Irish History

Since we're reading The Irish RM and plan to read A Long Way to Go, both of which are set in Ireland, it's been pointed out to me that we should have some background or setting for these books.  Since the history of Ireland is one of the many subjects about which I know nothing, I started prowling the web.
Keep in mind that The Irish RM was written around 1900.  A Long Way to Go was written around 1950.
From some W&L classes:
Understanding Irish History:  The following web-text introduces the student of Irish literature and culture to the general history of Ireland, from pre-historic times up to the establishment of the Irish state in 1923, and then to the current day.  Through the use of text, images, slide shows, audio files, and interactive quizzes, this work provides a dynamic and active study of Irish history.  As you read through the pages that follow, engage each section in an active, participatory manner.  In particular, work to interpret the images that are provided, to bring the realities of Irish life before you.
A few other resources including a brief timeline, outline of kings and queens, information on James Joyce and W. B. Yeats, etc.
From Wikipedia:  History of Ireland
This seems to be a website for the Presidency of the European Union (?) -- A brief history of Ireland
If you just want the briefest of highlights, Time for Kids has a timeline.

Some of the most interesting things about The Irish RM is what goes unsaid and what is assumed to be known by the reader.  Think about that.

Somerville, MFH

A photo of Edith Somerville, MFH of the West Carbery Hunt. The photo was sent by one of several book club lurkers (thank you!) and is from the book, Foxhounds of Great Britain and Ireland (1906).

I've been told that Somerville was the first female MFH, anywhere.  We might qualify that as MFH of any organized, mounted pack.  I don't know if there was any central governing body in Great Britain or Ireland at that time.

Horse-drawn vehicles

Almost all of the vehicles mentioned in Some Experiences of an Irish RM are horse-drawn.  They have a variety of names and almost no descriptions.  I've found a few websites that are more or less useful.
There's a site of clip-art with a subcategory of horse-drawn vehicles.  It's not the most useful but it's simple to navigate.
There's a very brief "word list" of carriages.  Again, this is simple to use but of limited value.  It does include some foreign terms which might be helpful with other books.
As usual, Wikipedia is quite useful.  The main article on horse-drawn vehicles is only useful because it directs you to entries on each kind of vehicle.  "Outside car" appears in the list only to direct you to "jaunting car."  Anyone who has seen the movie The Quiet Man will recognize this vehicle immediately.  This description also explains what an inside car is.
The book also occasionally mentions a bus.  Without doubt the label derives from the omnibus but whether the vehicle looked like a real omnibus or not is up for debate.
If anyone can recommend an authoritative book or other websites, I'd appreciate it.

Below are three pictures of an outside car as it appears in the movie, The Quiet Man.  Notice the driver at the front with the passengers sitting back-to-back.  They're facing outward.  An inside car would have had the seats reversed so the passengers faced the inside of the car.  In an inside car, passengers face each other.  An inside car is not an enclosed car.

The Irish RM -- Language

I didn't have much trouble with the dialect as written until Chapter 5, Lisheen Races, Second Hand.  Slipper's tale of O'Driscoll (also referred to as Driscoll).  I think I figured it out, mostly.  Perhaps it's not a literal translation but I got the gist of it.  I thought I'd listen to the audible version to see if that helped.  I can't say that it did.
If you can do streaming audio, start at the main page for The Irish RM and select Chapter 5.  Allow it to stream for a minute.  Then you should be able to click in the bar and go forward to the part you want.  It's around the 20 minute mark (or 21 minutes) and that's out of a total of 36 minutes.  So click a little less than 2/3 of the way through the status bar.  I hope that makes sense.  If you're on a slow connection, have patience -- click once and wait.  Repeated clicking of the mouse is not going to help you.

Excerpts from the Irish RM (Part Two)

The opening chapters of this book are very funny but they don't exactly cast foxhunting in the best light.  It might be worth discussing the differences between hunting in Ireland and in the US or the differences between foxhunting in 1895 and 2016.  Or both.  It was a different world and almost a different sport.

This is from Chapter 2, In the Curranhilty Country.

The rain had reached a pitch that put further hunting out of the question, and we bumped home at that intolerable pace known as a "hound's jog."

At Rockbridge Hunt we are altogether familiar with the intolerable hound jog.  It's a specialty of David Conner's.  (And he knows exactly how uncomfortable it is for most horses and riders.)  It seems to be almost universal among huntsmen.  I have been out with other packs on a few occasions that operated quite differently.   When they hacked to coverts, they'd trot as hard as they could go.  At the end of the day, they walked in.  It's just a different style.

As I was reading, I came upon a word that I didn't know.  I didn't stop to look it up or even make a note.  I just went right on reading.  An opportunity lost.

Excerpts from the Irish RM (Part One, likely)

Over the years of reading, I have collected excerpts from books which are either educational or humorous or thought-provoking or just beautifully written.  I would encourage you to do the same.  Here are a few that just grabbed me from the first chapter of The Irish RM.

"You ought to throw a leg over him," said Mr. Knox, "and you're welcome to take him over a fence or two if you like. He's a nice flippant jumper."
Even to my unexacting eye the grey horse did not seem to promise flippancy, nor did I at all desire to find that quality in him. I explained that I wanted something to drive, and not to ride. 

