THE SPUR. 289 



land until the reign of Henry VIL, we have good 

 reason to believe ; and in Ireland, from the ab- 

 sence of any representation of it on their coins, it 

 may be conjectured, not till many years subsequent 

 to that period. The woman's saddle, called by us 

 the side-saddle, first appeared in Richard the Se- 

 cond's time, when his queen rode upon one ; but 

 from the pictures of men and women's saddles used 

 in England's early days, we find they were miser- 

 able apologies for our modern saddles. Indeed, at 

 the present time. Great Britain is the only coun- 

 try in which proper saddles are made. Hunting 

 saddles should have their pannels well beaten and 

 brushed to prevent sore backs ; and no sportsman, 

 even if light, should use a short saddle — ^. ^., under 

 sixteen inches from pummel to cantle. 



The antiquity of the spur does not appear to 

 have much excited curiosity ; but the use of this 

 instrument was known in the very earliest age of 

 which we have any satisfactory history. At least 

 we may presume that it was so, from the Hebrew- 

 word signifying horseman {Pavash^) appearing to 

 be derived from a Hebrew root signifying to prick 

 or spur. So at least says Buxtorff ; and he adds, 

 that the horseman, or spurrer, was so called on this 

 account : Eques quod equum calcarihus pungat ; and 

 he quotes Eben Ezra in confirmation of his opin- 

 ion : A calcarihus quw sunt in pedihus ejus. Spurs 

 occur but seldom on seals, or other antiques, in the 

 eleventh century, but in the thirteenth they are 

 more frequent. As it is necessary that a horse 

 should obey the leg as well as the hand, all mili- 

 2b 



