An American’s Experiences as an English MFH
Linda Armbrust, MFH, High Peak Harriers (UK), leads her field. / Jim Meads photo
Years have passed since I was resident and MFH of two hunts in England. Now, as a married and ex-MFH in Virginia, I reflect on my fourteen years of English hunting. All the dark moments—rain, rain, and more rain, difficult farmers, and monumental mistakes—have faded now, leaving me with thoughts of good friends, outstanding hunts, great hedges and walls, and lovely hounds.
In The Curranhilty Country
Illustration by Edith SomervilleNow that we all have more reading time on our hands, here is this issue’s Bonus Article to fatten the content for our subscribers and to open more articles, previously restricted, to our non-paying registrants. We’ve been talking about the Irish cousins and author team of Someville and Ross in this issue, so here’s a condensed version of a chapter from Experiences of an Irish R.M. The narrator is Major Sinclair Yeates, the lovable (in the instance of the Somerville and Ross stories) British Resident Magistrate (R.M.) sent to Ireland to adjudicate local disputes in the days before Irish independence in 1922.
Who is Edith Somerville?
Edith Somerville (left) and Violet Martin (right) from “Irish Memories” (1919) by E. Œ. Somerville and Martin Ross. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
I discovered Edith Œnone Somerville (Irish, 1858-1949), cousin and writing partner of Violet Martin (Irish, 1862-1915), while searching the National Sporting Library & Museum archives for content to post on the NSLM’s Facebook page for Women’s History Month. One of my favorite things about my job are the opportunities I have to research our collections and share them digitally, but I felt that Edith Somerville’s story deserved more than a Facebook post.
Somerville was the first female Master of Foxhounds in Ireland, the West Carbery in Skibereen, County Cork. By no means incidentally, she was also a writer, humorist, artist, suffragist and feminist, and believer in the occult. She was President of the Munster Women’s Franchise League, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by Trinity College Dublin in 1932, and was invited to become a member of the Irish Academy of Letters by W.B. Yeats the following year.
County Limerick at Knockainey
Traditionally-bred English foxhounds of the Co Limerick with huntsman Fergus Stokes (right) and whipper-in David Beecher (left) / Catherine Power photo
George Blenerhaasset of Ridelstown is credited with being the first Limerick Master around 1800. In about 1830 Mr. Croker of Ballinagarde took on the pack with Geo Fosbury which went on to become the County Limerick Foxhounds.
Hounds have been kennelled in Clonshire, the hunt property in Adare, since 1930. The village is now one of Ireland’s leading equestrian centres. Former County Limerick Masters familiar to many in the U.S. are the recently mourned American Master Al Schreck of the Los Altos Hounds (CA) and Master and huntsman Hugh Robards who hunted the Co. Limerick for twenty-seven seasons before coming to North America.
You Might Be a Foxhunter If…
John Anderson, writer/editor/foxhunter / Douglas Lees photoIt’s been said that a “highbrow” is someone who can listen to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” and not think of the Lone Ranger. In the hunting world, that might be said of anyone who’s never heard of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be A Redneck” jokes. Leader of the Blue Collar Comedy genre, Foxworthy’s shtick consists of such gems as:
If you can recognize your friends by the sound of their mufflers, you might be a redneck.
If your school fight song was “Dueling Banjos, …”
If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, …”
If you refer to the sixth grade as “My senior year, …”
Borrowing from this concept, herewith are a few examples of “You Might Be A Foxhunter.” (Some of these apply to horse people more broadly, but all of them apply to foxhunters.) So here we go.
Keeping Score in the Hunt Field
Judith on Parker, the Perfect
With the close of the recent hunting season, I’m feeling the need for some deep reflection since I fell six times. That’s right—six times—this season! Read on, as I evaluate each fall and its root cause.
Fall # 1: I was behind Ken Trogden when he and his horse, Moseby, took a bad jump over the coop into Gentlemen’s Hill. Ken hit the ground on landing and broke his wrist. My horse, Parker, and I were landing after jumping the coop just as Ken hit the ground and his air vest deployed. Parker spun at the sight and sound. I almost stuck it but, in the end, had to bail. When I ask myself how this ride went, I can hear Barbara Lee, one of my riding instructors, in my head, “You were following too close!” Okay. Mea Culpa.
HORSE-0 RIDER-1
Hunting in Style on Dartmoor: Where and How?
Watching huntsman and hounds draw across Dartmoor, 365 square miles of wild, open, and uniquely English moorland.
“I hope they’re feeding Royally properly,” murmured my grandmother (ninety-three), as she departed peacefully from this earth. Sixty years earlier, back in 1926, the foxhunter and show rider had won the ‘Girls Hunter’ class at London’s International Horse Show, riding her beloved Right Royal side-saddle, and I don’t think anything ever quite matched up. I’m gazing at her huge cup as I write.
Little did anyone dream that I’d continue the family equine theme, but earlier this year I opened a new business for experienced riders from around the world, offering riding and hunting holidays direct from my home, Wydemeet. Nestled in the heart of remotest Dartmoor—the wildest, most open landscape in Southern England—Wydemeet sits at the cusp of all four Dartmoor hunts: Dartmoor, South Devon, Spooners and West Dartmoor, and the Mid-Devon Foxhounds.
The Reluctant Foxhunter
Author-editor Steve Price was so smitten with Dickie Power’s Scarteen hunt report in our last issue, that he offers this slice of his own experience at Scarteen. Steve is in the process of writing his equestrian memoir, “The Outside of a Horse,” and has allowed us to publish this advanced peek at his work-in-progress in which he recalls a day with the Scarteen while on a 1973 equestrian journalists’ junket to Ireland.
Steve Price (right-center) and Carol Clark (left-center) hunting with the Scarteen in 1973
Carol Clark, then editor of the Practical Horseman, had done her homework. During our Friday-morning drive to the village of Knocklong on the Limerick-Tipperary county line, she told me about our host, Thady Ryan. The Ryans had owned the Scarteen pack, named after their ancestral manor house, since 1798. Thady (né Thaddeus) was the most recent in the chain of Ryan men to serve as Master and huntsman. In addition to breeding, training, and caring for his hounds, and breeding and hunting his horses, Thady was a Dublin Horse show official and chef d’équipe of the Irish Olympic three-day team at the Tokyo and Mexico Olympics.
North Galway Foxhounds at Shrule, County Mayo
Huntsman David Masterson with Masters Tom McNamara, Michael Lennon, and Jackie Lee with whipper-in Gabriel Slattery at Shrule Castle directly across from TJ Gibbons Pub. Shrule Castle, a Norman keep, was built by the de Burgh family in 1238. / Noel Mullins photo
The hunting country of the North Galway Foxhounds was originally hunted by the Bermingham & North Galway Foxhounds, founded in 1946 by Sir Dermott and Lady Molly Cusack-Smith. Lady Molly had hunted the Galway Blazers during World War II. When the Bermingham and North Galway was disbanded in 1985, the North Galway Foxhounds was formed.
The meet was at TJ Gibbons Pub in Shrule, County Mayo, which has been in the family since 1925 and is now managed by Ronan Gibbons. The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne as Sean Thornton and Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate, was filmed in nearby Cong and The Neale.
Whelping Foxhounds
When Bay Cockburn was huntsman of the Loudoun West Hunt (VA), he would allow the author to bring the bitches home to whelp in a quiet place during the point-to-point season when he was busy racing. “It was so much fun,” says Wendell.
Beneath the cone of heat lamp light,
in the time it takes to break
a sack, wipe clear a face, and head-down shake
all wet away, I urge this not-yet-
breathing-thing: Come in,