In Search of the Kerry Beagle - A Fascinating Book Review By Derek Fanning

A Fascinating Book About A Famous Hunting Hound Breed

Life is not always fair and some been well received but it still hasn't books which should be classics been given the amount of praise which I have never seen the light of day. feel it deserves. Noel passed on the This was the case for a book about the book to me a few months ago, because Kerry Beagle, which was discovered he knew of my admiration for Lynch, and published by a Loughrea man a and I read it in a few sittings. I was very couple of years ago. happy to see it was equal to the standard

This Loughrea man was the very fine of Lynch's other works and, on each equestrian writer Noel Mullins, who a successive reading session, I dived few years ago was browsing through the gratefully back into the charming, library of one of his literary heroes when exciting and fascinating world that he he came across a valuable manuscript conjured, the very different universe of which had never been published. Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. My

The “library, literary hero and hope in writing this article is that it will valuable manuscript” were all win more readers for this book, a connected to one man, Stanislaus destiny that it fully deserves. In Search of the Kerry Beagle. Lynch. Some would say that Lynch was There are many enjoyable things in being the Irish Wolfhound, Irish Terrier, the finest equestrian and hunting writer Lynch's text; one of them is the Glen of Imaal Terrier, Kerry Blue, Red which Ireland produced. I have read a theorising about the provenance of the Setter, White Setter, Soft Coated lot of hunting literature and I would Kerry Beagle, the other is the fantastic Wheaten Terrier, and the Irish Water definitely put him up there. The descriptions of the many larger than life Spaniel. unpublished manuscript was called “In people that he met on his hunting forays The word “beagle” is misleading for Search of the Kerry Beagle” and, as (including a lot of fabulous passages set some. The breed is actually the size of a Noel perused it in the library in Cavan, in Kerry). fox hound. The dog got its name from he realised he had stumbled across a lost I will look firstly at the provenance the French word “Beegueule”, which treasure, which bore all the hallmarks of of the Kerry Beagle. This is a complex means “open-mouthed”, which is a Lynch's best work. subject but I will give the bones of it. description of them when they are

With the permission of Stanislaus' There is an aura of mystery around the hunting on a line. wife, Margaret, Noel edited the book Kerry Beagle. It's one of the nine native The best known Kerry Beagle pack is and published it in 2017. The book has breeds of Irish dogs / hounds, the others the Scarteen Hounds in Limerick (Chris Ryan, Huntsman and Master of the Scarteens, wrote a glowing foreword for Noel's edition of Lynch's book). There are a number of foot packs which hunt with Kerry Beagles, mainly in Cork and Kerry.

We don't know the exact origin of the breed, and there are many theories. One theory says the breed arrived in Ireland as surviving dogs from the wreckage of the Spanish Armada along the west coast in 1588. Another theory, and a stronger one, is they came from a Welsh monastery; and the Welsh monks, apparently, got them from a monastery in France.

Tom & Noel Geary, Masters of the Killeagh Harriers with their Kerry Beagles at the Irish National Hound Show. (photo Noel Mullins)

Some speculate that the Kerry Beagle appearance, size, and movement. “They encompassing vast sweeps of land, we can be traced back to Saint Hubert's are lighter boned, fast,” he wrote, “and realised it would be impossible for a hounds. Saint Hubert is the patron saint move with great freedom; they have a human being to follow them in the same of hunters and he became the Bishop of kind nature to the point of being close way you might follow another Liege in 708AD. He was the eldest son affectionate. Notably too, they have a pack on flat terrain. We could also hear of the Duke of Aquitaine and hunted in 'hare foot' – like the foot of a hare with the tremendous bellowing voice of the the Forest of Ardennes. (There's a great the full pad on the ground and a long Kerry Beagles in the pack. The scent prayer to Saint Hubert by Don Dubuc centre toe, as distinct from the was strong and the pack hunted well for which asks the saint to bestow on the foxhound's rounded 'catfoot'.” The much of the day. hunter “a deep sense of respect and coloration of the Grand Bleu de As I stood watching this fine display reverence for the game we pursue...In Gasgogne hounds was generally blue of hunting, I sometimes listened to the our souls instil the passion to share mottled (most people associate Kerry conversation of my fellow hunters with these precious traditions of the chase in Beagles with the black and tan colour, their strong Kerry accents. Their talk the spirit of camaraderie.”) but they can also be blue mottled, blue was sometimes serious, sometimes

