390 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



unfortunately Giraldus gives no description of the Irish horses, 

 they evidently had already that docility which stamped the 

 Irish Hobbie of the sixteenth century, and which, as we have 

 already seen, characterizes the horses of North Africa both in 

 ancient as well as modern times, their descendants in Spain 

 from before the Christian era, and their Eastern progeny, the 

 Arabian. That these Irish horses were already known as 

 Hobbies in the century when Giraldus wrote is proved by a 

 Scotch document 1 which gives the number of equi discooperti 

 qui dicuntur hobelarii (i.e. Hobbies) among the Irish troops 

 serving in Scotland in 1296. These Irish horses may well 

 have been largely mixed with North African blood derived 

 from Spain many centuries earlier than the Tudor period. 

 The trade between the south and west of Ireland with Spain 

 and southern France goes back into a very remote period, even 

 one type of Irish Bronze Age axe differing from any found in 

 Britain, but being similar to one in Spain. 



Nor is this view unsupported by representations of the 

 medieval Irish horse. On the contrary the beautiful remains 

 of Irish art, unrivalled in their kind, furnish many representa- 

 tions of horses, both ridden and driven under chariots. Thus 

 the famous North cross at Clonmacnoise, King's Co., bears on 

 its plinth two panels, in the uppermost of which are three 

 horsemen, in the lower two chariots and horses. The chariots 

 (which contain men) have eight-spoked wheels. Another famous 

 cross which, like that of Clonmacnoise, may be assigned to the 

 tenth century, still stands in the street of the town of Kells, 

 co. Meath, and exhibits horsemen (Fig. 109) 2 in the panel on one 

 side of the plinth, whilst the other panel shows a hunting scene. 



The horses on both these monuments, although executed 

 in a material not particularly well adapted for delicacy of 

 delineation, are smart, well-bred animals, tallying completely 



1 J. ' Stevenson, Documents illustrative of the history of Scotland (1870), 

 Vol. ii. p. 125. 



2 My illustration is from a photograph of the original by Mr R. Welsh of 

 Belfast, well known for his photographs of Irish antiquities. Both the crosses 

 are well figured in Henry O'Neill's Sculptured Crosses of Ancient Ireland (Lon- 

 don, 1857), pp. 11, 22, and 33. O'Neill shows on the Kells cross four horsemen, 

 two of whom carry round shields. 



