Part 7

“The village of Dufton, in which the hill farm of Keisley is situated, was quite a centre of pony breeding, and for many generations the Fell-side farmers in this district have been noted for their ponies; they bred them to the best Fell pony stallions, most of which were trained trotters of great speed. Each of the three mares originally purchased to found the stud at Keisley were got from well-known locally bred dams and grand-dams, and all were selected to match each other in character and style. The mare from which two of them were bred was from a very old strain by a stallion pony called Long Cropper, a record trotter; and all the three mares were themselves by a pony called Blooming Heather, another well-known pony stallion of a few generations younger. These mares have been put to a stallion got by Mars from a pony mare belonging to Col. Stirling, Kippendavie, and the present stud, with the exception of two of the mares originally purchased, are all by him. Last season, and this, a pony stallion by Little Wonder II. has been in use, and five or six of the mares have foaled to him, the end of May and beginning of June being quite early enough for these mares to foal, as they are never under cover unless broken-in, especially as they very readily stand to their service at first season after foaling.

“When safe in foal they are turned out to the higher allotments and the open fell with their foals, where they run from July to November; save in exceptionally hard winters they get no hand feeding in the shape of hay, as they thrive and do well in the rough open allotments, to which they are generally brought down in November to remain until the end of March.

“In height these ponies run from 12 to 13 hands, and with the exception of two blacks all are of uniform rich dark bay colour with black points. Just at first, when brought in wild to break, they are a little nervous, but if kindly treated soon become very docile and easily handled. They are very easily broken both for riding and driving, and ponies comparatively quite small carry with ease men of ordinary stature. They are the most useful means of locomotion in crossing the mountain ranges and traversing the hilly roads of the district. Although of no great size these ponies are very muscular, their bones and joints are fine, hard and clean, and, generally speaking, they have good middles. Some are perhaps a little short in quarter, but with a fair shoulder, and their legs, ankles and feet are all that can be desired. There certainly seems to be very fair field in the district for breeding ponies, as they are very cheaply and easily reared, and when fit to break in can be disposed of for a very fairly good figure.”

The Cumberland “Fell-siders” are wedded to the customs and usages of their ancestors, and endeavours to promote schemes for the general improvement of the ponies have met with small success. Colonel Green-Thompson, of Bridekirk, Cockermouth, in 1897, offered the farmers the opportunity of using an Arab stallion, but the chance of thus bettering their stock appears to have been neglected by the breeders. This is to be regretted, for the fells and dales offer thousands of acres of good, sound grazing land which might be far more profitably devoted to pony-breeding than given up to the few scattered flocks of Herdwick sheep which they now carry. The sheep farmers of Caldbeck and Matterdale in Cumberland pay some attention to the business, asserting that the ponies are less trouble and involve less risk than sheep. Their fillies are put to the horse at two years old, and they frequently obtain a second foal before sending the dam to market. The colts command a readier sale than the mares. The ordinary Fell pony, outside the district, is in demand for pit work, for which purpose suitable animals bring from £12 to £15.

Mr. W. W. Wingate-Saul supplies the following description of the Fell ponies:—

“A very powerful and compact cobby build, the majority having a strong middle piece with deep chest and strong loin characteristics, which, combined with deep sloping shoulders and fine withers, make them essentially weight-carrying riding ponies. The prevailing—indeed, the only—colours are black, brown, bay, and, quite occasionally, grey. I do not remember ever having seen a chestnut, and if I found one I should think it due to the introduction of other blood. The four colours prevail in the order named, the best animals often being get black and usually without white markings, unless it be a small white star. The head is pony-like and intelligent, with large bright eyes and well-placed ears. The neck in the best examples being long enough to give a good rein to the rider. The hind quarters are square and strong, with a well-set-on tail. The legs have more bone than those of any of our breeds; ponies under 14 hands often measuring 8-1/2 inches below the knee. Their muscularity of arm, thigh and second thigh is marvellous. Their habitat (having been bred for centuries on the cold inhospitable Fells, where they are still to be found) has caused a wonderful growth of hair, the winter coat being heavy and the legs growing a good deal of fine hair, all of which, excepting some at the point of the heel, is cast in summer. Constitutionally they are hard as iron, with good all-round action, and are very fast and enduring.”

IRELAND—THE CONNEMARA PONY.