Really -- flippancy?  That's just . . . it's perfection.  When writers struggle and come up with perfectly apt descriptions which are NOT cliches but are fresh and different, the effect is quite powerful.  When a description like the above grabs you and your reaction is, "Yes, that's it exactly" -- the writer has done his job.  [That notion is from a book called How Proust can change your life : not a novel by Alain de Botton.  And doesn't this book sound interesting:  Proust and the squid : the story and science of the reading brain / Maryanne Wolf.]
And I agree with the narrator that I don't desire flippancy in a horse (much).  Another excerpt --

Mr. Knox accompanied me into the house and had a drink. He was a fair, spare young man, who looked like a stable boy among gentlemen, and a gentleman among stable boys. He belonged to a clan that cropped up in every grade of society in the county, from Sir Valentine Knox of Castle Knox down to the auctioneer Knox, who bore the attractive title of Larry the Liar. So far as I could judge, Florence McCarthy of that ilk occupied a shifting position about midway in the tribe. I had met him at dinner at Sir Valentine's, I had heard of him at an illicit auction, held by Larry the Liar, of brandy stolen from a wreck. They were "Black Protestants," all of them, in virtue of their descent from a godly soldier of Cromwell, and all were prepared at any moment of the day or night to sell a horse. 

The phrase "a stable boy among gentlemen, and a gentleman among stable boys" is perfectly descriptive and I would almost say that that line is a classic in the field of foxhunting literature.  Also, Larry the Liar!  I have known a dog named Slipper, after a character in this book but Larry the Liar would be a great name for a horse or dog.  We could probably have a good looooong discussion on the honesty of horses and hounds.

Book Club -- getting started

The first book for the Foxhunting Book Club is Some Experiences of an Irish RM by Somerville and Ross.
You can read about the authors at Wikipedia -- it's a very brief "stub" article.  There is a good biography -- I'll try to get that title here soon.
That Wikipedia article directs you to the Internet Archive to download the book.  Scroll down to find links for downloading various formats.
You can also download the book, in various formats for various devices, from Project Gutenberg.
And if you have a Kindle, you can download the book from Amazon.
The Loyal Books website let's you download the audible book or listen to chapters by streaming on the web.  This might really help with some of the Irish language or accent funny business.  What a great/cool/nifty option!
This biography has been recommended to me:  Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish R. M. by Gifford Lewis

A BBC series based on the books was first aired in 1984.  At that point, Alaister Cook was introducing Masterpiece Theater and here are his introductory comments to the series.  (Taken from the Masterpiece Theater Archive.)  This gives us a little bit of a setting for the book.  (For those of you who don't remember those days, I wish I could find a recording.)

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we begin a series in six parts that takes us back to a familiar time in what for us at Masterpiece Theatre is an unfamiliar setting. The time is the very end of the nineteenth century in the last days of Queen Victoria when she was Victoria, Regina, Defender of the Faith (the Non-Roman Church of England faith, that is) Empress of India, and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland--all of Ireland.

I ought to say that by the 1890s the move to secede from Britain was underway, but was not yet a threat to the unity of the United Kingdom--though the comedy you're going to see bristles with the hints of the chronic mistrust between the Irish and the Anglo-Irish, between both of them and the English--not to mention the happy turmoil that can be whipped up between the Irish and the Irish inside one family! In fact, this whole series is about one Englishman who went to live in Ireland and found he was in a foreign country.

Now these adventures derive from a book written in collaboration by two authors, and I'll talk about them later—they were published in 1899 with the title Some Experiences of an Irish RM. An American reviewer said it's a meaningless title, but he didn't know that an RM was a Resident Magistrate, and that this was the administration of justice throughout the empire. He was especially significant in country towns where feuds between castes, families, townspeople, and country people, and also between Catholic and Protestant–were confused and complicated. In these instances, a Resident Magistrate was sent in as a sort of legal umpire to bring something approximating justice to the local benches. And our story begins with Major Yeates, a British soldier who's not going to be Colonel of the regiment because the Colonel is the father of the girl he's in love with. So he's about to turn in his tabs and become a resident magistrate in Ireland.

The Irish RM episode one. 

I have not found what I'd call a reading guide or book club guide for this book.  If you find such a thing, let me know.  If you think of appropriate, thought-provoking questions, pass them along.  If you don't understand something in the book, please ask.

I think comments are working here.  You should even be able to comment anonymously.  If someone wants to test that, I'd appreciate it.  You can send comments or questions to me and I'll try to answer or post appropriate things here.

Proposed Reading List

I've put together a list of books that I suggest we consider for the Book Club.

Poem: A Hunting Song by Adam Lindsey Gordon

It's April which is National Poetry Month.  So, a link to a poem: The Fox Hunters by George W. Doneghy. And the text of another poem.
 

A Hunting Song 

by Adam Lindsey Gordon

Here's a health to every sportsman, be he stableman or lord,
If his heart be true, I care not what his pocket may afford;
And may he ever pleasantly each gallant sport pursue,
If he takes his liquor fairly, and his fences fairly, too.

He cares not for the bubbles of Fortune's fickle tide,
Who like Bendigo can battle, and like Olliver can ride.
He laughs at those who caution, at those who chide he'll frown,
As he clears a five-foot paling, or he knocks a peeler down.

The dull, cold world may blame us, boys! but what care we the while,
If coral lips will cheer us, and bright eyes on us smile?
For beauty's fond caresses can most tenderly repay
The weariness and trouble of many an anxious day.

Then fill your glass, and drain it, too, with all your heart and soul,
To the best of sports—The Fox-hunt, The Fair Ones, and The Bowl,
To a stout heart in adversity through every ill to steer,
And when Fortune smiles a score of friends like those around us here.

Link at Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/258/258-h/258-h.htm#2H_4_0049