Compared with the sports in which horse and hound participate, all other outdoor pastimes in Ireland take rather a minor place.  Still, the Irishman’s love of sport is diversified.  Few there are who have not many inclinations, and as a nation our taste in sport is catholic.  We take part in nearly every pastime; in many we excel.  The prize ring has fallen from its high estate, nor is it the intention here to try to cast any glamour over it.  The subject is introduced, in a passing way, for the sole purpose of showing that, in what at least used to be the manly art of self-defense, Ireland in days gone by as well as at the present time has more than held her own.  The most conspicuous of the representatives of her race in this department are perhaps Heenan, Ryan, Sullivan, Corbett, Maher, McAuliffe, McFarland, and McGoorty.  There is one other prize-fighter, Dan Donnelly by name, who became a sort of national hero, of whom all Irishmen of his day were not a little proud, because he laid the English champion low, and whose performance, now haloed by the antiquity of more than a hundred years, we may with equanimity, as without offense, contemplate, with perhaps a sigh for the good old times.  The famous encounter between Donnelly and Cooper took place on the Curragh, and after eleven rounds of scientific boxing Donnelly knocked his opponent over the ropes and won the world’s championship for the Emerald Isle.  The spot where the battle came off has ever since been known as Donnelly’s Hollow, and a neat monument there erected commemorates the Dublin man’s pluck and skill.  A ballad recounting the incidents of the fight and, as ballads go, not badly composed, had a wonderful vogue, and was sung at fair and market and other meeting place within the memory of men who are not now more than middle-aged.

A search in other domains of sport will be by no means barren of results.  Take running, for instance.  Who has not heard of the wondrous little Thomas Conneff from the short-grass county of Kildare?  Who does not know of his brilliant performances on the track?  We in Ireland, who had seen him defeat Carter, the great Canadian, over the four-mile course at Ballsbridge one summer’s eve now nearly twenty golden years ago, knew his worth before he crossed the broad Atlantic to show to thousands of admiring spectators in America that Ireland was the breeder of fleet-footed sons, who lacked neither the courage, nor the thews and sinews, nor the staying power, to carry them at high speed over any distance of ground.  May the earth lie light on Conneff, for in a small body he had a great heart!  Then there was the mighty runner, James J. Daly, a true hero from Galway, the idol of the crowd in his native land as well as in the United States.  Daly was the champion long distance cross-country runner of his day at home, and he showed before various nationalities in the Greater Ireland beyond the seas that he could successfully compete with the best from all countries.