Is tally-ho really high class? Oh, for fox sake!
Fiona O’Connell
COLD is creeping in and the days growing darker — and not just in terms of the weather. Or so I’m reminded as an openbacked truck parks in this country town one evening, the two men that climb out covered in dank muck from digging deep into the earth.
For the fox-hunting season is about to start and those who serve it are tracking and tormenting wildlife, their pursuit being the thrill of “tally-ho!”
That traditional cry of the huntsman isn’t just a leftover from those who once lorded it over this land. For the association with power and privilege is very real — and the reason why fox hunting continues to be legal.
It’s widely felt that this blood sport will never be banned — largely because, as one wildlife-loving local put it, “the wrong people are in the Government.
“They’re all hunting people anyway and big shots.”
This blood sport could easily be called a snob sport, since it is perceived as a high-class pastime of those who have made money, or those hoping to rub shoulders with money. A glance at the websites of estate agents selling big country houses invariably mentions the local hunt being part and parcel of an affluent lifestyle.
Well-known supporters of hunting include Gavin Duffy, Johnny Ronan and Tanaiste Simon Coveney — but there are many other politicians and influential cronies involved.
One local resident hopes the foxes in his area will survive this season.
“We’re lucky; very few farmers around here let them in any more.”
Though a couple of landowners still give them access. “But sure, they’re all about snobbery. If they saw a hunter come by, they’d run up to him. They still think they’re posh.”
What’s funny is that some think the word ‘posh’ comes from ‘port out, starboard home’ — referring to the British heading to India in Victorian and Edwardian times, as a suntan was associated with the working class, richer passengers chose the port side of the ship on the way out as it did not face the sun. The opposite was the case for the return journey, the expensive tickets being for the starboard side.
‘Snob’, meanwhile, may derive from when entrance to Oxbridge — Cambridge and Oxford — required signing in with your status. Anyone who wasn’t a duke, earl or so on, needed to sign ‘sine nobility’. However, the rise of the middle classes during the industrial revolution meant captains of industry were allowed to enter Oxbridge. This group of ‘sine nobility’ gained a reputation for their annoying efforts to identify by association with their noble pals in college and beyond, while looking down on those who lacked connections. Leading Thackeray to make use of the word ‘snob’.
Which might muddy the waters when it comes to the status of this sport, as one favoured by the nouveau riche who are desperate to be pals with pale-faced folk whose ancestors grabbed power centuries before.
Tally-ho ho!