VISITING friends in Laois over the New Year, my family and I were given a tour of their farm, the highlight of which was feeding time for an organically-reared litter of pigs. There were a whopping 13 bonhams and, being half saddleback and half landrace, they made for an entertaining variety of colours and shapes. But the object of most attention by far – from the visitors, if not from her own family – was the runt.
She was astonishingly small: under half the size of the biggest siblings. And as she battled to get her snout in the trough anywhere, occasionally finding an opening before being pushed out yet again and having to probe elsewhere for another gap in the row of porky posteriors, it was impossible not to get emotionally involved in her struggle for survival.
Then our host explained that, paradoxically, the smallest piglet would enjoy a longer life than the rest of her brothers and sisters. While the bigger ones all reached critical mass in their turn and were then sold, she would be kept longest, until fully fattened. And however slow she was to start, she would catch up eventually, as the competition eased.
In fact, he added, it suited a farmer to have staggered rates of growth among the litter. In the meantime, the most successful feeders – the young pigs in a hurry – were merely winning the race to market, while the apparent weakling was the one with the superior evolutionary strategy.
For me, this was a useful reminder of the truism that, while the early bird may catch the worm, the second mouse often gets the cheese. Among other things, it has since lent a new layer of meaning every time I hear the word “rasher”.
DRIVING BACKto Dublin later, I dredged up from somewhere the memory that one of the most famous of all Irish animals was also the runt of his litter. Being a greyhound, however – and a 19th-century greyhound at that – this was a particular risky strategy, evolution-wise. Indeed, years afterwards, when the hound had achieved international renown, visitors to his Waterford home would be cheerfully shown the stream wherein, as a pup, he was once due to be drowned.
That was until his youthful handler intervened to save the dog from the owner/breeder’s dire plans. And when the young man went on to prove that, as well as being a pet, the greyhound could run, the grateful owner did the decent thing by naming the reprieved animal after his saviour, Master McGrath.
Even in his prime, now owned by Lord Lurgan in Armagh, the four-legged Master was never prepossessing. He remained small. But he had fierce eyes, was strong and athletic, could jump a wide drain (as coursing greyhounds often had to do), and had a reputation for cleverness in pursuit of his quarry. A terror to English hares and bookmakers alike, he won 37 of his 38 races, including a hat-trick of successes in British coursing’s blue ribband, the Waterloo Cup.
Surrounding his sole defeat, during the 1870 instalment of that same competition, there were said to be suspicious circumstances, involving drugs. But the Liverpool ground was also frozen, which didn’t suit him either. Indeed, in his chase of the hare, he for once met his tactical match, when led onto a frozen river, where he crashed through the thin ice and, not for the first time, had to be rescued from a watery end.
When he died suddenly in 1871, at the very height of his fame, foul play was again suspected. In fact, his demise had been the result of natural causes. And in a letter to The Irish Timesmore than half a century later, one Samuel Haughton – the son of a clergyman doctor who performed the post-mortem – helped set the record straight.
Haughton recalled that, having been asked to perform the autopsy by Lord Lurgan, his father had “met the body” at Dublin’s Amiens Street station and then accompanied it in an “outside car” to Trinity College. There, the car-driver inquired after the contents of the mysterious box. And when informed, he replied: “Glory be to God, your reverence, I’m proud to have been at the funeral of Master McGrath” before refusing to accept the fare.
The post-mortem identified the cause of death as double-pneumonia. But it also revealed one of the possible secrets of the diminutive dog’s success: that he was only small on the outside. At any rate, he had an abnormally large heart, at least half as big again as normal.
Today Master McGrath is commemorated by, among other things, a monument in Dungarvan, the eponymous ballad, and a mention in Finnegans Wake. Like many Irish economic migrants before and since, however, he also made a mark on the London property market. In this case, at least, it appears to have been a lasting one. He (or his earnings) helped Lord Lurgan build a row of houses in Walthamstow. And although the address was later subsumed into the larger Shernhall Street, a plaque identifying "Master McGrath Terrace" still stands.