Part 4

“At the last Ringwood Fair, December 11th, 1897, there was a larger outside demand for suckers than ever experienced; buyers coming from Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Essex, Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. The prices ran from £4 to £6 10s.; the larger dealers buying about fifty to sixty each, which they trucked (25 to 30 in a truck) away by rail. One lot of about 55 were sold at once by auction at Brighton, and realised £6, £7 and £8 each, one fetching £10. The foals improve enormously on good keep. Our Forest feed is hardly good enough; on richer lands the ponies grow nearly a hand higher and get more substance. Since our Association has improved the breed, of late years, very many have gone to the Kent Marshes, where they are highly thought of, very much more so than the Dartmoor ponies. Yearlings at last Lyndhurst Pony Fair, in August, fetched £5 to £8, but the average was spoiled by two large sales by auction of ‘lane haunters’—old mares and other cast-offs—which realised small prices.... I have seen some of our improved ponies at Hastings and elsewhere, broken in, and about five years old. They are much valued and sell for about £25.... The general improvement since 1889 or 1890 is very marked; and, though there was some opposition to the idea of bettering ‘the real Forester’ at first, now all admit the benefit of the work.”

For the information of those interested in this breed, the following description, furnished to the Polo Pony Society for their Stud Book (vol. v.) by the New Forest Local Committee, may be quoted:

For the New Forest pony it is difficult to give any exact description, but the best class of them are from 12 hands to 13 hands 2 inches high according to the portion of the Forest on which they are reared. If taken off the Forest when they are weaned and well kept during the first two winters, they are said very often to attain the size of 14 hands 1 inch. There is sometimes an apparent deficiency of bone, but what there is should be of the very best quality. The feet are wide and well formed. They are often considered goose-rumped, but their hocks should be all that could be desired. In colour they may be said to range through every variety, though there are not many duns, and few if any piebalds left. The flea-bitten greys which are still very numerous on the Forest show strong traces of an Arab cross. The shoulders, though not always what might be desired in point of depth, are almost invariably fine and well laid. It is a great characteristic of the New Forest pony to be always gay and alert, and, though they are extremely good-tempered and docile when fairly broken, they are quite indomitable until they are completely cornered. The true Forester is never sulky.

A PONY HACK.

Engraved on wood by F. Babbage.

A pony well-known on Newmarket Heath and North Country racecourses about 1828.]

THE WELSH PONY.

At the period when Wales was an independent kingdom live stock was protected by a singularly comprehensive series of laws. These were originally codified by Howel Dda (the Good), a prince who reigned from A.D. 942 to 948, and at a somewhat later period they were embodied in three distinct legal codes, the Venedotian, Dimetian and Gwentian, applicable respectively to North, South and South-eastern Wales, conforming to the local customs which prevailed in each area. Under these laws no Welsh serf was permitted to sell a stallion without the permission of his lord. The value of a horse (or, accurately speaking, pony, as the hill ponies were the only equine stock the country possessed in those days) was laid down without regard to individual merit till he reached his third year. A foal until a fortnight old was worth four pence; from the fifteenth day of his age till one year old, 24 pence; when a year and one day old he was worth 48 pence, and stood at that value till he began his third year when he was valued at 60 pence. When in his third year he was broken in, and his value depended on the work he was fitted for. A palfrey or sumpter horse was valued at 120 pence, and a working horse to draw cart or harrow 60 pence. It was not permissible to use horses, mares or cows for ploughing for fear of injury; oxen only might be employed for such labour. Any entire male animal was worth three females; thus a wild stallion was worth nine score pence to the mare’s value of three score pence.

If a horse were sold he was to be warranted against staggers for three nights, against “black strangles” for three months, and against farcy for a year. He was to be warranted against restiveness until the purchaser should have ridden him three times “amid concourse of men and horses;” and if he proved restive the seller had to refund one third of the price he had received.

The commentators believe the disease so termed to be glanders; but inasmuch as the warranty against farcy held good for twelve months, perhaps we should accept this reading with reserve.

The value of each part of the horse was strictly specified by these laws; the worth of his foot was equal to his full value; each eye was esteemed worth one third of his full value. For every blemish in a horse one third of the total worth was to be returned, his ears and tail included: a not obscure hint that cropping and docking were practised in Wales at this period, and that opinions varied concerning the desirability of the operations. That docking was in vogue is certain, for a special clause makes the “tail of a filly for common work” worth the total value of the animal. The peculiar value of the tail of a “filly for common work” lay in the fact that the harrow was often secured to the tail, as was the practice in parts of Ireland and Scotland until near the end of the last century. In Wales, as in other parts of Britain, the mare was preferably used for draught and pack work, horses being reserved for military service. The mane and bridle were worth the same amount, viz., four pence; the forelock and halter were also coupled as worth one penny each.

