reportage Running wild
There is a little additional business: some dogs and pups will be traded. But the people leave quite quickly. The race may have been sponsored by a local pub and the crowd will go back there for the presentation of a cup filled with whiskey and lemonade. The summer in Ireland soon fades and the drag hounds will rest and train. Their owners take out other dogs in winter and hunt the hare, waiting for the new season and fresh meetings, renewed rivalries next year. The drag racing will go on in this wilderness, virtually in private, for the pleasure and excitement of the challenge and the excellence of the hounds, among men of village, farm, mountain and bog, as it has done for generations. There is satellite TV in the local pub, there are mobile phones in back pockets; in nearby towns jobs can be found in hi-tech multinational plants. As people leave the countryside, or are distanced from it, drag racing provides continuity. For a half hour or an hour at a time, the men become hunter-gatherers again and they, their animals and the land are joined in the purpose and the passion of the drag.
Spring 1999 | Tony O'Shea and related links | Archive | Back | Next | 14 of 15