Ponies Past and Present

Part 1

Transcriber’s Note

Page 51 — precints changed to precincts Page 72 — atttention changed to attention Illustration labelled ‘H. F. Lucas Lucas’ Page 110 — is left as printed. The Footnotes have been changed from alpha to numeric.

PONIES PAST AND PRESENT

Painted by A. Cooper, R.A. Engraved on wood by F. Babbage.

THE SHOOTING PONY.]

PONIES PAST AND PRESENT

BY SIR WALTER GILBEY, BART.

ILLUSTRATED

VINTON & CO., LTD., 9, NEW BRIDGE STREET, LONDON, E.C.

1900

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Introduction 1

The New Forest Pony 11

The Welsh Pony 25

The Exmoor and Dartmoor Ponies 38

The Cumberland and Westmoreland Ponies 53

Ireland—The Connemara Pony 63

The Ponies of Scotland and The Shetland Islands 71

Uses and Characteristics of the Pony 87

Breeding Polo Ponies 97

ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Shooting Pony Frontispiece

The Pony Hack To face page 25

Little Wonder II. 59

Child’s Shetland Pony 82

“Princess Victoria in her Pony Phaeton” 87

The First Leap 89

Part 2

Arab “Mesaoud” 104

The Polo Pony “Sailor” 110

The increasing attention which during the last few years has been devoted to breeding ponies for various purposes, more especially for polo, suggested the collection of facts relating to our half-wild races of ponies. It will be seen from the following pages that we possess large supplies of small but strong and sound constitutioned horses which may be turned to far more valuable account than has been done hitherto. The Polo Pony Society set the example of drawing attention to the possibilities of utilising profitably the Moorland and Forest Mares, and it is hoped that these pages may be of some interest to those who are giving attention to pony breeding whether for polo or for any other purpose.

Elsenham Hall, Essex, August, 1900.

PONIES PAST AND PRESENT

INTRODUCTION.

In another volume, Horses Past and Present, brief reference has been made to the early subjugation of the horse in Eastern countries by man; and it is unnecessary here to further touch upon that phase of our subject.

The early history of the horse in the British Islands is obscure. The animal is not indigenous to the country, and it is supposed that the original stock was brought to England many centuries before the Christian era by the Phœnician navigators who visited the shores of Cornwall to procure supplies of tin. However that may be, the first historian who rendered any account of our islands for posterity found here horses which he regarded as of exceptional merit. Julius Cæsar, when he invaded Britain in the year 55 B.C., was greatly impressed with the strength, handiness, and docility of the horses which the ancient Britons drove in their war chariots; his laudatory description of their merits includes no remark concerning their size, and from this omission we may infer that they were not larger than the breeds of horses with which Cæsar’s travels and conquests had already made him acquainted.

There can be no doubt but that these chariot horses were small by comparison with their descendants—the modern Shire horses; they probably did not often exceed 14 hands, and were therefore much on a par in point of height with the horses Cæsar had seen in Spain and elsewhere. It is unlikely that so shrewd an observer would have refrained from comment on the point had the British horses been superior in size, as they were in qualities, to the breeds he already knew. It is doubtful indeed whether the horses of Britain gained in stature to any material extent until the Saxons and Danes introduced horses from the Continent. These being for military purposes would have been stallions without exception, and being larger than the British breed must have done something to produce increase of height when crossed with our native mares.

See “The Great Horse or War Horse.” By Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. 3rd edition, 1899. Vinton & Co., Ltd.

