180 



THE HOESE AND ITS RIDER. 



[1853. 



dozen of 13, only linger in some rural corners; the cwt. of 

 112 lbs. is fast giving way before the legitimate claimant of that 

 title, and the Bank of England has just taken one important 

 step, which will be followed by many othere, in announcing their 

 intention to use hereafter only weights which are decimal multi- 

 ples of the Troy grain. 



These facts give us hope that some day or other our children's 

 children may be saved the irksome labour that our childhood 

 underwent, and an arithmetic book of the present day be regarded 

 by them as a useless curiosity. 



Tbe IIoTSS and its Rider. 



BY J. BAILKT TURNER, ESQ., QUEBEC. 



It is thought that wild hoi-ses existed in Europe, but that 

 among the Celtic tribes the domesticated horse was not known 

 until about the period that the Celtic-Scythian Gauls ascended 

 the Danube and crossed the Rhino, and that it was inti-oduced 

 into England by the Phoenicians, who were the means of bringing 

 many Eastern customs and commodities into the land with which 

 they traded. Now we know that the Celtic tribes in Fi-auce 

 ■were hoi-semen, for Pausanius tells that thiy used in their armies 

 the trimarkesec, or well-known triiial ari-angemeut of a knight 

 and his two squires, while in Britain, at the time of Cjesar's inva- 

 sion, the natives fought in chaj-iots ; the Gallic Celts therefore 

 followed more the custom of Northern Asia, and the British Celts 

 that of Southern Asia. 



It has been commonly believed and asserte 1, that astronomical 

 observations were firet made in Egypt, and that there the Z(xlia- 

 cal belt wa? divided into its twelve horees; but it has now been 

 satisfactoi'ily shown, that the zodiacal constellations w^ere named 

 in some country more rortberly either than India or Egypt, 

 therefore before the civilization of either, or the introduction of 

 the domesticated horse ; and that as in the houses of the sun, the 

 horse is not placed, we may take that as an indication that that 

 animal was already used as a type of the moving power of the 

 sun, and as a personification of that luminar}"^, by the nation to 

 whom we may attribute the division of the zodiac ; some riding 

 nation of Central Asia. Among all the riding nations the horse, 

 or the name of the horse, was used to express beauty, power and 

 exaltation ; and in the earliest annals of the Persians, the various 

 names of that animal are not only titles of the sun, but of kings 

 and great lords : as Var, in Varanes ; Phar, in Pharnabasus ; 

 Asp, in Lorasp. The same practice prevailed among the Gothic 

 nations, where we find Hengist, Horsa, Uppa, and Bayard, all 

 names of the horse, applied to princes and chiefs. It is probable 

 that superstitious veneration was first applied to the hoi-se in 

 Egypt, Arabia, and the neighbouring countries, at about the 

 period of the fii-st Scythic invasions; for we find tliat some of the 

 tribps of idiilaters by whom the Jews were surrounded in Pales- 

 tine worshipped gods in the form of horses. The king-s of Judah 

 themselves were often polluted by this worship, for we read that 

 the pious Josiah took away the horses that the kings of Judah had 

 given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord. 

 In Europe, a black horse was long considered a form of the evil 

 one. Among many of the Pagan Asiatic tribes at this day, their 

 magic ceremonies are performed with small images of hoises; 

