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Always stalking around the edges of Ferrebeekeeper we find those enigmatic horselords of the ancient steppe, the Scythians! The classical Scythians were nomadic people (or peoples) who dominated the Pontic steppe between 700 and 300 BC. Since they existed just beyond the outermost fringes of Greek civilization (and since they were charismatic yet completely un-Greek) they loomed large in the ancient Hellenic imagination–and cast their thrall over all of the subsequent scholars who have looked to ancient Greece for inspiration and explanations. Thus we have weird stories of Hercules (the ultimate Greek hero) sleeping with the ultimate monster to beget the Scythians, or tales of how the Scythians were the ancestors of the Scottish (although I guess all human beings are pretty closely related). Anyway, for the Scythians, none of this mattered–what mattered were their beloved horses, which were always at the center of their rituals, trading, fighting, and just about every other part of their lives (indeed it seems like domesticated horses might have come from the part of the world which became Scythia). Thus, today, I wanted to show you a historical recreation of how Scythian horses were arrayed for rituals or for battle (see the image at top). We have found ample Scythian equestrian gear preserved in the old cold barrows which dot the steppe. Recently some Scythian enthusiasts reconstructed how it might have looked with original colors on a steppe horse of yore. Obviously this equipage is not stupendously practical, but it truly is stupendous! I am going to have to look around to see if I can find some more artworks of Scythian horses!
Hunter/Jumper (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
I don’t know what happened but the drawings in my little book seem to have a country/horsey theme lately. Above is an equestrian jumping over some weird antiques in the middle of a nebula.
Provincial (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
Here are some down-home characters (maybe corporate mascots?) annoying a hard-working farm woman and a quail.
The Gate (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink)
This is a vignette sketch of the eminent bar in Park Slope.
Dawn Horse, Culture Vulture, Doughnut Man, & Princess (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, Colored Pencil and ink)
I guess this is about unwholesome sugary treats maybe? Frankly I have no idea–I am as surprised and perplexed as the vulture, however I like the expressions on the animals. The dawn horse looks so pleased. They usually look scared.
Horse Treats (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, Colored Pencil and Ink)
This horse just looks pleased to be presented with such an array of treats. I think that gray block is a salt lick. I need to draw more horses. They are pretty but they are not an easy subject!
The most popular post in Ferrebeekeeper’s history was about leprechauns. Thanks to popular folklore (and marketing shenanigans), leprechauns are currently imagined as small drunk men in Kelly green frockcoats who sell sweetened cereal. Yet the silly little men come from a deep dark well of legends which reaches far into the pre-Christian era. The really ancient stories of Irish myth are ineffable and haunting: they stab into the heart like cold bronze knives.
Once there was a hero-bard, Oisín, who performed numerous deeds of valor and fought in many savage battles. Oisín was mortal and he lived in Ireland long before Christianity came with its doctrine of a blissful fantasy afterlife. To Oisín’s mind, to die was to cease being forever–except perhaps in songs and ambiguous stories. Yet some things are more important than death, and Oisín was always brave and loyal (although since he was also a poet he did tend to play moving laments upon his harp).
One day, as he hunted in the greenwood, Oisín was spied by Niamh. Some say she was the daughter of the queen of the ocean and others claim she was a fairy princess. Whatever the case, she was one of the Aes Sidhe, an immortal being who was merely passing through Ireland. When she saw Oisín, she recognized the endless sadness of mortalkind and the doom all men bear, but she also saw his noble heart, his loyalty, and his courage. Unlike the deathless men of fairykind his bravery was real. After all, what meaning does bravery have when there are no stakes?
Niamh revealed herself to Oisín: she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She had hair like dancing fire and eyes like emeralds and the stain of age was nowhere upon her since she was from a land beyond the shadow of decay. Niamh offered Oisín an apple and then she offered him more. The two fell in love.
Niamh had a white stallion who could gallop upon the waves of the Western Sea. Together the two mounted the horse and they rode upon the whitecaps into the sunset until they came to her homeland, Tír na nÓg, the land of the forever young. There among the perfumed gardens and unearthly music, the lovers lived forever afterwards in perfect happiness…
Except that Oisín was not perfectly happy. His heart was loyal and even among the wonders of fairyland he began to pine for his family. For three years he stayed in Niamh’s lovely arms, but more and more he begged her to be allowed one last trip home. In the thrall of love’s enchantment he had left his family and his knights behind. He needed to say his farewells so that he could stay forever with Niamh without regrets.
