454 



THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE 



[CH. 



He adds that once only had he seen " as many as five 

 distinct stripes extending from the dorsal band across the 

 back." 



First let us notice that stripes are in Norway, as in 

 Kattywar, the marks of good breeding. Bnt, as in the latter 

 case, we know absolutely that the native horses have been 

 saturated with Arab blood, the stripes in Norwegian ponies 

 may be similarly explained. We have traced the improve- 

 ment of the breeds of horses in Upper Europe from the second 

 century B.C., when the Gauls began to import from the south 

 a superior tj^pe of animal, and we saw that by Caesar's time 

 Gaul was well supplied with southern horses. We also ascribed 

 the superiority of the horses of the Tencteri, the only German 

 tribe of the time of Tacitus which appears to have been well- 

 mounted, to their close proximity to the Gauls. It is thus 

 clear that by the second century A.D. a good deal of Libyan 

 blood had made its way into Central and Upper Europe. It is 

 not then surprising if by the tenth century excellent horses 

 imbued with southern blood were found in Norway and Iceland. 

 We have seen that the best horses mentioned in Burnt Njal 

 are a chestnut, a brown, and two dun-coloured horses with 

 black stripes down their backs, these last " were the best steeds 

 to ride in all the country round." Here, again, the combina- 

 tion of black stripes with special excellence points to the same 

 explanation as that given for the striped horses of Kattywar. 

 If the stripes were but a characteristic feature of the dun stock 

 of Northern Europe, why should horses of this description be 

 superior to other duns, both in ancient and modern times ? 

 On the other hand, as soon as we recognize that the stripes are 

 due to the presence of North African blood, the cause of the 

 superiority of such animals is at once obvious. This is 

 fully confirmed by Olaus Magnus, who says (p. 348) that the 

 light dun is especially the livery of the wild horses of Europe, 

 and that horses of this colour were always the worst (a view 

 held by Virgil man}' centuries earlier), but that the be.st of 

 them were those with a dorsal stripe. But since dun without 

 stripes was the colour of the unimproved wild or feral horses of 

 Europe, and the best duns whether in medieval Iceland and 



