Editor of “Sport,” Dublin.

On the face of the earth there is no nation in which the love of clean and wholesome sport is more strongly developed than in the Irish.  Against us it cannot be urged that we take our pleasures sadly.  We enter into them with entire self-abandon, whole-hearted enthusiasm, and genuine exuberance of spirit.  There is nothing counterfeit about the Irishman in his play.  His one keen desire is to win, be the contest what it may; and towards the achievement of that end he will strain nerve and muscle even to the point of utter exhaustion.  And how the onlookers applaud at the spectacle of a desperately contested race, whether between horses, men, motorcars, bicycles, or boats, or of a match between football, hurling, or cricket teams!  It matters not which horse, man, car, cycle, boat, or team is successful:  the sport is the thing that counts; the strenuousness of the contest is what stimulates and evokes the rapturous applause.  At such a moment it is good to be alive.  Scenes similar to those hinted at may be witnessed on any sports-field or racetrack in our dear little Emerald Isle almost any day of the year.  All is good fellowship; all is in the cause of sport.

No one can question that in some departments of horse-racing Ireland is today supreme.  The Irish devotion to the horse is of no recent growth.  Everybody knows how, in the dim and distant days when King Conor macNessa ruled at Emain, the war-steeds of the Ultonians neighed loudly in their stalls on the first dramatic appearance of Cuchulainn of Muirthemne at the northern court.  Cuchulainn’s own two steeds, Liath Macha, “the Roan of Macha”, and Dub Sainglenn, “Black Sanglan”, are celebrated in story and song: 

      Never hoofs like them shall ring,
      Rapid as the winds of spring.

To read of the performances of Cuchulainn and his war-horses and his charioteer and friend, Laeg macRiangahra, at the famous battle of Rosnaree, and again at the last fight between the Red Branch Knights and the forces of Queen Medb of Connacht, does truly, in the words used by Sir Philip Sidney in another connection, stir the heart like the sound of a trumpet.

As time went on, the Irish war-horse became more and more famous, and always carried his rider in gallant style.  Stout was the steed that, bestridden by Godfrey O’Donnell at the battle of Credan-Kille, withstood the shock of Lord Maurice Fitzgerald’s desperate onslaught, and by his steadiness enabled the Tyrconnell chieftain to strike senseless and unhorse his fierce Norman foe.  More celebrated still was the high-spirited animal which Art MacMurrogh rode in 1399 to his ineffectual parley with King Richard the Second’s representative, the Earl of Gloucester.  The French chronicler who was a witness of that historic scene tells us that a horse more exquisitely beautiful, more marvellously fleet, he had never seen.  “In coming down,” he says, “it galloped so