Reluctantly Niamh lent her stallion to Oisín. As she bathed her lover in kisses, she made him promise that no matter what, he would not step off the horse. One day only would he tarry ahorse in Ireland to say his valedictions and explain himself, then he would ride the tireless steed back across the sea to Otherland and Niamh. Oisín rode east, but when he reached Eire, everything was strange: new villages had grown on the coast and peculiar priests passed among the people waving crosses. His town was alien and he knew no one. Among a field of hoary lichstones he remembered an ancient myth and realized the terrible truth—for every year he spent Tír na nÓg, a hundred had passed in the mortal realm. Everyone he knew was dead and gone. In a fit of horror and grief he tumbled from the white horse. As he hit the ground he immediately began to wither from the long years. The village folk were amazed at the howling old man who stumbled crying among them. As they watched, Oisín aged before their eyes into a wizened corpse and then into dust which blew away to the sea.
Happy Chinese New Year! Last year was the reptilian year of the snake, but this year things get all mammalian again—and what a magnificent mammal! Lunar Year 4711 is the year of the horse!
Tang Dynasty Horses at the British Museum
Ferrebeekeeper has shied away from writing about horses because the majestic animals have played such an important role in military and economic history (also I don’t want a bunch of patricians shouting at me about the finer details of fetlocks and snaffle bits), but, since it is now the year of the horse, I would be remiss not to post some equine highlights from those 4711 years of Chinese culture. Horses were (probably) domesticated in next door Kazakhstan about five thousand years ago, and they have had an unparalleled position in Chinese culture. Not only is Chinese mythology replete with horses, throughout the entire history of the Han people, the great perissodactyls have been pivotal as labor, military mounts, transportation, pets, status symbols, and food.
A Cermaic Horse from the Tang dynasty (618 AD-907 AD)
There are numerous artistic masterpieces which celebrate this long alliance of man and mount. From ancient Zhou bronzeware vessels, to terracotta tombware from the Han dynasty, to deft Sung dynasty brush paintings, to elaborate Quing jade carvings. However I have chosen to celebrate the year of the horse with a gallery of earthenware porcelain statues from the far-flung Tang Empire (which stretched farthest towards what is now Kazakhstan, the original home of domesticated horses). The Tang was an overland dynasty which looked west along the Silk Road for trade ties, artistic inspiration, and conquest. It was an era of cavalry patrols, mounted merchants, and riders of all sorts.
Tang dynasty Ceramic Horse
Tang Horse
The Tang dynasty was also an era when porcelain glazes grew in color, depth, and complexity—yet the calligraphic exactitude of Ming glazes was still unknown. These sculptures each seem like a perfect depiction of a proud horse simultaneously coupled with an abstract painting of brown, yellow, orange, and green. What could be a better metaphor for a new year?
A contemporary knock-off of a Tang Horse
Hopefully you will enjoy these images as you go about your New Year’s celebrations! Start a cultural dialogue with the local constabulary by lighting off some red fireworks! Enjoy “Buddha’s Delight” (a traditional New Year’s Dish made of black algae). Pack some decorative red envelopes full of cash and give them to your loved ones (or your favorite eclectic blogger!). But as you go about your new year celebrations keep the horse in mind (and spare a few moments of thought for the matchless artisans of the Tang Dynasty as well).
Grey Dun Icelandic Horse (Paula Jantunen)
Because of humankind’s long close association with horses, horse coloration has a very specific and complex vocabulary (as any fan of wild west literature could attest). One of the most interesting horse colors is grullo a dun color characterized by gray body hair. Grullo gray can be either tan gray or mouse colored.
A grullo horse
Grullo horses have bodies which are lighter in hue than their tails and manes. They also often have primitive markings such as stripes, spots, and stipples. Some grullo horses even have striped legs as though they were zebras or quaggas.
Cave painting of a grullo wild horse from Lascaux, France (ca 15,000-10,000 BC)
Grullo is of interest as an ancestral coloration of wild horses. The tarpan (Equus ferus ferus), an extinct subspecies of wild horse from Eurasia was believed to have grullo coloring. The last tarpan died in captivity in Russia in 1909, but mad attempts to recreate it through selective breeding have resulted in the primitive looking Heck horse (a breed of horse which tend to be grullo). Additionally many small harry northern horses like Norwegian Fjord horses and Welsh ponies tend to be grullo. Look at how cute they are!
A Heck Horse
Cordovan Penny-loafers
As is usual in New York’s wet cold winters, my favorite everyday shoes have disintegrated. They were a pair of old fashioned cordovan penny-loafers and, as I discarded them, I wondered why the lovely maroon/burgundy color is called cordovan. It turns out that the simple question has a complicated answer which winds back to late antiquity when the city of Corduba was the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior (in fact the city was initially named Kartuba by the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca). When the Roman empire broke into pieces, Hispanica Ulterior was overrun by Vandals who were subsequently defeated and replaced by Visigoths (a sequence of internecine conquests and reconquests which lasted from the 5th through the 7th centuries).
