18 Nov Meath Hunt (Cubbing Meet), County Meath
“Sing the peasantry and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen”
County Meath – known as “royal Meath” from its ancient connection and the Kings of Tara – is a country of democratically level pastures, royally rich grasslands, slow rivers and humid airs. Its wide fields are necessarily intersected by deep broad ditches for drainage and these, in all their awkward variety, furnish a God’s plenty of exacting jumps for the most cool-heated rider and the sure-footed horse.
High overgrown banks contribute to the sporting character of the country. Meath is lacking in the stone walls which are such a feature of the hill country of Ireland and which represent not so much an enclosure of land as a clearance of rock. Being mostly dry walls, with knock-overable boulders, they make excellent hazards. For centuries the hunt has lent edge and urgency to the quiet fields of Ireland, and horse and rider, and hound, are noted for their endurance. “There was the Scarteen pack of a hundred years ago which hunted as well by night as it did by day and which so little needed guidance for a huntsman that once, says the local legend, the cottagers of the Galtee Mountains where startled from their sleep at midnight by the baying of hounds as the Black and Tans swept past on an epic run which carried them 30 miles from the point in Limerick where their huntsman had lost them, and brought them all the way over the Galtees into Tipperary.”
County Meath is full of spectacular scenery which is a must see on your tours of Ireland.