My brother Bill and I got a real good start one day with the Curraghmore hounds. We led the field till we came to the river Clodagh. The hounds swam the river, and we followed them, with the water over our horses' girths. In jumping out, Bill got on the hard bank, but in the place where I went, the water had undermined it. I was on a little horse called Eden, which was not 15 hands, but which had won the jumping prize at the Horse Show in Dublin. He was "a great lepped harse," as the Irish say. He did his best, but the bank gave under him, and he came right back on me in the water. When I got up, both my stirrup leathers had slipped, and I saw the irons showing at the bottom of the river. I had to go down under water to recover them. I got out and rode to a public-house, the landlord of which was a tenant of my brother Waterford.
"For the love of God, Lord Char-less, how did ye get that way at all at all?" says he.
I told him, and,
"Can you give me a suit of clothes, as they will draw Ballydurn in the afternoon, and I must be there?" said I.
"Divil a suit have I got," says he. "But there, his Riverence is just afther changing his clothes within, and I'm sure he'll be glad and proud if you esconced yourself in his clothes, and he big enough to cover two of yez."
I went upstairs, and there I found his Reverence's clericals on the bed, and with that I stripped and put on his vest, shirt, trousers and clerical coat. His great boots were elastic-sided, and I had to put two copies of the Cork Examiner newspaper in each to make them fit me. He was a big man, over six feet high and weighing about twenty stone; and his trousers were so long that when I turned them up half-way to the knee, they still could go into the top of the boots, in which I stowed them, tying string round the boots to keep the trousers in. The trousers were so wide round the waist, that I had to button the top button round on the opposite side brace button behind. The coat was so long that it reached down half-way between my knees and ankles.
Thus ecclesiastically garbed, I rode to the cover, and waited under a bank for nearly an hour, hoping to hear the hounds. My teeth were chattering with cold, and all I had on of my own was my hat. At last I heard the horn, and at once a fine old fox broke. I waited till he got afield and then knocked a bawl out of myself that would terrify a neighbourhood. Out came the hounds and me on top of them, with two fields' start, as I was wrong side of the cover down wind concealed under a big bank. Then came over twenty minutes as hard as legs could lay on to ground, and all the field wondering who his Reverence could be that was leading the field, and where in God's name did he come from—all except Bill. He knew that I had fallen in the river, he knew Eden, and he laughed so that he could hardly sit his horse. When the field came up, fox to ground, they nearly fell off their horses with laughing. One farmer said to me:
"Begob, your Riverence, you will never be so near heaven again as on the top of that terror of a high bank ye lepped!"
There was a lady, a very hard and jealous rider, who often hunted with our hounds, and who was told one day that she must hold her own with the Curraghmores, as some ladies from the neighbouring packs were out.