By the time the stallion was seen, the judges had done their arbitration; and we went to the yard, where broad-backed sheep were resting peaceably in their pens; bulls were led about by the nose; enormous turnips, both Swedes and Aberdeens, reposed in the mud; little cribs of geese, hens, and peafowl were come to try for the prize; and pigs might be seen—some encumbered with enormous families, others with fat merely. They poked up one brute to walk for us: he made, after many futile attempts, a desperate rush forward, his legs almost lost in fat, his immense sides quivering and shaking with the exercise; he was then allowed to return to his straw, into which he sunk panting. Let us hope that he went home with a pink ribbon round his tail that night, and got a prize for his obesity.
I think the pink ribbon was, at least to a Cockney, the pleasantest sight of all; for on the evening after the show we saw many carts going away so adorned, having carried off prizes on the occasion. First came a great bull stepping along, he and his driver having each a bit of pink in their hats; then a cart full of sheep; then a car of good-natured-looking people, having a churn in the midst of them that sported a pink favour. When all the prizes were distributed, a select company sate down to dinner at Macavoy’s Hotel; and no doubt a reporter who was present has given in the county paper an account of all the good things eaten and said. At our end of the table we had saddle of mutton, and I remarked a boiled leg of the same delicacy, with turnips, at the opposite extremity. Before the vice I observed a large piece of roast beef, which I could not observe at the end of dinner, because it was all swallowed. After the mutton we had cheese, and were just beginning to think that we had dined very sufficiently, when a squadron of apple-pies came smoking in, and convinced us that, in such a glorious cause, Britons are never at fault. We ate up the apple-pies, and then the punch was called for by those who preferred that beverage to wine, and the speeches began.
The chairman gave ‘The Queen,’ nine times nine and one cheer more; ‘Prince Albert and the rest of the Royal Family,’ great cheering; ‘The Lord-Lieutenant’—his Excellency’s health was received rather coolly, I thought. And then began the real business of the night: Health of the Naas Society, health of the Agricultural Society, and healths all round; not forgetting the Sallymount Beagles and the Kildare Foxhounds—which toasts were received with loud cheers and halloos by most of the gentlemen present, and elicited brief speeches from the masters of the respective hounds, promising good sport next season. After the Kildare Foxhounds, an old farmer in a grey coat got gravely up, and without being requested to do so in the least, sung a song, stating that—
‘At seven in the morning by most of the clocks
We rode to Kilruddery in search of a fox’;
and at the conclusion of his song challenged a friend to give another song. Another old farmer, on this, rose and sung one of Morris’s songs with a great deal of queer humour; and, no doubt many more songs were sung during the evening, for plenty of hot-water jugs were blocking the door as we went out.
The jolly frieze-coated songster who celebrated the Kilruddery fox, sung, it must be confessed, most woefully out of tune; but still it was pleasant to hear him, and I think the meeting was the most agreeable one I have seen in Ireland: there was more good-humour, more cordial union of classes, more frankness and manliness, than one is accustomed to find in Irish meetings. All the speeches were kind-hearted, straightforward speeches, without a word of politics or an attempt at oratory: it was impossible to say whether the gentlemen present were Protestant or Catholic,—each one had a hearty word of encouragement for his tenant, and a kind welcome for his neighbour. There were forty stout, well-to-do farmers in the room, renters of fifty, seventy, a hundred acres of land. There were no clergymen present, though it would have been pleasant to have seen one of each persuasion, to say grace for the meeting and the meat.
At a similar meeting at Ballytore the next day, I had an opportunity of seeing a still finer collection of stock than had been brought to Naas, and at the same time one of the most beautiful, flourishing villages in Ireland. The road to it from H—— town, if not remarkable for its rural beauty, is pleasant to travel, for evidences of neat and prosperous husbandry are around you everywhere—rich crops in the fields, and neat cottages by the roadside, accompanying us as far as Ballytore—a white, straggling village, surrounding green fields, of some five furlongs square, with a river running in the midst of them, and numerous fine cattle in the green. Here is a large windmill, fitted up like a castle, with battlements and towers; the castellan thereof is a good-natured old Quaker gentleman, and numbers more of his following inhabit the town.
The consequence was, that the shops of the village were the neatest possible, though by no means grand or portentous. Why should Quaker shops be neater than other shops? They suffer to the full as much oppression as the rest of the hereditary bondsmen; and yet, in spite of their tyrants, they prosper.
I must not attempt to pass an opinion upon the stock exhibited at Ballytore; but, in the opinion of some large agricultural proprietors present, it might have figured with advantage in any show in England, and certainly was finer than the exhibition at Naas; which, however, is a very young society. The best part of the show, however, to everybody’s thinking (and it is pleasant to observe the manly fair-play spirit which characterises the society), was, that the prizes of the Irish Agricultural Society were awarded to two men—one a labourer, the other a very small holder, both having reared the best stock exhibited on the occasion. At the dinner, which took place in a barn of the inn, smartly decorated with laurels for the purpose, there was as good and stout a body of yeomen as at Naas the day previous, but only two landlords; and here, too, as at Naas, neither priest nor parson. Cattle-feeding, of course, formed the principal theme of the after-dinner discourse—not, however, altogether to the exclusion of tillage; and there was a good and useful prize for those who could not afford to rear fat oxen—for the best-kept cottage and garden namely, which was won by a poor man with a large family and scanty precarious earnings, but who yet found means to make the most of his small means, and to keep his little cottage neat and cleanly. The tariff and the plentiful harvest together had helped to bring down prices severely; and we heard from the farmers much desponding talk. I saw hay sold for £2 the ton, and oats for 8s. 3d. the barrel.
In the little village I remarked scarcely a single beggar, and very few bare feet indeed among the crowds who came to see the show. Here the Quaker village had the advantage of the town of Naas, in spite of its poorhouse, which was only half full when we went to see it; but the people prefer beggary and starvation abroad, to comfort and neatness in the union-house.