Hare Coursing relates to the pursuit by two greyhounds of a hare to assess the relative merits of the dogs. Since it was banned in the UK at the beginning of the century, the Republic of Ireland is the only country in the world where it is held legally to any significant degree. Purportedly invented by one antique Roman philosopher and historian of Greek extraction (Flavius Arrianus), both the pursuit and the dog are purely British. Indeed, the sport was devised by the aristocratic and merchant élites of the second part of the sixteenth century, at the crossroads between the financial-based right to own a greyhound and the aristocratic right to chase a hare, as shown by its symbolism at Robert Dover's Cotswold Games. Therefore, given the antagonism between the two countries at the time of its adoption (early twentieth century), it poses the problem of the adoption by the Irish of a leisure pursuit designed by and for the British. However, the creation of the Irish Coursing Club fits in the political history of sport in Ireland, closely linked to the struggle for independence. Moreover, the reasons behind the adoption of the enclosed version are very different from the commercial British motives and has socio-political and strictly Irish roots. Finally, the economic potential of the greyhound industry used to lie on coursing, illustrating the changeover from a nation obsessed with her past to the forward-looking Celtic tiger-to-be. Eventually, this book poses the question of what a 'national' sport is.