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.
Thady and his wife Anne welcomed us effusively. Joe Lyman, our Irish Board tour coordinator had already arrived, as had Elwyn Hartley Edwards, a well-known English equestrian journalist, and his equally affable photographer, Leslie Lane. The first order of business was to inspect that year’s crop of foals and their dams in a field beyond the house. Field? Bog was more like it, and we slogged across the land, the other men in rubber boots that they kept in their cars for just such eventualities. Carol and I did the best we could in our paddock boots.
After admiring the brood, we schlepped back to the house where Thady hosed us down, so to speak, and Anne announced that lunch was ready. During the meal, Leslie said he’d like to take a group photo of the hounds. “Easily done,” Thady assured him, and then told us he expected us to go hunting the following morning.
That was music to Hartley Edwards’ ears. He had hunted throughout the world, including Ireland, but had never gone out with the Scarteen. Carol also accepted with pleasure.
“Um, I think not,” I demurred. Due to the scarcity of timber trees, the majority of fields in that part of Ireland weren’t separated by fencing, but by banks and ditches. To contain livestock centuries earlier, soil had been scooped out to create six- to eight-foot banks with equally wide ditches alongside. The banks had sprouted all manner of tough thorny bushes over the years, and what lay under the stagnant ditch-water was anybody’s guess. And I wasn’t eager to find out.
Thady looked at me oddly―what kind of American equestrian journalist had he been sent? Shrugging an “it’s your loss” shrug, he back to regaling us with stories of memorable hunts, none of which made me want to reconsider my decision.
We walked up to the kennels after lunch. Inside pens were some fifty Scarteen hounds, an ancient breed known as Kerry Beagles that preceded even the foxhound as a distinct breed. About the size of a foxhound, they are known by their distinctive coloring as the Black and Tans (also the name given to the British paramilitary force in Ireland’s early twentieth-century struggle for independence). With the assistance of his kennelman, Thady assembled the pack up the driveway for the photo that Leslie wanted.
That’s when all hell broke loose. First one, then a few, and finally all the hounds took off in a cloud of gravel and a cacophony of howling. “They scented something,” Hartley said unnecessarily. As Thady raced off after them, Hartley led us to the stables at an extended trot. “Hounds running riot―Master needs his horn,” he told the stablemen.
Within minutes four horses were pulled from their stalls and tacked. Harley, Joe, Carol, and I were boosted into saddles, Hartley was handed a hunting horn, and off we went in pursuit of Thady in pursuit of the hounds in pursuit of, or so we presumed, a fox.
There was no alternative now. My horse followed its herd instinct and did everything the other horses and riders did, which included negotiating several banks and ditches. One minute my horse scrambled up a bank, and a second later hurled himself off the top and to the ditch’s far side. Only once did the process involve clearing a ditch, landing halfway up the bank, and half-trotting half-cantering to the top and then sliding down the far side. I owe my life to my mount’s mane, fistfuls of which I grabbed at essential moments.
We must have circled back because ahead was the manor house…and Thady. The hounds had evidently lost the scent or grown bored because they were now back in their kennel. Thady was happy to see us, although less so when I inadvertently rode across his beautifully manicured lawn tennis court.
“No excuses now, Steve,” Thady decreed. “You’ve been blooded. No excuses now―you’ll come out tomorrow.”
And so I did. I was there at 9:00 A.M under a threatening sky at a crossroad where dozens of horse trailers disgorged their occupants. Some of the ratcatcher-clad riders had mounted, while others stood smoking or taking nips from flasks. Hartley’s and Carol’s enthusiasm was infectious―I was going foxhunting in Ireland. A cattle truck appeared, and resplendent in his Scarteen black coat with tan collar, Thady hopped out. He opened the truck’s rear door and distributed at least a dozen fully-tacked horses as they tumbled out.
“Steve, you’ll ride this fine mare. I know she’ll do you proud,” He handed me the reins of a big bay with feet the size of dinner plates. When I asked her name, Thady said without pause, “Why, whatever you want to call her.” Not exactly an old household pet, I deduced.
Hounds spilled out of another truck, girths were tightened, and we mounted. As guests, Carol, Hartley and I took our place at the rear of the field, some fifty or so horses behind Thady, his whippers-in, and hounds.
Not very much happened for the first two hours. Hounds found nothing, and the only obstacles that my horse and I faced were two low stone walls that had been reduced to kitty litter by the time we got there. It had also started to sprinkle, and word was passed back that Thady was going to draw one last covert at the top of a hill. If a blank, then we’d go home.
This Irish foxhunting, I confided to Carol, isn’t as tough as it’s cracked up to be. Oh, how wrong I was.
Hounds did find a fox in the hilltop covert, and we were off to the races. And racing through my mind were things I shouldn’t be doing but was: I shouldn’t be cantering down a steep hill…but I was. I shouldn’t be cantering on a rain-slick asphalt road at the bottom of the hill…but I was. I shouldn’t be doing anything at all on horseback while wearing wet eyeglasses that blurred my vision…but you get the pointillism picture.
We left the road and plunged into a woods with just enough room between trees for the horses to squeeze through, an occasion when, if I hadn’t learn to keep my knees in, I would have figured it out, or else.
Ahead loomed a bank. Nellie (the name I bestowed on my mare, as in “Whoa, Nellie!”) charged up and then heaved us off and across a ditch. I was thrown back in the saddle, but only momentarily and not badly. On we galloped across a soggy field, my eyes behind now somewhat-dried glasses lenses focused on Carol ahead of me. When I settled into the rhythm of Nellie’s long galloping stride, I resumed normal breathing and felt a glimmer of confidence creep into my body.
Now came a ditch before a bank and with taller shrubbery on the landing side. I raised an arm to shield my face when we hit the far side. We plunged into the overgrowth, and as we slid down and galloped off, I found that I had a passenger: a sizeable branch of some sort had wedged itself between my right leg and the saddle. Twisting in the saddle, I dislodged the interloper and plunged on ahead.
Ahead loomed the largest bank in Ireland, or so it seemed as we neared it. And if the bank were that ominous, I could imagine the width of the ditch behind it. No, I didn’t want to imagine the width of the ditch behind it, nor did I want any part of the bank. “Uh-oh, the party’s over,” I gasped.
Life is options, we are told, and at that very moment my predicament turned into an option. Up ahead one of the whippers-in veered off to the right. “I’ll follow that man to hell,” I told myself, and I veered along behind my savior together with several other riders who had the same idea. And to my relief, the group had the good sense to slow down to a trot so the stitch in my side stood a fighting chance of dissipating.
Everyone else in our little lost tribe was familiar with the countryside and had some idea where everyone else had gone, but even so it took twenty minutes to rejoin the field. By that time the fox had gone to ground, and Thady had called it a day. Carol could not have been happier to find me in one piece. “Your first hunt and all―I had visions of you lying in a blackwater ditch, and I was really worried.”
“You’re very kind to have worried,” I said and meant it.
“Darned right I was worried,” she replied, “you have the car keys.”
Posted March 9, 2020