The Welsh Pony, Described in Two Letters to a Friend

Part 1

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THE WELSH PONY

THE WELSH PONY

DESCRIBED IN TWO LETTERS TO A FRIEND

By OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN

BOSTON: PRINTED PRIVATELY FOR CHARLES A. STONE: 1913

Copyright, 1913, by Charles A. Stone

PINKHAM PRESS, BOSTON

To ANNE WHITNEY

ILLUSTRATIONS

HERD OF WELSH MOUNTAIN PONIES GRAZING Frontispiece MY LORD PEMBROKE xii A MORNING RIDE xiv IMPORTED WELSH STALLION RAINBOW 4 SEARCHLIGHT--PONY MARE 6 THE FAMOUS WELSH STALLION GREYLIGHT 8 A FULL BROTHER OF DAYLIGHT 10 LONGMYND FAVORITE AND HER FOAL MANOMET WHITE STAR 12 MY LORD PEMBROKE WHEN THREE YEARS OLD 14 LONGMYND ECLIPSE ON A RAINY DAY 16 A WELSH COB 18 MARE AND FOAL 20 LONGMYND 22 LONGMYND COMMONS 24 IMPORTED WELSH STALLION MY LORD PEMBROKE 26 LONGMYND ECLIPSE AND GROVE RAINBOW 28 LONGMYND CASTOR 32 LONGMYND ECLIPSE AND MY LORD PEMBROKE 34 BRECON 36 THE BEACONS 38 LONGMYND POLLOX 40 FOREST LODGE PASTURES 42 MY LORD PEMBROKE 44 KNIGHTON SENSATION, LONGMYND ECLIPSE AND MY LORD PEMBROKE 46 KNIGHTON SENSATION 48 MY LORD PEMBROKE IN HARNESS 50

INTRODUCTION

While living in Devon about a year ago, I first became acquainted with the Welsh pony and found great pleasure in riding and driving with my children through the charming lanes and by-ways of Southwestern England.

I was so fortunate as to have at that time an attractive little gray mare which was loaned to me by a friend who was spending the winter in France. This little mare, partly Welsh, was so cheerful and friendly, and seemed so much to enjoy our excursions into the country, that I felt sorry to leave her behind when I left Devon.

The following spring, at the London Horse Show, I saw some splendid specimens of thoroughbred Welsh mountain ponies ridden by children, and my wife and I were so attracted by them that we determined to get four or five and bring them to America. Later during the same season, at the Royal Agricultural Show, which is the best fair of its kind in the world, I saw many splendid ponies of the Welsh breed, and had an opportunity to find out more particularly about them.

A trip to Wales was then planned with a view of visiting the ponies on their native hills and arranging with some owners and breeders to help me select a small herd for shipment to Boston. On this trip I found the Welsh country so charming and the ponies so attractive and so different from any ponies I had known before, that I spent altogether several weeks in Wales and the border counties selecting a herd which finally amounted to about twenty-five of the best of the true mountain type that I could obtain.

I have been pondering ever since, not only how I might improve and add to my own somewhat superficial knowledge of the remarkable qualities of the Welsh pony, but also how I might bring him to the favorable notice of my countrymen. In this endeavor I was fortunately able to enlist the interest of my cousin, Miss Whitney, whose friend, Mrs. Olive Tilford Dargan, was at that time journeying through England and Wales. Miss Whitney saw the opportunity that lay before me provided Mrs. Dargan could be won to a study of the pony problem, and promised to set herself at once to the attainment of this object--although she did say that such a call upon her friend was about as nearly related to that lady's real vocation as a yokel's whistle to Pan's pipes. I think, however, that the author of the following letters has shown a true idea of the dignity inherent in the mission to which she was summoned, and has indeed written up to it; responding to the request of her friend with a whole-souled heartiness which makes me her grateful beneficiary.

C. A. S.

December, 1912.

THE WELSH PONY--HIS PEDIGREE

LETTER NUMBER ONE

London, England, July 15, 1911.

Dear A----:

Some months ago you asked me to tell you all that I knew or could discover about the Welsh pony. I will tell you if you will stand the listening. For since you bade me I have taken the subject to heart and can talk on it from dawn to dusk. We have travelled--pony and I--from Arabia to the Lybian sands and from Scandanavia to the midland seas; and on my recent journey through Wales--that land, as you know, of old adventure and anguish of endless battle--I kept but half an eye in pursuit of the vanishing skirts of Romance; the other eye and a half swept along the vista in search of the mountain lady who trips so handsomely on her four feet that Sir Phenacodus Primaevus, could he behold her from his fossil retreat, would acknowledge his success as an ancestor, whatever may have been his discouragements in prehistoric society.

