hard that, in my opinion, I never saw hare, deer, sheep, or any other animal, I declare to you for a certainty, run with such speed as it did.”  Edmund Spenser, the poet of The Faerie Queene, writing in 1596, bears this striking testimony to the Irish horse-soldier and inferentially to the Irish horse:  “I have hearde some greate warriours say, that, in all the services which they had seene abroade in forrayne countreys, they never sawe a more comely horseman than the Irish man, nor that cometh on more bravely in his charge.”  The feats performed at the Battle of the Boyne, in 1690, by the Irish horse-soldiers under Hamilton and Berwick were really wonderful, and well-nigh turned disaster into victory on that memorable day which decided the fate of nations as well as of dynasties.  And surely those were fleet and stout-hearted steeds that, on August 12, 1690, carried Sarsfield and his chosen five hundred on their dare-devil midnight ride from the Keeper Hills to Ballyneety, where in the dim morning twilight they captured and destroyed William of Orange’s wonderful siege-train, and thereby heartened the defenders of beleaguered Limerick.

Writing in 1809, Lawrence, in his History and Delineation of the Horse, said:  “From Ireland alone we import [into England] many saddle horses, as many perhaps as 1,500 in a year; upwards in some years.  The Irish are the highest and steadiest leapers in the world.  Ireland has bred some good racers, and the generality of Irish horses are, it appears, warmer tempered than our own; and, to use the expression, sharper and more frigate-built.”

It is not to be wondered at therefore if in such a country there developed an ardent love of the noble sport of horse-racing.  The Curragh of Kildare, the long-standing headquarters of the Irish Turf Club, was celebrated far back in the eighteenth century as the venue of some great equine contests; and to this day, with its five important fixtures every year, it still holds pride of place.  There are numerous other race-courses all over the country, from Punchestown, Leopardstown, Phoenix Park, and Baldoyle in the east to Galway in the west, and from The Maze in the north to rebel Cork in the south.  Horse-racing has not inappropriately been termed the national pastime of Ireland.  The number of people now giving their attention to it has called for a notable increase in the number of race-meetings, and stake-money is being put up on a more generous scale than at any previous time in the history of the sport.  For example, the Irish Derby, run at the Curragh, was in 1914 worth L2,500; and there are besides several stakes of L1,500 and L1,000.  The result of this forward policy is that increasing numbers come to our race-meetings and that the turf has never been more popular than it is today.  Men and women of wealth and position find in the national pastime a pleasant method of employing their leisure, and in expending their surplus wealth in its pursuit and in the raising of horses of the highest class they realize that they confer a real benefit on the country.