PROCOPIUS; A MISSTATEMENT 89 



knew when he tells us that about the year 631 

 a.d. "the English first began to saddle horses," 

 while many of the horsemen who opposed the 

 incursion of the hordes of Romans are known 

 beyond dispute to have been mounted on saddled 

 horses. 



Mention of the mare, Alborak, called also 

 Borak, must be made — though only a mythical 

 animal — as she was said to have carried 

 Mahomet from earth into the seventh heaven. 

 "She was milk-white," we are told, like Fadda, 

 the mule, with "the wings of an eagle and a 

 human face with a horse's cheeks," while " every 

 pace she took was equal to the farthest range 

 of human sight." In Arabic the word means 

 literally "the lightning." 



Procopius, who wrote in the sixth century 

 a.d., is looked upon generally as a dependable 

 authority, and probably upon most occasions 

 he wrote the truth. Yet he would seem to have 

 made one or two rather grave misstatements 

 when speaking of the horse in its relation to the 

 history of his time. 



In an interesting way he describes certain stir- 

 ring scenes in the war between the Angli who 

 had settled in Britain and the Varni — the Werini 

 of the "Leges Barbarorum "—whose region lay 

 chiefly east of the Rhine. The direct cause of 

 this war was the positive refusal of the king of 

 the Varni to marry an Anglian princess to 



