This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had “dishonourably” stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv!
“But we’ve beaten them entirely,” he said, with equal zest, “at Marble Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses too, of the poor men that were put out.[19] I didn’t ever think we’d get that; but ye see the truth is,” he added confidentially, “he must have the money, Sir Henry—he’s lying out of a deal, and then there’s heavy charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!”
“In fact,” I said, “you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?”
“Well, it’s like that. But we shan’t get that out of Clanricarde, I’m thinking. He’s got a power o’ money they tell me; and he’s that of the ould Burke blood, he won’t mind fighting just as long as you like!”
As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other day “there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred ladies and gentlemen—a grand sight it was.”
I asked if the hunting had not been “put down by the League.”
“Oh, now then, sir, who’d be wanting to put down the hunting here in Galway?—and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!”
I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of the League to hunting.
“Oh, that’ll be some little lawyer fellow,” he replied, “like that Healy, that can’t sit on a horse! It’s the grandest country in all the world for riding over. What for wouldn’t they ride over it?”
“Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?”