At first, aware of my weakness for the equine, I was afraid that I had succumbed to my charmer with regrettable haste, but association only fixed my loyalty and sustained the credentials that he wears on every inch of him. Let me parenthesize here and have done with it, that if I use my genders in hopeless interchange, or am forced to the apologetic "it," you must extricate the sex as best you can, and re-register your old vow to reform the English language. "She" will apply but ludicrously to the gallant entires that were asked to exhibit their best steps before me; and "he" does not come naturally to my pen if I have in mind some of the graceful mares whose acquaintance I made as they drew me through pass and over bryn, almost coquetting with the task laid upon them, yet modest withal, for the Welsh pony, be the pronoun what it may, never forgets manners.

Later, at the Olympia, during the International Horse Show, I spent a fatuously happy time in the stables. Many pony types were exhibited, and nobly they represented their kind, but I found none so love-inspiring as the little conqueror from Cymric, "Shooting Star," owned by Sir Walter Gilbey. He is a dapple-gray, eleven hands high, of perfect shape and brim-full of spirit, not of the self-conscious kind, eager for gratuitous display, but unabashed, careful of the amenities, and avowing with all the grace in him that he will be your friend if you choose to be his. If he has one defect it is a parsimony of tail, though I heard none of his thousands of admirers make that criticism; and he carries it up and out in true Arabian style. In the arena, when all of the horses came in for the general parade--the big Clydesdales first, followed by representatives of nearly every breed in the world, the procession ending with a wee Shetland, whose mistress is the little Princess Juliana of Holland--it was Shooting Star that received the most impulsive greeting--an applause of love evoked by his irresistible dearness, billowing where he passed until he completed the great circuit.

I had the assurance of others who daily haunted the Show that this triumph was a feature of every general parade; and it was then that I began to ask a certain Why? Why is the Welsh pony gifted with a symmetry that subjugates at sight, while his congeners too often show an ensemble whose mild ungainliness must be admitted by their best of friends? Why, with the hardihood of the half-wild forager, and unflagging endurance, does he display the grace and bearing that we associate with carefully tended animals of pedigree? The Exmoor and Dartmoor types only in a moderate degree show signs of high descent, and the ponies of the Fells (though I mind me well of the lovable traits of some of my neighbors among them up in the shires of Cumberland and Westmoreland) are indubitably plebian, while the Welsh pony is a patrician on his wildest hill. Even those who hold a brief for other breeds confess his superiority in points that stamp him "of the blood." Parkinson proclaims him the perfect pony of the kingdom, and Lord Lucas, who for some years has been engaged in improving the New Forest pony, says, after an excursion in search of desirable strains to introduce into the Forest, that he found the best ponies in Wales; and he has confirmed his judgment by the purchase of "Daylight," a young Carmarthenshire pony of prepotent promise, for alliance with the Forest stock.

The breeder of Daylight seems particularly able in adding "lights" to a constellation whose first impulse to shine came from Dyoll Starlight, a sire who cannot be accused of any desire to hide his light under a bushel. It gleams not merely from one hill, but a hundred, and the breeder so happy as to own a bit of this strain rarely fails to advertise his good fortune in the name he gives to his prize. The result is a confusion of Starlights, Greylights--even Skylights!--in repeated series distinguished as Starlight II, III, etc., until the dazzled investigator prays for an eclipse. I take it, however, as a hopeful sign that one of the latest comers to the circle is yclept Radium. But to know these ponies makes one lenient to the pride that clings to the family name. I send you a photograph of Searchlight, a daughter of Dyoll Starlight, and granddaughter of Merlyn Myddfai, who was sold into Australia. She is a sister to Daylight, bought by Lord Lucas, and also to Sunlight, a three-year old pony mare, undoubtedly with a scintillating future, who will be exhibited for the first time at Swansea during the National Pony Show, whither I intend to go just to have sight of some of the exquisite young things that are springing up all over Wales since the recent awakening of Taffy the Thrifty to the fact that the pony is one of the most profitable assets of his country. The photograph of Searchlight is somewhat unfair to her beauty. The slight turn of the head coarsens the nose and widens the lower jaw with an unpatrician suggestion of which there is no hint when she is before you in vivid substance. Her brother, Greylight, poses more successfully, but I send you Searchlight also, partly because she is a lady, and of a more retired life, but mainly because she illustrates, so far as may be in a photograph, that indefinable thing called "pony character," which you will find me dilating on later. Just now I want to get back to my Why.

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