Raspers and Doubles

It is in the nature of foxhunting that at least half the enjoyment of the sport is in the retelling of tales -- the recounting of a day's adventures.  And just like their sporting cousins, the fishermen, foxhunters are inclined to some slight exaggeration.  It's a fact that any group of foxhunters will contain at least one good story-teller.  So, foxes become bigger, chases longer, horses faster, and . . . jumps get bigger.

And of course there's a word for those really big jumps.  Of course, Margaret Cabell Self goes much more along the lines of understating things.  She simply defines a rasper as "A big fence" (in The Horseman's Almanac and Handbook).   Yes, when you're riding  to a jump on a downhill slope, sliding into it, or struggling uphill on a tired horse, you need a word for "a big fence."  Rasper is it.

Since John Welcome wrote fiction, he has more of a way with words.  From Red Coats Galloping.

Out of the corner of his eye Jeremy saw Prue pull the grey away from the crowd as they galloped across the next field, and he found time to be thankful that the fences in this part of the country were clean, so that she could at least pick her own place.
The grey "fled" the first fence without laying an iron on it. He kicked back at the second and all but came down, lurching and staggering for several yards before he got on his feet again. The third was what was known in that country as "a rasper" -- it was a big, strong double and it was a fence at which such a one as the grey might be confidently expected to turn end over end. With the perversity of some bad jumpers, however, the grey elected to do it perfectly, jumping well into the top of it, changing his feet and popping out into the next field like a third season hunter. After that came a stone wall over which he hurled himself like a hurdler. In the next field, to the intense relief of Jeremy, who had been watching the entire performance with his heart in his mouth, hounds checked.

In that piece, Welcome mentions a "double," using the term just as though everyone knows what it is.  Back to Margaret Cabell Self (Irish Adventure; A Fox Hunter's Holiday) to explain that one.

Now, I had seen pictures of Ireland's banks in those enticing brochures at the travel agency.  I had even seen them in the flesh, so to speak, from the roads.  But I had not met them personally and I still did not know what it would be like to jump one.  Meanwhile, I had done a bit of research on them.  I learned that they were the direct result of the Irish farmers' constant battle with the climate.  When the Connecticut farmer first cleared his fields, he realized that before he could grow anything he had first to get rid of the rocks.  So he built stone walls with the double purpose of dividing up his lots and disposing of the rocks.  The Irish farmer discovered that his land was very wet and therefore untillable.  To rectify the condition he dug deep, straight-sided ditches, or drains, to carry away the excess water.  He piled the dirt parallel with the drain, topping it with sod "skinned" from the fields to make his ploughing easier.  When he finished he had a very effective barrier to prevent his cattle from straying, and his fields were dry enough to till.  Often he repeated the process on the opposite side of the bank so that he had a much higher and wider bank with a ditch on both sides, known as "double."  Occasionally one runs across the opposite kind of formation:  instead of a "double" -- two drains with a bank between -- one sees two banks with a drain between.

More about banks and drains to come.