THE HORSE AS AN EPIC CHARACTER 



small part of its bulk to folklore and mythology. Then, 

 too, our particular epic may be in a transition stage 

 between epic and romance. 



Still, in spite of all this, it would not be surprising if 

 we had nothing but a collection of descriptive phrases 

 as splendid as the famous one in Job, or pretty stories 

 illustrating the intelligence of the horse — the kind of 

 an anthology one might glean from newspapers, or 

 farming and sporting journals. One finds something of 

 this sort in the Arabian epic romance of Antar. The 

 Arab horse is famous throughout the world, and all 

 know well enough the brilliant audacity of oriental 

 imagination; yet Antar^s steed, almost as celebrated 

 as Antar himself, is, apart from his beauty, a very 

 commonplace animal. Now, the epic horses of which I 

 wish to treat belong to quite a different category. I 

 hope to prove that many of them have as just a claim 

 as their masters to be called heroic. 



In showing what the epic horse is, I shall trace his 

 career from the moment he appears on the scene to the 

 moment he disappears. I advisedly refrain from using 

 the words " birth " and " death, ^' because, as is the 

 case with some of his masters, his beginning and end are 

 not infrequently shrouded in mystery. First of all, he 

 comes into his master's possession in a number of ways. 

 He may be a gift, a part of booty in war, or he may have 

 been handed down from father to son. The horse of the 

 Russian Dobrynya Nikitich served several generations. 

 Occasionally he is bought from a dealer. This is suffi- 



"3 



