“YOU can pull and drag out of a foxhound, but with harriers you just have to leave ‘em alone,” Jamie Crosse, then huntsman to the Stonehall Harriers, once told me. As a hunting correspondent, this is just the sort of succinct soundbite I like, but my editor at Horse and Hound was quick to contact me with the request, ‘Please explain “pulling and dragging”’.

Pulling and dragging aside, it is true that there are many different types of hound hunting the fox in Ireland, each with its own virtues, each with its avid supporters and scornful detractors.

The Irish harrier, rich in voice and independent in spirit, is closest to the old southern hound of our medieval ancestors. As the forests and bogs were gradually cleared and improved, the swifter black and tan Kerry beagle gained in popularity. Both breeds trace their distant origins to south-western France. The most famous pack of Kerry beagles in existence today is, of course, the Scarteen. No one who has crossed the old grass and formidable banks of County Limerick with the incomparable music of the Scarteen hounds ringing in their ears ever forgets the experience.

Traditional quarries

As Britain’s hold over Ireland strengthened, it became increasingly fashionable for Anglo-Irish landlords to keep a private pack of hounds. The early years of the 19th century saw English foxhunting on the cusp of its first golden age, with the traditional quarries of the stag and hare largely abandoned in favour of the fox and a new emphasis on speed. Pioneering hound breeders like the Dukes of Beaufort and Rutland and Hugo Meynell of Leicestershire were developing what would become known as the old English foxhound, the handsome tri-colour hound familiar from a hundred sporting prints.

Mr John Power of Kilkenny is widely credited with importing the new trends to Ireland. He had hunted with Hugo Meynell’s Quorn hounds and devoted his life to creating a similar pack. The drive, toughness and faithfulness to the line of the old English hound made them particularly suited to many Irish countries and, to this day, some of the purest old English bloodlines are to be found in renowned Irish kennels like the Limerick, Waterford and Louth.

Ironically, it was in the Kilkenny country established by John Power that a movement against the old English foxhound began a century later. The latter decades of the 19th century had seen the rise of increasingly heavy-boned, straight-limbed hounds dominated by Belvoir bloodlines. The wealthy young master of the Kilkenny, Isaac ‘Ikey’ Bell, decided that a leaner, smaller, more active hound was required. He began to experiment with outcrosses to the rough-coated, independent hounds that hunted the Welsh hills and, in partnership with breeders like Sir Edward Curre and Sir Ian Amory, spear-headed the development of the pale-coloured, athletic hound we know today as the modern English foxhound. Modern English packs like the Kilkenny, Tipperary, Island and Meath are still firmly based on bloodlines established by Ikey Bell.

It matters little whether you are watching a pack of trencher fed harriers rattle a fox up and down a West Cork glen, marvelling at the sonorous voices of the Scarteen black and tans in a County Limerick covert or galloping behind the dashing Tipperary bitches. The magic remains the same from one generation to the next. More than a hundred years ago, the Scottish poet William Henry Ogilvie wrote:

Far on the hill is the horn still blowing,

Far on the steep are the hounds still strung.

Good men follow the good men gone;

And hark! They’re running!

They’re running on!