Gerald Hausman - The Mythology of Horses: Horse Legend and Lore Throughout the Ages

Copyright 2003 by Gerald and Loretta Hausman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com

THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Design by Cynthia Dunne

Art by Mariah Fox

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hausman, Gerald
The mythology of horses : horse legend and lore throughout the ages /
Gerald & Loretta Hausman.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Horse breeds. 2. HorsesFolklore. 3. HorsesMythology. 4. Horses in literature. I. Hausman, Loretta. II. Title.

SF291.H35 2002

398.245296655dc21 2001052520

eISBN: 978-0-307-82475-2

v3.1_r1

Thanks to Tesuque, New Mexico, horse handler, wrangler, and team driver Sid Hausman, whose forty years of experience in the horse trade attest to an uncommon knowledge of western horse lore. As a former film wrangler and team driver for Warner Brothers, he acquired a lot of practical experience with all kinds of equines. His interviews and stories are in the chapters on the mule, the Appaloosa, the mustang, the Tennessee walking horse, the Morgan, and the Belgian.

Karen D. Rickenbach helped us with research and with the chapter on the Connemara pony, and we wish to extend to her our deepest appreciation. Dianne Tidwell gave us insight and research assistance on the Morgan and the paso fino. Hannah Hausman and Grace Pedalino contributed material on various breeds. As always, special thanks to the staff of the Pine Island Public Library. The drawings in the book are by illustrator Mariah Fox; we are grateful to her for her contributions to this and our other mythology books.

The horse, like the dog and the cat, has been an importantif sometimes reluctantcounselor of compassion, kindness, cleverness, courage, and the art of four-footed deliverance since the earliest times with human beings.

But whereas the dog and the cat have been agreeable bedfellows, so to speak, and secret sharers of our soul, the horsein size alonehas kept her distance from us. Yet apart from humankind, the horse was no less than what she has always beenan independent wonder, an order of being altogether different in shape and psyche from ourselves.

Or was she?

In the horse we can see the sacred history of ourselves, our passage through time as warrior, priest, healer, wrecker of worlds, and builder of dreams. We can see it all in the horses eye; in the prism of her pupil is our beginning and, perhaps, our end.

Truly, she contains the cosmos of collective memory.

In her magnitude, there is a vast repository of wisdom.

In the magic whorls of her brain is encoded the course of humankinds folly, fantasy, determination, failure, and ingenuity.

Canine mythology explains that God, seeing Man so feeble, gave him Dog so that he wouldnt be so miserable.

Feline mythology suggests that we couldnt see Godbut we could see, and worship, Cat.

Equine mythology says that Man was once Horse. Naturally, that is not the end of the story.

The five-thousand-year cycle of equine myths shows that when a human becomes one with a horse, what transpires is just as Shakespeare remarked,

more than one,

And yet not many.

What is it, then?

For lack of a better word, magic.

The cat and the dog got us safely down the path, but the horse took us through the hedge and out into the gloried and storied magic wood. In going off on her back, we discovered, however, that the thing we sought was already with us: It was Horse herself.

The mythology of the horse is, in fact, this ancient wild ride on the back of that old, familiar mare of the night, Nightmare. A gallop through the centuries of mysticism, alchemy, flight, and fable teaches us that the mount is seldom ennobled by the rider, but its almost always the other way around.

As horsemenwhether Don Quixote, Don Juan, or Jeanne dArcthe human in us rises to a greater sense of self and is indeed bettered and brightened by virtue of the horses dignity and equanimity. In this instance, we have only to remember Comanche, the sole survivor of the Seventh Cavalry, that singular, historic horse that survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, standing faithfully beside his fallen man days after the last bullet had been fired.

The oral literature of the equine takes us astride into our own dim past and shows us our darker self. Yet its also true that on horseback we can see humanity emergenot always as a self-defeated warrior with a sword, but as an invincible warrior with a dream.

On horsebackso say our mythswe shall live forever.

Equine tales remind us to let go of the reins, and fly!

For it is then, in that instant of letting go, that we are finally freed of our burden to enter our destiny, that which is indivisible from that cosmic horse. Long ago, mythology says, we were once joined in bone and sinew, in spirit and flesh to all that is equine.

In the long agojust a moment agowe were born in the body of a horse. Big-hooved and bighearted, we trod upon the Milky Way, kicking hot sparks at the cold moon.

Moments ago, we were four-footed gods.

ARABIAN

he Arabian horse came out of the great deserts of the East, but equine experts do not know precisely where any more than etymologists know the origin of the word Arab, which remains a mystery to this day. Yet over the centuries the stunning desert horse and the nomadic Bedu have become nearly synonymous.

Indeed, the Arab horse was hot-blooded; so was her master. The horse was the wind, and her master put a bridle to it.

As it says in the Koran, the Bedu horseman was a refined instrument of war, a wielder of death to all infidels; By the snorting war steeds, which strike fire with their hoofs as they gallop to the raid at dawn and with a trail of dust split apart a massed army; man is ungrateful to his Lord! To this he himself shall bear witness (The Chargers [100:17]).

The great horse probably existed on the Arabian Peninsula around 2500 B.C. The mystery of the Arabians origin is certified by the extreme aridity of the desert climate; she couldnt have lived in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula without the aid of people.

Where did she come from?