94 THE ARAB THE HORSE OF THE FUTURE 



before the latter half of the nineteenth century, 

 frequent reference is made to the jennet. For 

 instance, Sir Walter Scott in ' Ivanhoe ' speaks of a 

 lay-brother leading for the use of Prior Aymer one 

 of the most handsome Spanish jennets ever bred in 

 Andalusia, ' which,' he says, 'merchants used at that 

 time to import, with great trouble and risk, for the 

 use of persons of wealth and distinction'; and he 

 describes the horses of the Eastern attendants of 

 Brian du Bois Guilbert as of Saracen origin, and 

 consequently of Arabian descent, with fine, slender 

 limbs and small fetlocks, and as forming a marked 

 contrast with the heavy Flanders horses for mount- 

 ing the men-at-arms. Sir Walter Scott knew better 

 than most men in England what was the history 

 and what was the belief of the age about which 

 he wrote (the end of the twelfth century), and 

 would not have been guilty of an anachronism, and 

 his references show the belief in the Arab which 

 existed at the period he refers to. The Crusaders 

 were men of war — had founded their belief on 

 actual experience. They did not want horses to 

 ride and show off in Hyde Park. If the native 

 breeds had been as good as the jennet, we should 

 not have heard so much of the latter, either in Spain 

 or in England, nor would they have brought them 

 to England at great trouble and risk. 



The ' Imperial Dictionary ' gives the same meaning 

 of jennet, 'A small Spanish horse, properly "Genet,"' 

 and gives a quotation from Prescott : ' They were 



