In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch with a Foreword by Chris Ryan, MFH, The Scarteen HoundsA manuscript on the Kerry Beagle that languished for nearly seventy-five years has been rescued, edited, and published twenty-seven years after the author’s death by Irish author and photojournalist Noel Mullins, from whom the book may now be purchased.
In Search of the Kerry Beagle by Stanislaus Lynch attempts to trace the roots of this unique breed of Irish hound, most widely known as that bred for more than four hundred years at Scarteen in County Limerick, the Black and Tans. The ancient hound is believed to have descended from hounds that swam ashore from shipwrecked Spanish boats sunk off the southwest coast of Ireland.
Noel Mullins is well-known to Foxhunting Life readers for his regular reports on Irish hunting, personality profiles, and hound shows. Stanislaus Lynch is also known to FHL readers through his short stories and poetry published in these pages. (Use the Search function, top left-hand column, to find Mullins’s and Lynch’s works.)
Lynch, who died in 1983, was a huntsman, journalist, author, broadcaster, poet, and producer of Irish Draught Horses and Connemara Ponies. He is the only Irish writer to be awarded two Olympic Diplomas for the Literature of the Chase at the London Games in 1948 and Helsinki in 1952. He was also awarded the Saint Hubert Gold Medal by the Grand Chapter of the International Order of Saint Hubert. His work has been translated into ten languages in sixteen countries.
During a meeting in 2005 between Mullins and Lynch’s widow Margaret, while Mullins was writing a feature on her late husband, the possibility of publishing the manuscript was discussed. Now, twelve years later, it has found its way into the hands of readers.
In Search of the Kerry Beagle tells the story of a time seventy-odd years ago when Lynch traveled from Dublin through the Irish Midlands to the Hills of Kerry and Limerick in his quest to discover the origins of one of Ireland’s native breeds of hounds. Did they swim ashore on the west coast of Ireland from the Spanish Armada in 1588, or could they have escaped from Noah’s Ark when it is said to have rested against Galtee More Mountain in the Golden Vale in County Tipperary! Or did the Kerry Beagle originate in France, brought to Ireland by a distant generation of the Ryan family of Scarteen?
Adding a nationalistic element to the quest, lawyer/politician/statesman Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), The Liberator, from Derrynane Abbey, Caherdaniel in County Kerry was cousin to the Ryans. (O’Connell is probably the most important Irish political figure, campaigner of Emancipation and a Repeal of the Act of Union, as well as being a Member of Parliament for Clare and Dublin and Lord Mayor of Dublin.) Lynch’s book contains a letter from O’Connell to his cousin Tha Ryan dated 1812 with the offer of a Kerry Beagle hound!
The book’s subject brings back memories of a conversation my wife Joan and I had with the late Thady Ryan, Master and huntsman of the Scarteen, sometime in the early 1970s. Relaxing after a day’s hunting with his pack of Kerry Beagles, Thady spoke to various theories of the origins of the pack passed down in conversations with his father, Master and huntsman before him. Then he told of his experience one day traveling through the Spanish countryside. He happened upon a rural village square, and in the middle of the square was an ancient statue of a hound. Thady was stunned. “It could have been my hound,” he said. From that time on, he was convinced of the Spanish origins.
Lynch treats us to his memories of the Kerry Beagle as a drag hound, a harrier, and a foxhound, and recalls visits to people’s homes, and hunting on foot in the Hills of Kerry, and on horseback with the Scarteen Hounds in County Limerick, the only Kerry Beagle pack hunted mounted. Important places and subjects like Caherciveen, Waterville, Kenmare, Killarney, Breaghey, Daniel O’Connell Pack, Kerry Hunting Songs, Valentia Island all feature. The author also looks at the Kerry Beagle connection with the French Gascon Hound and its influence through the bloodlines of two hounds Mountain and Muse on American Foxhound breeding.
The Mountain and Muse connection can be disputed, based on old sketches of Mountain and Muse which do not resemble the Kerry Beagle in any way, but such could be the quarrel with virtually any study of animal breeding that attempts to peer back through the veils of time.
The book is a gem to which Mullins has added additional information about Daniel O’Connell, the Kerry Beagle, and the author Stanislaus Lynch himself. Lynch was a skilful author focusing on hunting and the countryside, in books that are highly collectable as they are now out of print, such as Rhymes of an Irish Huntsman, Hoof-prints on Parchment, Echoes of the Hunting Horn, From Foal to Tally-Ho, Hounds are Running, and A Hunting Man Rambles. The book is also generously illustrated by photos of people, packs, and hounds of the past, to which Mullins has added photos from his collection of Kerry Beagles and present-day people.
Click for more information or to purchase directly from Mullins.
Posted August 25, 2017