left.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kildare Hunt pack were also capable of taking to the water and the hounds pursued the fox across the Liffey\u00a0 close to a ford at Castlekeeley. In a move which would be considered treacherously dangerous in later times the Hunt\u00a0 crossed and recrossed the main\u00a0 Dublin-Cork railway line and ran parallel to the Liffey by the old covert of\u00a0 Gingerstown to Yeomanstown where they made a small circle of \u201cMessrs Gills luxuriant stud paddocks\u201d and again swam\u00a0 the Liffey to the old breeding earths at\u00a0 Shannon\u2019s Hill at Halverstown where the fox seems to have at last escaped\u00a0 his bloodthirsty pursuers by squeezing into a warren of rabbit holes.<\/p>\n
The hunt correspondent clearly breathless himself after a spectacular chase of many miles through urban outskirts\u00a0 and across canal and river wrote: \u201cI have seldom seen a fox who was so fond of swimming.\u201d!And back to our little bit of weather history the fine spell in the last ten days of February 1913 eventually\u00a0 reverted to a more typical Irish outlook \u2013 the last sentence in the hunt notes for the week reported: \u201c The rain\u00a0 came in real earnest on\u00a0 Tuesday night and fell in torrents \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Postscript:<\/strong> There is a lot of history between the Irish and the Welsh \u2013 and the rugby field is only the small part\u00a0 of it. This Friday, 1st March, is St David\u2019s day, feast of the Welsh saint who has been\u00a0 patron saint of Naas for\u00a0 more than eight centuries and whose association with the town is reflected in the names of St David\u2019s Church of\u00a0 Ireland and the Catholic Church of Our Lady and St David. Series no: 320.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The report of a Kildare Hunt Meet in the last week of February 1913 from Liam Kenny’s popular Looking Back series no. 320<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The report of a Kildare Hunt Meet in the last week of February 1913 from Liam Kenny’s popular Looking Back series no. 320<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looking-back","category-sport"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8375,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/8375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}