Ireland's Lore and Tales

A symbol of old Ireland

I found some old Dublin newspapers in the attic of the Parochial House one night and I browsed through them to see what I could learn about the past. In one newspaper, dated July 1832. I read a report about the ‘Jaunting Car’ as a method of travel. A ‘Jaunting Car’, as all the Irish people know, is a light two-wheeled carriage for a single horse, with a seat in front for the driver. In its most common form, it had seats for two or four persons placed back to back and with the footboards projecting over the wheels and the typical conveyance for persons in Ireland at one time.

The colloquial name for the driver of this type of vehicle was ‘Jarvey’ and there were mainly two types of Jaunting Cat – ‘The outside Jaunting Car’ and ‘Inside Jaunting Car’. The former was the more common type and the passengers faced outward over the wheels. The other type was considered to be the more genteel Jaunting Car, in which the passengers sat with their backs to the sides of the car and faced each other, but some described it as being, “The most uncomfortable kind of vehicle yet invented” (Anthony Trollope). There was a third type of car known as an ‘Inside or Covered Car’ that had oiled canvas arranged on all sides to protect the passengers from the weather, but at the expense of visibility.

Being that these Jaunting Cars are few and far between these days I thought you readers might want to hear what the correspondent of that Dublin newspaper reported, and read about what Dublin was like in those far off days …

“This is properly, an Irish machine. The ‘Jaunting Car’ is almost peculiar to our island. A Scotchman or an Englishman, on first landing at Dublin or Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), is immediately struck by this peculiarity, but they soon learn to relish so agreeable and handsome a conveyance. It is true that the cars for hire do not present very great temptations, the miserable horses, and too often the squalid, dirty drivers, clamouring for a fare, and underbidding each other with fierce vociferation, while the furious driving and incessant attempts to take advantage of ignorance and inexperience, render the Dublin car-men almost intolerable, (We speak generally) except to those who are content to endure these disadvantages for the pleasure and ease of being conveyed to any part of the city or country. But none who have enjoyed the comforts of that pleasant vehicle, a private car, will quarrel with our designating it agreeable and handsome. Almost every citizen who can afford it, (and we are sorry to add, many who cannot) keeps a car …

“Who has not enjoyed the advantages of the jaunting car: who that has even traversed the beautiful road to Kingstown on the various vehicles denominated ‘DISLOCATORS’, which pass and repass in unremitting whirl; or who that has watched the beautiful daughters of the ‘green isle’ borne through the streets of our extending metropolis on this handsome and commodious vehicle, that will not feel curious to know from what humble principle it has thus risen to perfection. And in good time, have I met with Master Bush’s ‘Hibernia Curiosa’: he was a careful and observant traveller, and feel I cannot do better than amuse you readers
with an extract on the above matter from his work:

“They have an odd kind of a machine here, which they call the ‘NODDY’(See above picture); it is nothing more than an old cast-off one-horse chaise or chair; with a kind of stool fixed upon the shafts just before the seat, on which the driver sits, just over the horse, and drives you from one part of the town to another, at stated rates for a ‘set-down’ and a good ‘set-down’ it is sometimes, for you are well off if you are not set-down in a channel, by the breaking of wheels, or an overset-down it is sometimes; nor can you see anything before you but your nod, nod, nodding charioteer, whose situation on the shafts obliges his victim to be conformed to that of the horse, from whence I suppose they have obtained the name ‘Noddy’. I assure you the ease of the fire is not much consulted in the construction of these nodding vehicles. But the drollest and most diverting kind of conveyance for your genteel and ungenteel parties of pleasure is what they call 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, and axle and two shafts, which over the axle are spread out a little wider than the sides of the horse, and framed together with cross pieces in such a 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 carrying or moving of goods, merchandise of every kind, hay, corn, etc, through the kingdom. These are, however, used for parties of pleasure, when on the level part a mat is laid for the commonality, and for the genteeler sort of people a bed is put on this, and a half-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 jaunts of a few miles out of town; and they are the most sociable carriages in use, for ten or a dozen will take one of the ‘Chaise-marine’ parties on the Sunday we landed coming out of town as we went up to it from Dun Laoghaire.”  Such was the ‘Jaunting Car’ in 1764 and could the honest gentleman to whom we are indebted for this description “Revisit the moon,” and see the vehicle of 1832, how great would be his praises, and surprise. I shall take an early opportunity of returning to his pages, from whence I have no fear of being enabled to extract much that will be agreeable, useful, and entertaining.”