the same two varieties that we find among the block-wheel cars. It is obvious that in the first variety the wheel must be kept small, otherwise there would not be room enough for it beneath the floor of the cart; but this necessary limitation does not obtain for the second variety. Here the conditioning factor appears to be a blind adherence to traditional methods, for the people are accustomed to the old style of cart, with its familiar small wheels.

We have seen that it is more convenient to make blockwheels of small size, and this necessitates a considerable slant in the shafts, which has to be rectified by propping up the hinder part of the floor of the cart. If this particular form of cart is persisted in, the wheels must be kept small, even when they are outside of the shafts, or else they would make the floor of the cart slope downwards in front.

I have a photograph of another cart which shows two interesting features: first, a slight reduction in the upright back-staves; and second, the shafts proper are added on to the lower framework of the cart, and are placed at such an angle to it that they approximate to the horizontal position of ordinary shafts.

From this last it is but a small step so to increase the diameter of the wheel that the shafts can lie in a horizontal position, and thus form the foundation of the floor of the cart. This is the present condition of the ordinary cart.

IN

CHAPTER VII

THE ORIGIN of the IRISH FAUNTING-CAR

N the last chapter we studied a series of primitive vehicles which are either in use at the present day in Ireland, or which, comparatively recently, were employed in various parts of the British Islands. We have now to investigate the origin of a conveyance which is absolutely confined to Ireland, a true insular variety of carriage.

There is very good evidence that the jaunting-car was evolved at the end of the last century, or more probably within the first few years of this century. It is therefore by no means an ancient vehicle, and, unlike many other implements, it has no long ancestry of progressive improvements from an early type, but, once started, it rapidly passed through its developmental history.

We have not far to seek for the parental form; in fact, we have already made its acquaintance as a cart. In his Hibernia Curiosa, Mr. Bush' gives the following graphic account of the various uses to which the cart was put in 1764:

'But the drollest and most diverting kind of conveyance for your genteel and ungenteel parties of pleasure is what they call.

1 J. Bush, "Hibernia Curiosa. A Letter from a Gentleman in Dublin to his Friend at Dover in Kent. Giving a general View of the Manners, Customs, Dispositions, etc. of the Inhabitants of Ireland. Collected in a

Tour through the Kingdom in the Year 1764," p. 30. Dublin, 1769.

here the Chaise-marine, which is nothing less or more than any common car with one horse. A simple kind of carriage, constructed with a pair of wheels, or thin round blocks, of about twenty inches in diameter, an axle, and two shafts, which, over

Irish Low-Back Car (1769); after Bush.

the axle, are spread out a little wider than by the sides of the horse, and framed together with cross pieces, in such manner as to be nearly in a level position for three or four feet across the axle. These simple constructions are almost the only kind of carts, in common use, for the carrying or moving of goods, merchandise of every kind, hay, straw, corn, dung, turf, etc., throughout the kingdom.

"A sketch of the figure and construction of one of these cars I have here given, and, when used for parties of pleasure, on the level part LL is laid a mat, for the commonalty, and for the genteeler sort of people a bed is put on this; and half a dozen get on, two behind and two on each side, and away they drive, with their feet not above six inches from the ground as they sit, on little pleasurable jaunts of three or four or half a dozen miles out of town; and are the most sociable carriages in use, for ten or a dozen will take one of these chaise-marines, and ride it by turns,

the rate being seldom, in such cases, more than foot pace. I assure you they are the drollest, merriest curricles you ever saw. We were infinitely diverted at meeting many of these feather-bed chaise-marine parties, on the Sunday that we landed, coming out of town, as we went up to it from Dunlary."

1

Twelve years later the author of A Tour through Ireland' alludes to the same method of conveyance. After describing the ordinary block-wheel car, he continues: "They are frequently used as vehicles for the common people on their parties of pleasure; a bed or a mat is at such times placed on the car, and half a dozen people sit on it, with their legs hanging a few inches from the ground; they are generally dragged a foot-pace." The author (Twiss) was severely criticised after the appearance of this book, and subsequently he printed a metrical reply to his critics, which, though it gives an amusing description of the embryonic jaunting-car, can scarcely be credited with mollifying them. His "Heroic Answer is as follows:

3

"Well might an artist travel from afar

To view the structure of a low-backed car.

A downy mattress on the car is laid,

The rev'rend father mounts, and tender maid;
Some back to back, some side by side are placed.

By dozens thus, full many a Sunday morn,
With dangling legs the jovial crowd is borne;
Clontarf they seek, or Howth's aspiring brow,
Or Lexlip, smiling on the stream below.

When ease and cheapness would thy Twiss engage,
Cars be preferr'd to noddies or to stage."

1 The accompanying illustration is taken from the Dublin edition; the book was reprinted in London in the same year, but the corresponding illustration was evidently taken from a very poor sketch, and shows an almost impossible sort of vehicle. Twiss, A Tour through Ireland, London, 1776, p. 3.

3 Repository, a Collection of Fugitive Pieces, ed. by J. Reed, 1790.

Fifty years later the old low-back car was nearly completely superseded throughout Ireland by the ordinary cart. The Halls thus describe it in its declining days:

46

1

The car, or rather cart, used by the peasantry, requires some notice. Flat boards are placed across it, and upon these straw is laid, and often a feather bed. The one described in the engraving has the old-fashioned wheels cut out of a solid piece of wood. These vehicles are now, however, nearly obsolete; we met but few of them during our latest journey; their unfitness having been understood, they have given way before modern improvement."

Hone, in his Every-day Book (1824), ii., p. 239, says that the country car always had the wheels outside the shafts; ropes were intertwisted across the rails (Fig. 25), and on these a ticking stuffed with straw, or a quilt, was laid.

About the beginning of this century it occurred to some one in Dublin to protect the legs of passengers from getting in the way of the wheels, and from being splashed with the mud, by attaching a foot-board to the sides of the flat cart. Two boards were also placed along the cart in such a way as to support the travellers' backs and to leave a space between them in which the luggage could be placed. As in the case of many other inventors, the name has not been preserved of this benefactor to the riding public of Ireland. This obvious improvement at once "caught on," and, in 1806, Sir John Carr makes one of his first allusions to the jaunting-car. He says:

"Upon the road we saw several carriages peculiar to the country; that which struck me most was the jaunting-car, an

1 Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland: its Scenery, Character, etc., London, 1841, i., p. 65.

2 John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland; or a Tour in . . . etc., in the year 1805, London, 1806, p. 32.