“PREFAIRY? One of the best-bred thoroughbreds we had, by Precipitation out of Fairyary by Foxhunter,” the late Nenagh veterinary surgeon Jack Powell responded instantly, when I once asked him about the stallion.

Powell smiled as he recalled a Horse & Hound sales correspondent’s pithy remark about hoping the horse was not destined to be a ‘country stallion’ in Ireland. “If only every country stallion was a Prefairy,” he added.