Richard Berenger, Gentleman of the Horse to King George III. in his work, The History and Art of Horsemanship, 1771—says that—

“Ireland has for many centuries boasted a race of horses called Hobbies, valued for their easy paces and other pleasing and agreeable qualities, of a middling size, strong, nimble, well moulded and hardy.... The nobility have stallions of great reputation belonging to them, but choose to breed for the Turf in preference to other purposes; for which, perhaps, their country is not so well qualified, from the moisture of the atmosphere, and other causes, which hinder it from improving that elastic force and clearness of wind; and which are solely the gifts of a dry soil, and an air more pure and refined. This country, nevertheless, is capable of producing fine and noble horses.”

The great stud maintained in England by Edward III. (1327-1377) included a number of Hobbies which were procured from Ireland. A French chronicler named Creton, who wrote a Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II., refers with great admiration to the Irish horses of the period. He evidently accompanied King Richard during his expedition to Ireland in the summer of 1399, for he says the horses of that country “scour the hills and vallies fleeter than deer;” and he states that the horse ridden by Macmore, an Irish chieftain, “without housing or saddle was worth 400 cows.”

See vol. xx. of Archeologia for prose translation.

At a much later date the character of this breed was changed by the introduction of Spanish blood. Tradition asserts that the ponies which inhabited the rough and mountainous tracts of Connemara, in the county Galway, were descended from several animals that were saved from the wreck of some ship of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It is, however, quite needless to invoke the aid of a somewhat too frequently employed tradition to explain the character which at one period distinguished these ponies. Spanish stallions were freely imported into England from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries; and it is probable that the character of the Connemara pony was derived not from shipwrecked stock but in more prosaic fashion by importation of sires from England.

The testimony of many old writers goes to prove the high esteem in which Spanish horses were held. The Duke of Newcastle, in his famous work on Horses and Horsemanship, written in 1658, says: “I have had Spanish horses in my own possession which were proper to be painted after, or fit for a king to mount on a public occasion. Genets have a fine lofty air, trot and gallop well. The best breed is in Andalusia, especially that of the King of Spain at Cordova.” The Spanish horse of those times owed much to the Barbs, which were originally introduced into the country by the Moors; and if the Connemara pony was permitted to revert to the original type, something was done to re-establish the Spanish—or, perhaps, it were more accurate to go a step further back and say the “Barb”—character in the early thirties.

Mr. Samuel Ussher Roberts, C.B., in course of evidence given before the Royal Commission on Horse Breeding in Ireland (1897), stated that he lived for five-and-twenty years in the west of Galway, and when in that part of the country, “there was,” he said, “an extremely hardy, wiry class of pony in the district showing a great deal of the Barb or Arab blood. Without exception they were the best animals I ever knew—good shoulders, good hard legs, good action, and great stamina ... they were seldom over 14·2. I never knew one of them to have a spavin or splint, or to be in any respect unsound in his wind.... There was a strong trace of Arab blood which I always understood arose from the introduction into Connemara of the Barb or Arab by the Martin family many years ago—you could very easily trace it to the Connemara ponies at the time I speak of.” In answer to a subsequent question Mr. Ussher Roberts fixed the date of the introduction of the Barb or Arab blood by Colonel Martin at about 1833.

The old stamp of Connemara pony was described by another witness, Mr. R. B. Begley, as “long and low with good rein, good back, and well coupled”; but the majority of witnesses from Galway, and those who had personal knowledge of the breed, shared Mr. Ussher Roberts’ opinion that it had greatly deteriorated since the middle of the century when the influence of the Barb or Arab sires had died out. The young animals, it was stated, were collected in droves when about six months old, and hawked about the country for sale, bringing prices ranging from thirty shillings to £3. Many of these were purchased for use in the English coal pits. Evidence was forthcoming to show that there are still some good specimens of the breed. Mr. John Purdon described a drove he had recently seen in Connemara: “They were beautiful mares, I never saw lovelier mares; about twenty in the drove, and foals with them. They were the perfect type of a small thoroughbred mare.” These animals were the property of Mr. William Lyons, who kept a special breed for generations.

The falling off in quality was generally attributed to promiscuous breeding and to in-breeding. “In some parts of Connemara,” said Mr. H. A. Robinson, “they just turn a stallion out loose on the mountains, mongrels of the very worst description.” There is, however, another factor in the loss of quality, namely, the terrible straits to which the peasantry were reduced in the time of the famine. A correspondent informs me that in south-west Cork, in the fifties, nearly all the people had mare ponies; in west Galway in the sixties there was scarcely an ass in Connemara west of Spiddal and Oughterard; and the case in west Mayo was the same. When my informant visited the same districts fifteen or twenty years later, he observed a remarkable change. “Hard times” had come upon the people in the interim, and all the small holders had donkeys instead of ponies; poverty had obliged them to sell their mares; and when times improved they were too impoverished to buy new ponies, and replaced them with asses.