Howel Dda’s “Law of Borrowing” was equally comprehensive. The man who borrowed a horse and fretted the hair on his back was to pay four pence; if he broke the skin to the flesh eight pence; and if skin and flesh were broken to the bone sixteen pence. Borrowing without the owner’s leave was expensive: the borrower had to pay four pence for mounting, and four pence for each rhandir (supposed to be a league) he rode the horse. He also had to pay a fine to the owner’s lord.

If a hired horse fell lame or was injured by accident the owner had to furnish the hirer with one equally good until the injured horse recovered.

The laws which regulated compensation for trespass show that it was customary to fetter or clog the horses when they were turned out to graze. Trespass in corn by a clogged horse was to be compensated by payment of one penny by day and two pence by night. Trespass by a horse free of restraint was recompensed by half those sums. In this connection it must be noted that stallions were “privileged;” and though a broken-in entire ran at large for three seasons (season from mid April to mid May and the month of October), he did not lose the privilege which relieved his owner from fine for any damage he might do in the standing crops.

The Welsh pony is more numerous than any other breed. He wanders over the hills and waste lands in all the twelve counties of the Principality, and also on the borders of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Monmouth; whereas his congeners are limited to areas insignificant by comparison. The distribution is of course very unequal, the strength and number of droves varying with the character of the country; there are no statistics in existence nor has there been made any estimate of their number.

Many of the common lands which were once open to the Welsh pony have been enclosed of recent years; but in spite of his exclusion from the better pastures and the warfare waged against him by shepherds and their dogs in the interests of grazing for sheep, he thrives marvellously. There are thousands of acres of wet and boggy lands whose grasses “rot” sheep, but which afford the hardy pony nourishing diet. In some districts he is kept on the move almost as unceasingly as are the deer in Scotland or on Exmoor; and the life he leads has done much to develope his instincts of self-preservation. Accustomed from earliest foalhood to the roughest ground, he is sure-footed as the goat, and neither punishment nor persuasion will induce him to venture upon unsafe bog. He has good shoulders, strong back, neat head and most enduring legs and feet; he is, in short, a strong, sound and useful animal. Some of the stoutest and best hunters bred on the borders of Wales trace their descent from the Welsh pony mare crossed with the thoroughbred sire; and the same may be said of some of the best modern steeplechasers.

J. C. Loudon, in his work, An Encyclopedia of Agriculture, published in 1825, writes:—

“The Welsh horse bears a near resemblance in point of size to the best native breed of the Highlands of Scotland. It is too small for the two-horse ploughs; one that I rode for many years, which, to the last, would have gone upon a pavement by choice, in preference to a softer road.”

Again, the celebrated sporting writer, “Nimrod” (C. J. Appleby), in his book The Horse and the Hound, published in 1842, writes of this breed as follows:—

“They are never lame in the feet, or become roarers; they are also very little susceptible of disease in comparison with other horses, and as a proof also of their powers of crossing a country, the fact may be stated of the late Sir Charles Turner riding a pony ten miles in forty-seven minutes, and taking thirty leaps in his course, for a wager of 1,000 guineas, with the late Duke of Queensberry.... The Earl of Oxford had a mare pony, got by the Clive Arabian, her dam by the same horse, out of a Welsh mare pony, which could beat any of his racers four miles at a feather-weight; and during the drawing of the Irish lottery the news was conveyed express from Holyhead to London chiefly by ponies, at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour.”

Endeavours have been made from time to time to improve the breed, but these efforts have been made by individuals, and the benefits, when any followed, were local and temporary. The first recorded introduction of superior alien blood occurred in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when that famous little horse, Merlin, was turned out to summer on the Welsh hills after his retirement from the Turf. The small horses which George II.’s Act (p. 8) sought to banish from the race-course were not all worthless; “vile and paltry” they may have been as a class, but there were some good ones among them, and Merlin was the best. This little horse, who owed his name to the smallest of British hawks, beat every animal that started against him, and enjoyed a career of uninterrupted success until he broke down; he was then purchased by a Welsh gentleman, said to have been an ancestor of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and turned out to run with the droves on the hills. So remarkable was the improvement wrought upon the breed by this one stallion that in course of a few years the value of the ponies in that locality greatly increased. The name of the sire was applied to his stock and their descendants, which became famous as “Merlins”; and the certificate that proved an animal one of the true Merlin breed made all the difference in the market.

