62 White Horse Jottings. 



considering" that in the vast majority of ancient coins the former is 

 the position shewn, I was at first inclined to fancy that this ir- 

 responsible individual must have absolutely destroyed the old horse 

 before beginning to cut the new one. I had, indeed, ventured to 

 state the question even more strongly than this, and in my paper at 

 Trowbridge I said that in no British coin did a horse ever face to 

 dexter. But it was pointed out to me some years ago that this was 

 a mistake, and I have subsequently seen in the British Museum 

 several coins showing horses thus facing, though they are in an 

 exceedingly small minority. 



I imagine, therefore, that King Alfred did, for some reason or 

 other, cut his horse in this unusual position ; and that the fact of 

 its being shewn in the normal one in Gough's plate is due to the 

 carelessness of the engraver, who simply re-produced upon his block 

 the drawing sent to him, not thinking that such a detail as the 

 right or left facing of a turf figure was a matter of the least moment. 

 And I am the more inclined to this view as I have, over and over 

 again, in engravings both old and new, seen drivers represented 

 with the reins in their right hands and the whips in their left ; or 

 a troop of cavalry boldly sweeping on in line, every one of whom 

 held his weapon after the fashion of that renowned warrior, Caius 

 Mutius the left-handed, 



Nor, indeed, are engravers the only folk that seem to be unable 

 to distinguish between their right hands and their left. There is a 

 remarkably pretty picture in one of the art exhibitions in London 

 this year representing a mediaeval company of ladies and gentlemen 

 going out a-hawking, and all of them without exception carrying 

 their hawks on the right wrist ! Now this is, unfortunately, an 

 absolutely impossible position, for the left wrist, being protected by 

 a gauntlet, while the right is not, is the only one upon which the 

 hawk could possibly be carried. A wrist less strongly guarded 

 would be scratched and torn by the bird's talons to the very bone. 

 And accordingly you may have noted that amongst the innumerable 

 instances in which we find a human hand or arm represented in 

 heraldry, the solitary exception to the rule that this must be the 

 right limb is when a hawk is shewn to be thereon carried. I presume, 



