83-year-old Jack Lambert clears a double stone wall with the Carlow Farmers Foxhounds on his purebred Irish Draught hunter. Lambert is a regular visitor to the Genessee Valley Hounds (NY). / Noel Mullins photo
Only the most able riders, the foolhardy, or unsuspecting visitors go to the Carlow Farmers Foxhounds meet at John A’s Pub in Glynn. Only in parts of Galway and North Mayo have I ever seen such a succession of double stone walls that must be jumped clean because they don’t collapse. Many more cannot be jumped clean, but have to be banked. A clever and athletic horse is needed, and a rider who hangs on the reins is doomed!
The Joint-Masters of the Carlow Farmers are Joe Dunne, Joe Skelton, and Brian Rice. Huntsman Ado Moran is popular with the followers and has a quiet way with hounds. He is a natural horseman and, like his whipper-in Jodie Skelton, prefers to ride a straight line across country rather than alternative routes. There are no hiding places following these men!
Moran is originally from the Killinick Harriers country, where he whipped-in for four seasons before spending three seasons with the Kildare Foxhounds. He is recognised as one of the best men to break and back a horse, and has four for sale, including the horse he was hunting hounds off by Royal Touch and a smashing grey that Helen Keatley was hunting by All the Diamonds.
Jodie Skelton has whipped-in for seven seasons and also produces horses for sale. His thirteen-year-old brother Gerry was hunting a nice grey with a great temperament. Al Thomkins is road whip looking after the safety of hounds and horses on the road and keeps busy all day chatting to farmers. His father Albert seldom misses a day. Gerry Nolan is the junior whipper-in, and Niall Cummins does the country and the fencing.
Eighty-three-year-old Jack Lambert was visiting this day from the Killinick Harriers, where he hunts his purebred Irish draught stallions twice a week over the famous double banks in County Wexford. Jack breeds and breaks about six three-year-olds each summer and has them ready for sale during the hunting season. He travels each October to the Genessee Valley Hounds (NY) to hunt on a mare that he sold to Genessee Valley whipper-in Ann Morss.
Glynn, the name of the village, is a translation from the Irish, gleann, meaning valley, as the area is a series of valleys lined by woods, with rivers running through them, all guarded by the Blackstairs Mountains and Mount Leinster.
The Carlow Farmers were established in 1979 and hunt the country abandoned by the County Carlow Foxhounds that disbanded in the 1960s. Perhaps the best-known Masters of the old County Carlow were John Watson and his son Robert who occupied that office for ninety-two seasons until 1908. John’s son John hunted the Meath Foxhounds from 1891 to 1908. With others he drafted the first rules of polo, and was on the winning Great Britain team that took the International Polo Cup away from the top American Meadow Brook Team in a match played on Long Island in the early 1900s.
The Hunting Day
Going in by Tom Doyles’ yard, the huntsman drew Tom Joyce’s Plantation. Hounds got down to business opening in fine voice on a fox.Paul Scallon who rode for Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle Stable and was runner-up in the Irish Derby to High Chaparral in 2002 and now trains point-to-pointers was helping up front on a smashing coloured five-year-old who never put a foot wrong.
A line of double stone walls were looming, with the huntsman and whipper-in leading the way. The first was a wide double that could not be jumped clean and had to be banked. Some of the Killinick horses looked puzzled as they were more used to double banks, but all successfully negotiated them. Just as important, all the Wexford riders—Laura Whitney, Pat Whelan, Richard Doyle, and Jack Lambert—stayed in the plate. To locals like John McDonald, Liam Dennehy, Tom Berney, Gerry and Joe Skelton, Helen Keatley, and Hazel Valentine, a well known producer of Connemara ponies, it was just business as usual.
A dark brown fox appeared under pressure, but he decided to turn back and retrace his steps rather than leave. He broke covert again near the road to Borris and circled left-handed over the lane by a flock of ewes. Hounds were really steady around the sheep. Whipper-in Jody Skelton went back to support the pack over the line of walls, but he disappeared in a somersault at the other side of a big double with just the horse’s hind legs in the air. Fortunately no damage done. It was reminiscent of the Snaffles painting of the point-to-point scene titled “The Worst View in Europe”! Meanwhile the fox jumped up on a double wall, had a look back, but decided not to chance his luck, and returned to the plantation where he went to ground.
The Worst View in Europe by Snaffles
Dan Galvan’s plantation was next. Dan is a great supporter of the hunt and invited the hunt to draw over part of his Carrigleade Golf Course. Jack Lambert, who will soon be celebrating eighty-three years of age, came a cropper at another enormous double when his horse tripped on landing. He switched his horse with Laura Whitney’s well turned out dark bay. Lambert declared that it was his first time in seventy-five years hunting that he hunted a horse that was braided! There was more drama as Laura then got a fall followed by David Mullins, whose horse stood on his collarbone, so he headed for the hospital.
Hounds found again in Bahana Wood and hunted right-handed up the valley, but the fox was headed and ran the length of the valley again and to ground. The reduced field hacked through the village of St. Mullins and went in opposite Blanchfield’s Pub, crossing a tributary of the River Barrow. Hounds found a stale line in Michael McCluskey’s under the shadow of the Blackstairs Mountains, but despite their best efforts and in drizzling rain could make nothing of it, so the huntsman blew for home.
A roaring fire and refreshments greeted the followers back at newlyweds Valerie and James Doyle’s pub. Jack Lambert went home to Wexford, and, rather than counting sheep, has been dreaming of enormous walls ever since!
Posted January 20, 2014
Noel Mullins is a lifetime foxhunter and a retired computer marketing executive in Ireland. Visit his website for more of his work and his books.
(l-r) Liam Dennehy, Laura Whitney, Richard Doyle, Jack Lambert, Pat Whelan, Helen Keatley, Gerry Skelton, Hazel Valentine, John Berney, Joint-MFH Joe Skelton, Martin Fenlon, David Mullins / Noel Mullins photo