EIRE: Good News for Foxes

There is nothing in life will delight the spirit of a true Irishman the way a pack of lean hounds will be leppin’ in full cry with pink-coated riders on fine, gallant horses just on the tails of them. Farmer Larry Costello is a true Irishman, but when the Galway Blazers, the most famous hunt in all Ireland, bore down on his property, what did Larry do? He beat on buckets to drive the fox into the gorse and thwart the chase entirely.

Down the road at Deerpark, Pat Morrissey was acting a bit odd that day himself. “When I saw the hunt coming,” says he, “I called my neighbors. They grabbed the nearest implements they could get and lined the gate with me. If the Blazers try to hunt our lands we’ll use force if necessary to stop them.” At Moorpark Cross, other farmers patrolled the covert with rakes, and every day still others joined the boycott against the Blazers.

And why, now? Well, this was the why of it. A year ago pretty British Protestant Mrs. Trundle, the Blazers’ co-M.F.H., had divorced her husband in Britain and married a Mr. James Hanbury. Last month, soon after Mrs. Hanbury had been reelected co-M.F.H., the Roman Catholic bishop of Clonfert tacked a notice on the gate of Coorheen, closing his grounds to the hunt. The farmers followed the bishop’s lead. “It went hard with us to interfere with the Blazers,” said Larry Costello, “but there is a big matter at stake and we must stand by our priests and our religion.”

Last week, still M.F.H., Mrs. Hanbury took a plane at Shannon Airport and flew away to England. “She’s a kind, generous woman,” said the members of her hunt, but by week’s end, as more & more farmers joined the boycott, the Blazers were hunting under police protection and there was more trouble ahead for them. Said Harry Walker, second whip of the hunt: “If Mrs. Hanbury goes, the kennel staff goes, too.”