All on the Irish Shore

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All on the Irish Shore

Project Gutenberg's All on the Irish Shore, by E. Somerville and Martin Ross This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
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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[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 with which these abandoned their prey, whatever it was, suggested a very intimate acquaintance with the wrath of cooks and the perils of resistance.
Before their lawful custodians had recovered from this spectacle, a tall lady in black was suddenly merged in the _mêlée_, alternately calling loudly and incongruously for "Bismarck," and blowing shrill blasts on a