Under such circumstances, of course, the better the mare owned by the peasant the more likely it was to find a purchaser; and little but the “rag, tag and bobtail” was left to perpetuate the species. However considerably the remainder depreciated in quality, they still retained their characteristic hardiness of constitution and the germs of those qualities which under better auspices gained the breed its reputation. Some of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Royal Commission mentioned experiments in cross breeding which prove how well and rapidly the Connemara pony responds to endeavour to improve it by the introduction of suitable fresh blood. Mr. Samuel Johnston stated that he had bred one of the best hunters he ever possessed out of a Connemara mare; and Mr. R. B. Begley described a mare got by the pure-bred Hackney sire Star of the West from a “mountainy pony.” This Hackney-Connemara cross could cover an English mile in three minutes; Mr. Begley had driven her fifty-six Irish (over seventy-one statute) miles in a day, and had repeatedly driven her twelve Irish (over fifteen statute) miles in an hour and ten minutes; he had won two prizes with her for action in harness at the Hollymount Show; and had hunted her with ten stone on her back. With hounds as in the shafts this really remarkable pony proved herself able to go and stay, performing well across country.

These Connemara ponies stand from 12 hands to 14 hands or more. Like other breeds which run practically wild in mountainous country, they are above all things hardy, active and sure-footed: in response to the climatic conditions of their habitat—the climate of West Galway is the most humid of any spot in Europe—they grow a thick and shaggy coat which is very usually chestnut in colour betraying their descent. Although they have lost in size owing to the conditions of their existence and are rounder in the croup, they retain the peculiar ambling gait which distinguished their Spanish ancestors. Those with whose breeding care has been taken, such as the drove belonging to Mr. William Lyons, of Oughterard, show the characteristics implanted by the infusion of Barb blood in their blood-like heads and clean limbs. Even those which have suffered through promiscuous breeding conform in their ugliness and shortcomings to the original type.

For some years past systematic endeavours to improve the breed have been in progress. The Congested Districts Board, under the Land Commission of Ireland, introduced small Hackney stallions whose substance, action and robust constitution render them particularly well adapted to correct the defects of weedy and ill-shaped mares without impairing their natural hardiness.

THE PONIES OF SCOTLAND AND THE SHETLAND ISLANDS.

The Scottish nation from early times have possessed a breed of horses which was held in great esteem; and, as in England, laws were passed from time to time prohibiting their export from the country. The second parliament of James I. in the year 1406 enacted (cap. 31) that no horse of three years old or under should be sent out of Scotland. In 1567, James VI. forbade the export of horses in an Act (Jac. VI., cap. 22) whose preface makes specific reference to Bordeaux, from which place there was a great demand for horses.

In a curious old book entitled The Horseman’s Honour or the Beautie of Horsemanship, published in the year 1620 by an anonymous writer, we find the following passage:—

“For the horses of Scotland they are much less than those of England, yet not inferiour in goodnesse; and by reason of their smallnesse they keep few stoned but geld many by which likwise they retaine this saying ‘That there is no gelding like those in Scotland,’ and they, as the English, are for the most part amblers. Also in Scotland there are a race of small nagges which they call galloways or galloway nagges, which for fine shape easie pace, pure mettall and infinit toughnesse are not short of the best nagges that are bred in any countrey whatsoever; and for soundnesse in body they exceede the most races that are extant, as dayly experience shews in their continuall travels journeyings and forehuntings.”

Berenger says:—

“This kingdom (Scotland) at present encourages a fleet breed of horses, and the nobility and gentry have many foreign and other stallions of great value in their possession with which they cultivate the breed and improve it with great knowledge and success. Like the English they are fond of racing and have a celebrated course at Leith which is honoured with a royal plate given by his present Majesty [George III.]

“The wisdom and generosity likewise of the nobility and gentry have lately erected a riding house in the City of Edinburgh at their own expense and fixed a salary upon the person appointed to direct it.

“This kingdom has been famous for breeding a peculiar sort of horses called Galloways. From the care and attention paid at present to the culture of horses it is to be expected that it will soon be able to send forth numbers of valuable and generous breeds destined to a variety of purposes and equal to all: the country being very capable of answering the wishes of the judicious breeder who need only remember that colts require to be well nourished in winter and sheltered from the severity of a rigorous and changeable sky.”

“The History and Art of Horsemanship,” by Richard Berenger, published by Davies and Cadell, London, 1771.