THE ORKNEYS TO THURSO. 29 



his dun, brown, and mealy-grey dames are Lady 

 Grey and the aged piebald Lochelia, with her middle 

 close to the ground. Duke, Jolly, Duchess, and 

 Barney are not in the troop. Those pretty brown 

 pairs do the phaeton work ; and the run from Worces- 

 ter to Malvern, nine miles in the hour, is quite 

 within their scope. Colonel Balfour, grandfather to 

 the present proprietor of Shapinsey, began pony 

 breeding at the end of the last century. He im- 

 proved the form ; and when the colours did not come 

 as they expected, the natives, with a few drops of 

 whisky to quicken them, laid the entire blame on 

 Spunky, the Orcadian water kelpie. He was black, 

 say they, arid the sire of some of the finest original 

 ponies of the islands ; and if he was disturbed in his 

 courtships, he vanished under the waves in a mass of 

 blue flame. The Hellersay stock have been quite 

 able to dispense with him, as North Unst has 

 furnished them with some of its choicest jewels. 

 Brisk, the chesnut, dates very far back, and headed 

 the Balfour stud for well nigh thirty years, and 

 his brother Swift was in the flesh for nearly 

 forty-six. 



The piebald Cameron cost 24, and although he 

 rather spoilt the colours, he introduced a'better shape, 

 a smaller head, and decidedly truer action. Odin, 

 of the same colour, also kept up the form ; Thor got 

 them nearly all skewballs like himself; and Lord 

 Minimus was a grey, and the sire of grey beauties. 

 They are shifted from island to island as the grass 



