On one especially bad scenting day, Thady could smell the fox. Hounds, seemingly, could not. Feeling altitude might have something to do with it, Thady lifted one hound to the height of his own nose, then said: "Come on I can smell him -- why can't you?"
While the Scarteen hounds are called Kerry Beagles, that's a misnomer. Basically, the animal is a 23-inch hound, very similar to a harrier. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this was the hunting hound of Ireland -- a position lost when the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy made the English foxhound fashionable. Still, in the country near the Scarteen, there are roughly 15 packs hunting on foot; on almost any Sunday or holy day in County Kerry you can hear the countryside ring with their glorious music.
The hounds were brought from France to Ireland by Spanish traders in the seventeenth century; in fact, when Irish volunteers went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, they wrote home that they were seeing animals just like their hounds at home in Kerry (Kerrymen lay trails, or drags, 10 and 20 miles long, then race their hounds along them).
The beagles are longer-faced than a foxhound, have a pronounced occipital lump on the head and are longer and straighter in the upper hind leg. Edith Somerville, half of the team that wrote "Experiences of an Irish RM", the collection of short stories that eventually became a hit on United States public television stations, was no mean judge of hounds. She called them: "Tall, romantic creatures with long, pendant, unrounded ears and lovely eyes."
They are not easy for huntsmen to handle. In fact, the first time I saw them, I thought them undisciplined. They are independent, and "by English foxhound standards, unruly," sniffed Britain's "The Field" magazine.
Use the whip too much and hounds won't hunt at all. "Whether rightly or wrongly," says Chris Ryan, "I have always regarded the English foxhound as a kind of mercenary -- 'Nine to five, I'll do my job, and do it well.' But they aren't paid to think."
"These boys," Chris goes on, indicating his hounds, "they're independent. They have a lot more 'fox sense' than an English foxhound. They sense how the fox thinks. If they lose the line, they'll cast themselves and more often than not, they'll put themselves right if they're left on their own."
Supporters of the English foxhound might well howl over that comparison. Scarteen followers, however, refer them to an 1834 edition of "The New Sporting Magazine." It tells of a test run in Ireland between English and Irish hounds. The Irish won handily, being faster over ditches and banks than the English hounds. Not only that, said the writer (an Englishman), the Irish hounds had more tender noses.
Added to that, how many packs can boast of a place in the "Guinness Book o f Records?" They went into those hallowed pages on February 3, 1914. Hounds hunted continuously for hours, covering 22 miles. Of the twenty-one and one-half couple out, only one couple was not at the finish. As for the riders, the journey home was 18 miles, and the riders arrived at 11 p.m.
Certainly, few obstacles stop the "black and tans." The nearby town of Hospital houses the shop of Michael Fraser, whom I and many others consider one of the world's finest sporting tailors, a title held by his father, William, before him. Scarteen legend has it that on one memorable hunt, hounds ran their fox right into Fraser's "loo." No record exists to show if it was occupied or not at the time -- or, for that matter, what happened to the fox.
The hounds are bred for nose, voice and, of course, "fox sense." Thady feels that voice and scenting ability are related (the extra room in the larynx, he believes, better accommodates the membranes of the nose).
"You've got to operate on a breeding basis," says Chris. "We've got six or seven bloodlines running through
the pack. You don't want to get swamped with one bloodline, because you're snookering yourself."
Hunt members are so proud of their hounds that they wear black coats with tan collars, which has created a problem in certain art circles. A Lionel Edwards print from the 1930s shows a Scarteen huntsman in a pink coat! As family members recall it, the Depression was on, and in those grim times the huntsman simply was unable to afford a black coat.
In these high-cost times, can the Ryan family keep the hunt going? "We've got an active pony club," says Chris Ryan. "They're the nucleus of tomorrow's foxhunters, so it looks safe for another few generations yet."
There is, too, the weight of family tradition. On one occasion when Thady Ryan came back from New Zealand to hunt, Chris could not get the hounds out of the covert despite repeated efforts. So he decided to leave them in. "No," said his father, "Live by your decision -- get them out."
"No," said Chris, "I'll leave them in -- they're hunting their own fox." Whereupon Thady rode into the covert, and came out immediately, surrounded by hounds. "Now, master," he said, "where do you want them?"
With instruction like that, how could the Scarteen tradition not continue indefinitely?
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