The late master and huntsman of the mottled and tan, black tan and white, laced with gentle humour. “Fwisht”, Scarteens, Thady Ryan, thought the and tan and white). they would sometimes say, when the breed had no connection with the hounds were out of sight and couldn't be foxhound. He theorised that they The tactic was to climb to various heard. Their sentences often began with originated in France, the home of vantage points on the slopes “yerra.” I did not think about it then, but hounds, and were brought to Ireland by Some years ago myself and a few looking back on this fantastic hunt with Spanish sea merchants when there was a friends drove down to the Kerry great hunting people in the Kerry strong trade between Ireland and Spain mountains and met a foot pack in a wilderness it is possible that some of at the port on Valentia Island, County remote, wild valley in the centre of the them were sons or grandsons of the men Kerry, in the 16th Century. Thady, in his Iveragh peninsula. There were a few that Stanislaus Lynch hunted with when book “My Privileged Life” said he saw Kerry Beagles in their pack. The foot- he came this way in the 1950s. a sculpture in the Canary Islands which followers were friendly, decent men Stanislaus has great things to say resembled the Kerry Beagle. It was who advised me that you couldn't jog about the Scarteen Black-and-Tans in his thought that these Canary Islands dogs after the hounds in the same way you book. “Reputed to be in the Ryan family had come from France. When Thady might jog after a pack on the plains of since the Treaty of Limerick, in 1691,” visited a hound show in France he saw Ireland. Instead, the tactic for the day he writes, “they are now used the Grand Bleu de Gasgogne hounds on was to climb to various vantage points exclusively for hunting foxes, and are display and was convinced that these on the slopes of the heathery, stone- unquestionably one of the fastest packs were the closest hounds he had yet strewn hillsides and watch the action in Ireland. I heard several masters of discovered which most closely from there. As we watched the dogs hounds, men who were competent judges resembled the Kerry Beagle in flying up and down the steep slopes, of pace, say that under good scenting

conditions and in clean, open country, they could run any fox off his legs in twenty minutes. Their scenting powers are remarkable, and their music is truly wonderful. I measured several of them in their kennels, and they ranged from 15 to 24 inches.” He said he joined packs of Kerry Beagles in Cork and Kerry where they “were used for hunting drags as well as foxes and hares.”

On his first evening in Kerry, Stanislaus is standing outside taking the night air when he hears a solitary Kerry Beagle hunting in the darkness, somewhere in the surrounding bogland. He listens spell-bound and feels that the sound is better than a dozen brass bands. “Had a dozen brass bands turned out to welcome me to Kerry, their music would not have been half so thrilling as the cry of that lone hunter in the silent hills.”

He also likes the Kerry people who bid him “hearty good-nights” which he finds “a refreshing relief from the frigid dumbness of Dublin City which we had left that morning.” He meets the secretary of the Cahirciveen, Batt O'Connell, “a tall, quiet, young man, whose keenness for the task in hand captured my heart instantly.”

He visits the home of Daniel O'Connell. O'Connell was also an enthusiastic huntsman and owned a pack of Kerry Beagles (there's a great description of O'Connell hunting where he equalled “in agility men of half his age and poured forth an exhaustive stream of jest and anecdote, and entered with joyous zeal into the fullest of the sport.”)

The hunt secretary shows him a few hounds. He describes one: “He carried his stern as gamely as any connoisseur could desire and it was nicely feathered from halfway up, then tapered off gradually to the tip. He had a clean neck, fairly long, with no suggestion of a dewlap or stockiness. His gamelooking tan and white head was in perfect proportion to the size of the massive animal.”

The Kerry hunting horn is different to the norm, we are told, more like an old-type American Army bugle. “It was a peculiar sound, one I had never heard before. It was a run of three notes repeated ad lib. The sounds were rather like: Ho-aw-ling, Ho-aw-ling, Ho-awling! if sung to the tonic sol-fa: doh-fa-la, doh-fa-la, doh-fa-la!”

Of the countless marvellous hunting descriptions in the book I will choose a couple to bring this article to a close. They are both from a drag-hunt which Stanislaus attended near Cahirciveen. Standing on a bank he looks around at the Kerry men beside him who are watching the chase and writes, “When I glanced at the roguish, twinkling eyes in a weather-beaten face on my right I couldn't help noting the difference between them and the strained look of nail-biting anxiety one sometimes sees at horse racing and greyhound racing events.”

He describes the moment when the pack picks up the scent. “Like a flash, twenty-seven Kerry Beagles went away on their long twelve miles journey! The long line of black, tan, white and badger-pie surged up Lyons' Field; the line shortening every moment as its flanks raced in for close formation. They charged through a gap in the first bank, fanned out a little in the next small field, closed in again, raced ahead and went storming across the next high bank in a wave of flashing colour.”

If you have enjoyed this article and would like to read a book which, by all rights, should be a classic of hunting literature, then you can get a copy from Noel Mullins on his website www.noelmullins.com (Please note photos are credited to Noel Mullins and images are copyright protected, and if anyone wishes to use them they should contact Noel through his website www.noelmullins.com)