FROM THE ARCHIVES:The report on the Irish Grand National on Easter Monday 1896 was prefaced with this lengthy paean to Fairyhouse before getting down to the detail of the day.
Fairyhouse acts like a great and irresistible magnet on Easter Monday. On the most popular of the popular holidays Fairyhouse is the most popular resort. On no other day, at no other place, and through the medium of no other sport could such a gathering be got together as the Easter Monday gathering at Fairyhouse.
It is the Irish Derby Day, and has just as much attraction for Dubliners as the classical festival of the British Turf has for the London populace. Thither people of all classes flock for a day in the open air, and a day of keen and exciting sport. No two finer birds could be killed with the one stone, and well the people know it.
A day in the country just before the dawn of summer in the delightful middle season, with its restrained reminiscences of winter and its gentle and genial forebodings of the good days to come, and in a country of such varied loveliness, is the proper medicament for all the ills that the flesh of the city folk is heir to.
But people don’t want on the great popular festival to go into rustic solitude, to seek out-of-the- way spots, and to enjoy a silence broken only by the chirping of the birds.
No; the vigorous declamations of the bookmaker is far more musical on an Easter Monday than the most bewitching melody of the winged creation, and what the city man wants on this day of all others is to have an outing in a goodly company that is thoroughly enjoying itself. To Fairyhouse therefore goes everyone who is wise.
At Fairyhouse one meets a first-class company in first-class spirits. From first to last good humour prevails; in wet weather or fine: in good luck or bad, the assemblage is smiling at one time at its shrewdness in picking a winner; at another at its imprudence in forgetting the waterproofs and umbrellas; and at yet another at its clumsy and needless forethought in loading itself with wraps on such a grand day.
Everything is taken in a philosophic spirit at Fairyhouse. Rain, hail, or sunshine, long or short odds, a plucked favourite, a dark ’un, or a welsher, everything is received with equanimity and with a temper that nothing could ruffle. [. . .]
Of course getting to the scene of the action is one of the most pleasant experiences of the day. Real, genuine sportsmen always drive, and the real, genuine sportsman would rather walk than go by train. There is something so unnatural in being dragged to sport by a puffing and whistling steam engine, and in getting on to the course without a good layer of dust on one’s clothes.
For these reasons principally it is that the humble coster yokes his donkey for the Derby, and that the military folk bring out the stately four-in-hand. Fairyhouse is a great leveller too, especially on Easter Monday, and for that reason also it is a most enjoyable place to spend the holiday.