That usually accurate authority, Richard Berenger, in his History and Art of Horsemanship, says, the Welsh breed, “once so abundant, is now nearly extinct;” but in this he must have been mistaken, as there is evidence from the district to show that twenty-six years later it was very far from extinct. “A Farmer” writes to the Gentleman’s Magazine of July, 1797, complaining of the “injurious increase of the smallest breed of ponies, which are no kind of use,” and which, he says, do an immense amount of mischief to the growing corn. He ventured to assert that for one cow found trespassing ten ponies would be seen, and strongly urged that an Act of Parliament should be passed forbidding right of common to horses under 14 hands high.

In the middle of the present century, when fast-trotting animals for harness and saddle were in great demand, it was thought desirable to see what could be done with the Welsh pony, and accordingly Comet, Fire-away, Alonzo the Brave, and other fast-stepping small-sized Hackney sires were brought from Norfolk into Cardiganshire and Breconshire to cross with the native ponies. Such a cross could have hardly failed to result in a strong, fast-trotting and useful pony.

The Report issued by the recent Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire contains some remarks on the subject which must be reproduced here:—

“With regard to cobs and ponies, breeding in this direction is a much larger factor in the farming of Wales. There is plenty of material to make use of, and the breeding of ponies might be made much more profitable than it is at present. In the counties of Radnor and Brecon there has been some systematic attempts to encourage the breeding of cobs, with satisfactory results. On the mountains of North Wales, which were formerly famous for wild herds of ‘Merlins,’ little has, however, been done. Lord Penrhyn purchased an excellent stallion, Caradoc, who might have done much good had he been more patronised. The fault seems to lie in the careless treatment of the herds of ponies, which are allowed to ramble at will, winter and summer, to live or starve as nature may please. No attention whatever is paid to the breeding, the herds being wild to all intents and purposes. It seems a pity that such waste should be allowed. The stoutness and endurance of the Welsh pony is proverbial, and if attention were paid to selection in breeding, separation of the sexes, and feeding and shelter in the winter, an exceedingly valuable addition to the mountain farmer’s profits might be found at a small cost.

“Turning to the evidence upon this subject: Mr. J. E. Jones, who appeared before us at Tregaron, gave it as his opinion that the breed of cobs was deteriorating; while Mr. Bowen Woosnam, of Tynygraig, near Builth, himself a successful breeder, stated that not nearly as much attention was paid to breeding cobs as formerly. Mr. Woosnam also said: If Welsh farmers were to have a portion of their money invested in ponies and cobs which are suitable to the farms that they are occupying, they would derive proportionately a larger income from them than they would from the cattle or sheep that they are rearing.... I do not mean to say that their stock should exclusively consist of ponies and cobs, but that they should have a few on every suitable farm. There is the greatest difficulty at the present time in getting good ponies and cobs.”

The Commissioners were evidently unaware of the work which has been done by the Church Stretton Hill Pony Improvement Society. This society was formed to encourage and assist the farmers in the work of improving the ponies which they only too generally neglect. The plan followed was to take up the best of the native stallions for service: those of the truest type only were used, and the improvement in the young stock got by these selected sires was marked: they showed more compactness of build, better bone and greater spirit than their promiscuously bred brethren of the wilds. There can be no doubt but that continuance of work on these lines would do much towards converting the scarcely saleable raw material of the Hills into profitable stock.

Mr. John Hill, of Marshbrook House, Church Stretton, in his endeavours to breed polo ponies has shown that a valuable riding and harness animal can be obtained by judicious crossings on the Welsh pony. Running more or less wild on the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of Church Stretton are ponies closely allied to and very similar to the Welsh mountain breed. These usually range from 10 hands to 11 hands 2 inches in height, 12 hands 2 inches being considered the outside limit. About the year 1891 Mr. Hill purchased several of the best and most typical mares, wild and unbroken, from the hills: these mares, which averaged only 10 hands, were put to an Arab. His stock were handsome, compact and hardy, and grew to an average height of 13 hands. The fillies of this cross when two years old were put to the best Welsh pony procurable, a 14-hand 1-inch stallion with riding shoulders and showing bone and quality. These mares were subsequently put to a small thoroughbred, and to him threw foals full of quality and in every way promising. Mr. Hill’s breeding experiments have all been made with the 14-hand 2-inch polo pony in view: and he has shown that Welsh ponies judiciously crossed with suitable alien blood produce stock for which a ready market should be found.