Riding out one morning towards Mount Shannon, the then lovely home of the Fitzgibbons, on the banks of the river, and just on leaving the old town of Limerick, I arrived at a rather long and steep hill, at the foot of which a jarvey was trying to induce his horse, a long, rakish, Irish-built bay, to go up. The horse absolutely refused to do so, and each time the old jarvey flogged him he exhibited very considerable agility in every direction except up the hill. I rode up to the jarvey and asked him what was the matter. “Shure, sir,” he said, “I bought this horse to go up this hill, for I am the mail contractor on this road. I’ve got him here these last three mornings, and I’ve never got farther than this. Now I’ll have to go back again and get another horse, and all the people will get their mails late and they’ll report me, and they’ll fine me, and the divil do I know what my ould missus’ll have to say about it. And, shure, yer honour, ’tis all the fault of this donkey-headed old quadruped.”
I asked him whether the old quadruped could jump.
“Shure, yer honour,” he said, “he’d jump out of his harness, traces an’ all, if I hadn’t got him by the bit.”
“Will you sell him?” says I.
“Will I sell him?” says he. “Will I find the fool that’ll buy him, yer honour?”
“Bring him up to the old castle in the morning,” says I, “and I may find the fool that’ll buy him.”
“Begorra, sir,” says he, “yer a gintleman. I’ll be there with him at nine o’clock, with a halter round his old ewe neck.”
Next morning, at nine o’clock, just as the sergeant-major was reporting as usual, “All correct,” I saw my old friend leading his quadruped into the barrack square. He was a quaint looking horse. He was particularly full of corners, for he wasn’t furnished up above at all. But he had good-boned legs. His coat was by way of being a miracle to look at. He had no particular colour to speak of. In some places he was a bit of a roan—Taffy-like; round some other corners he was a dirty bay. In some places, especially where for the last three days he had attempted to get out of his harness at the bottom of the hill, there was no hair at all. But he had a good-looking eye; he had good sound feet; good bone, though his tail was hardly up to Cocker. Most of it, no doubt, was now part and parcel of the car.
I can well remember the look of the correct and austere sergeant-major—who himself was a bit of a sport, but who still considered himself “on parade”—as he cast his eye over that noble quadruped, and wondered what his lieutenant was about. I could see that he was asking himself, “Is he going to run a circus, and is this going to be the freak horse?”
“Mick,” says I, “if I get a saddle on the horse, will you ride him; come out with me and put him over a couple of jumps?”