 and the very Mahometans, to whom " the likeness of anythino- 

 that is in liea\en above, or in the earth beneath, or in the watere 

 that are undei' the earth," is an abomination, admitted a kind of 

 semi-idolatrous worehip of the hoi'ses of two of the great heroes 

 of Islam, Ilosein and Khizi'. Our own Teutonic ancestore sacri- 

 fi'.'ed horses to the suii, Ertlia, and other divinities, in their 

 tc!mj>les on the Isl.-md of Riigen. All the sun-gods, wherever 

 worshipped, by whatever ]jeople, imder whatever name, had stiuls 

 of .sacred horses, eitiier to draw their idol ch.-u'iot, oi' to bo lo 1 in 



solemn procession before its shrine ; such were those of the Per- 

 sian Ozmusd, snow-white, and bred for the service of the temple 

 in Cilicia. In every temple of the sun, in e\ery saereil grove, 

 from the Baltic to the Ganges, there weTC stalls for the holy 

 hoi-ses. The horse has been everywhere the type of victory, the 

 national emblem, the standard of battle-neither by the exhibition 

 of its skull, or its tail, or by the whole image of the animal. Who 

 has not heard of the white horse embroidered on the banners of 

 our Saxon ancestors? To this day, once in each veai', the whole 

 peasantry of the neighbourhood meet to clear the weeds and 

 grass from the sui'face of a huge white horee, extending over more 

 than an acre, cut deeply into the face of a chalk hill, near Let- 

 combe Regis in Berkshire, supposed to have been so cut in com- 

 memoration of a great victory gained by Alfreil the Great over 

 the Danes, under Otfa, in the year 871. 



" Carved rudely on tlie pendant sod is seen. 

 The snow-white courser stretching o'er the green; 

 Tlie antique figure scan with cxu'ious eye. 

 The glorious monument of victory. 

 Then England reared lier long dejected head. 

 Then Alfred triumphed and invaders blea." 



Other traditions, however, affirm that this singular antiquarian 

 relic is of much older date than Alfred, and was intended to 

 represent the white-horse of Hengist; to this day, the tail of a 

 white horse, with the ends of the hair dyed red, and fixed to the 

 end of a lance, is the standard of the Mahometan cavalry : it has 

 replaced over all Islam the white banners of the Ommiades and 

 the black ones of the Abassides. 



The great object hitherto has been to ascertain the original 

 habits of the horse in its wild state, the race of mankind by 

 whom it was first subjugated to man's use, and its probable fii-st 

 introduction to what are commonly known as civilized countries. 

 I shall now proceed to notice a few other facts with respect to 

 this animal, as known to and used by the ancients, and trace its 

 history to our own time. Pi'oceeding to other coimtries in the 

 neighbourhood of Egypt and Arabia, we learn from Herodotus 

 that the Babylonians had vast numbei's of horses. He speaks of 

 a certain satrap, or lord, of their country, by name Tritanta^chmes, 

 as owning, in addition to his war horses, 800 stallions and 18,000 

 mares. The same author also notices the numerous cavalry of the 

 Bactrians and Caspians, and tells us, that though the quadrupeds 

 and birds of what is now British India far exceeded in size those 

 of other countries, the horse was an exception, for it was far sur.' 

 passed by a peculiar breed in Media named the Nisean. Ten 

 horses of this breed, superbly caparisoned and of extraordinary 

 size, drew the chariot containing the idol of Jupiter, in the traiii 

 of Xerxes during his exjjedition into Europe. At this daj' the 

 horee of Hindostan, ofthe native breeds, is a very inferior animal; 

 and we learn from Col. Sykes, that the onl\' firm, well-made 

 hoi-ses in the country are the result of repented crossing with the 

 best blood of Arabia and Persia : and latterly the imjioi-tation of 

 English blood has done much to improve the race. Major 

 Gwatkin, the Superintendent of the East India Conqiany's 

 breeding stud in Northern India, describes the original Indian 

 mare, as very inferior in shape, and generally a jaih; with narrow 

 chest, drooping mean cpiarters, and if above fnuricen and a half 

 hands high, much too leggy. Just such as Major Gwatkin des- 

 cribes them, are the sculptured hoi'ses wherevor met with in 

 India, showing that what the native horse is now, it h.-is been 

 from the earliest times. It d.ies not appear that the lialiylonians, 

 any more than the Persians ami Greeks, at or about the time of 

 Homer, were accustomed to ride on horeeback. All tlie heroes 

 of the Iliad are depicteil as fighting in chariots; and chariots 

 alone are found sculptured on the basso-relievos of Pei'sopoliF. 

 Late discoveries in the ruins of ancient Ninevah lead ns to sup- 

 pose, that the Medes were accustomed to ride on horseback at a 

 much cariier period; fur Mr. Rich speaks of a ba<so-relievo of a 