This being the case, we are confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing between the horses and ponies of these early times; the chroniclers do not attempt to differentiate between “horse” and “pony” as we understand the terms. The process of developing a big horse was necessarily a slow one, from the system, or want of system, which remained in vogue until the fifteenth century, and was still in existence in some parts of England in Henry VIII.’s time. During the long period the greater portion of the country lay under forest and waste, it was the practice to let those mares which were kept solely for breeding purposes run at large in the woodlands, unbroken and unhandled. Doomsday Book contains frequent mention of equæ silvestres, equæ silvaticæ, or equæ indomitæ when enumerating the live stock on a manor; and there is evidence to show that these animals (always mares, it will be observed) were under a modified degree of supervision. They were branded to prove their ownership, and during the summer selected mares appear to have been “rounded up” to an enclosure in the forest for service. Apart from this they ranged the country at large, strangers alike to collar and bridle. It would be unreasonable to suppose that the mares which were employed in agricultural work were not also used for breeding; the surroundings of the farmer’s mare in those days were not luxurious, but she undoubtedly enjoyed shelter from the rigours of winter and more nourishing food than her woodland sister. Hence it is probable that the first differences in size, make and shape among English horses may be traced to their domestic or woodland ancestry on the dam’s side.

The life led by these equæ indomitæ made for hardiness of constitution, soundness of limb, surefootedness, and small stature; and we venture to think that the half-wild ponies England possesses to-day in the New Forest, Exmoor, Wales and the Fell country are (or were, until comparatively modern endeavours were made to improve them) the lineal descendants of the woodland stock which is frequently referred to in ancient records, and which in 1535 and 1541 Henry VIII. made vigorous attempts to exterminate.

The law of 1535 (26 Henry VIII.) declares:—

“For that in many and most places of this realm, commonly little horses and nags of small stature and value be suffered to depasture, and also to cover mares and felys of very small stature, by reason whereof the breed of good and strong horses of this realm is now lately diminished, altered and decayed, and further is likely to decay if speedy remedy be not sooner provided in that behalf.

“It is provided that all owners or fermers of parks and enclosed grounds of the extent of one mile in compass shall keep two mares, apt and able to bear foals of the altitude or height of 13 handfuls at least, upon pain of 40s.

“A penalty of 40s. is imposed on the Lords, Owners, and Fermers of all parks and grounds enclosed, as is above rehearsed, who shall willingly suffer any of the said mares to be covered or kept with any Stoned Horse under the stature of 14 handfuls.”

This Act applied only to enclosed areas, and therefore would not affect the wild ponies in any appreciable degree: but six years later another Act was passed (32 Henry VIII., c. 13) which provided that—

“No person shall put in any forest, chase, moor, heath, common, or waste (where mares and fillies are used to be kept) any stoned horse above the age of two years, not being fifteen hands high within the Shires and territories of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Essex, Kent, South Hampshire, North Wiltshire, Oxford, Berkshire, Worcester, Gloucester, Somerset, South Wales, Bedford, Warwick, Northampton, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Salop, Leicester, Hereford and Lincoln. And furthermore, be it enacted, that if in any of the said drifts there shall be found any mare, filly, foal, or gelding that then shall be thought not to be able nor like to grow to be able to bear foals of reasonable stature or not able nor like to grow to be able to do profitable labours by the discretions of the drivers aforesaid or of the more number of them, then the same driver or drivers shall cause the same unprofitable beasts ... every of them to be killed, and the bodies of them to be buried in the ground, as no annoyance thereby shall come or grow to the people, those near inhabiting or thither resorting.”

This enactment was of a more far-reaching character than its forerunner. The “shires and territories” enumerated were those in which greatest attention was paid to the breeding of Great Horses; “profitable labours,” in those times, could only mean military service, agricultural work, and perhaps pack transport, for any of which purposes the woodland ponies were useless. How far the law proved effectual is another matter: laws more nearly affecting the welfare of the subject were less honoured in the observance than the breach in the remoter parts of the kingdom in those times.

In 1566, when Elizabeth was on the throne, Thomas Blundeville, of Newton Flotman, wrote a book on Horses and Riding; and prefaced it by an “Epistle dedicatorie” to Robert Lord Dudley, Master of the Horse, which begins:

Continue reading Ponies Past and Present free in the Wunder reader →