CURIOSITIES: THE HORSE IS a noble animal, fine to look upon. But for me it is not to be sat upon. I gingerly swung myself into the saddle of my first mount, made the right noises to get the beast going, and then the saddle slipped, my head hit a gatepost, and that was that. Do horses laugh? I think so, or at least they snicker. This one did, leering at me as I dabbed the welling blood from my brow. I later discovered that it was called Calamity Jane.
It bared its teeth in a triumphant rictus as its owner whipped my foot from the stirrup and hauled me up. He ran a country pub in Yorkshire and had a huge grey as his particular mount, and sometimes, when the fancy took him, he would head off up wide Wensleydale or steep Swaledale and be gone for days.
The local gamekeeper was alerted by folk up the dale when the rider was on his way back, and would bed down in the stable so that he might untie the man from his horse - for the fellow's farmer friends had lashed him, profoundly drunk, to the saddle and the grey would bear him steadily and loyally home. There were nights when his singing could be heard the length of the dale.
This rider was a man thoroughly versed in country matters and sports, and he showed me an odd poem he'd culled from Illustrated Rambles from Hipperholme to Tong (they're small towns between Halifax and Bradford) published in 1904. Horse dealers or "coupers" would gather in the village of Wibsey near Bradford, where, it was said, they "were noted for the following characteristics: 1st - They liked good whiskey (and they got it); 2nd - They dearly enjoy a good feed; 3rd - They like Brass, and enjoy good company."
The poem is called To Tell the Age of a Horse.
To tell the age of any horse, inspect the lower jaw, of course,
The six front teeth the tale will tell, Ane every doubt and fear dispel.
Two middle 'nippers' you behold
Before the colt is two years old;
Before eight weeks two more will come;
Eight months the 'corners' cut the gum.
The outside grooves will disappear
From middle two in just one year,
In two years from the second pair;
In three the 'corners', too, are bare.
At two, the middle 'nippers' drop;
At three, the second pair can't stop;
When four years old, the third pair goes;
At five, a full new set he shows.
The deep black spots will pass from view
At six years from the middle two;
The second pair at seven years;
At eight, the spot each 'corner' clears.
From middle 'nippers', upper jaw,
At nine the black spots will withdraw,
The second pair at ten are white;
Eleven finds the 'corners' light.
As time goes on, the horsemen know
The oval teeth three-sided grow;
They longer get, project before,
Till twenty, when we know no more.
Nothing there about them laughing, or sneering. But I know they do.