THE HORSE AS AN EPIC CHARACTER 



ciently commonplace; yet the famous Bayard and the 

 Persian Rakhsh were obtained in this fashion. In the 

 latter case there is a redeeming note of mystery. Rustem 

 asks the dealer what are the origin and the price of the 

 animal. The dealer, who does not recognize the hero, 

 answers evasively: " Many rumors are current about 

 this horse. So far as we know, he has no master; we 

 call him Rakhsh the steed of Rustem.''^ When the dealer 

 does find out to whom he has been talking, he gives the 

 horse to Rustem, and will accept no payment in return. 

 Evidently we have here what we meet with in a number 

 of other places: a certain horse destined for a certain 

 hero. So marked is this relation at times that horse 

 and hero are born at the same moment. But there was 

 something else interesting in the horse dealer's remarks 

 — the '' many rumors " he refers to. One of them I 

 think is to be found in a Kurdish tale published by Prym 

 and Socin. It gives an account of the origin of the 

 animal, which Firdusi, the Persian epic poet, may have 

 known and yet hesitated to use. Rustem, requiring a 

 horse, is told by the Creator to go to the seashore, where 

 he must dig a pit, enter it, and cover himself with straw. 

 At daybreak a horse will rise out of the sea. Rustem is 

 to call out to him his own name and that of his father. 

 The horse will then be his. The water horse, therefore, 

 so common in the folklore of the Kelts, of Germany, 

 Bohemia, and other countries, appears in the epic. 

 Ridgeway, who published a work on the horse not long 

 ago, says it is evident that the horses of the Irish hero 



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