Visigoth Brooches from Southwest Spain ca. 6th century AD (in the Walters Art Museum)
The Visigoths were a branch of the Germanic tribe of Gothic people who converted to Arian Christianity (remember the heretic Arius from the story of St. Nikolaos—his theological survived in the Viisgoth kingdoms of Western Europe). The Visigoths were evidently great leatherworkers/cobblers, and they reputedly created the original cordovan leather. This did not initially refer to the color but was a special sort of extremely tough leather which was made from the flat muscle (“the shell”) of a horse’s rump. Cordovan leather was especially suited to boot toes, straps, and archery equipment—all of which had to be especially tough and thick.
Columns of the Great Mosque of Cordoba (now the Cathedral of Cordoba)
Corduba was captured by new invaders in AD 711 and became part of the Umayyad Caliphate which was run from Dasmascus, however the region broke away and became an independent emirate in AD 766. This state (named al-Andalus) subsequently grew into a powerful caliphate itself. During the 10th century, Cordoba, then known as Qurṭubah, was one of the largest and most cultured cities on Earth.
The Flag of Córdoba
In 1236, King Ferdinand III of Castile captured Qurtubah and renamed it Córdoba. Although the city declined in the Renaissance era it evidently remained famous for its leatherworks. The English first began to use the word “cordovan” to describe the oxblood color of cordovan-style leather goods in the 1920s.
Anyway, so that’s the history behind the name of the color of the shoes I just threw away. I guess they were named by Hamilcar Barca…
Hamilcar Crushing the Roman Navy and…wearing a Cordovan Color undertunic
An Inkanyamba flying prior to a storm (artist unknown)
Kindly forgive the last few weekdays without a post–I was on a winter solstice vacation from the internet. To cut through the holiday treacle, let’s concentrate on one of my favorite subjects—giant snake monsters! More specifically, after this year of horrible storms, I am writing about the fearsome inkanyamba, a mythical serpent-like being from South Africa. Inkanyambas are said to dwell in the pools beneath waterfalls. They have the bodies of great serpents and horselike heads. Inkanyambas are associated with powerful seasonal storms—particularly tornadoes. Such powerful local cyclones were thought to be caused by male inkanyambas out looking for mates.
Inkanyamba linocut by Kate Rowland
The creatures are said to live in the Pietermaritzburg area of KwaZulu-Natal . The Inkanyamba is particularly associated with the 95 meter tall (310 feet) Howick Falls, South Africa. For a while the Inkanyambas of Howick Falls even had a bit of Loch Ness Monster style fame attracting tourists, photojournalists, and cryptozoologists (insomuch as that is a real thing). Lately though, the moster is fading back to the proper realm of myth and art.
Howick Falls, South Africa
Landing horses from Australia (attributed to J. B. East ca.1834,
Watercolor on paper)
Horses are first known to have arrived in Australia in 1788. They came as part of an invasion fleet—the “first fleet,” which consisted of eleven British ships filled with marines, soldiers, “free” (but penniless) crown subjects, male and female convicts, horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, bedbugs, fleas, smallpox, and a handful of King George’s officers. Some of these various life-forms quickly escaped the hungry sweltering colony on Sydney Cove and began to alter the island continent. The first rogue horses were seen around Sydney in 1804. In subsequent years other colonists and business concerns brought yet more horses. Australians imported “Capers”, robust horses from South Africa. In the North, tiny Timor Ponies (renowned for toughness and the ability to thrive in the tropics) were purchased from Indonesia. Miners brought in hard-headed ponies from Cornwall, Wales, and Dartmoor. Wealthy squatters (land barons) brought in thoroughbreds and Arabians. Farmers brought Clydesdales and Percherons. Most of these horses ended up pulling wagons, ploughing fields, or carrying rich men on their backs—they were domestic horses doing human bidding–but a few lit out for freedom in forests and deserts which had never before known the hoof.
The result of the mixture was the “brumby”, the wild horse of Australia. In a continent where the largest native grazer was the stolid wombat, horses quickly began to thrive. In a few generations, feral horses completely adapted to the harsh arid climate of Australia. Huge herds roam the wasteland (particularly in the Australian Alps).
The Distribution of the Feral Horse in Australia According to the Department of Conservation
Thanks to natural selection, brumbies quickly reverted to the appearance of wild ancestral horses. Iliveforhorses.com describes the brumby with no particular enthusiasm:
The Brumby varies in conformation but generally has a heavy head with a short neck and back, straight shoulders, sloping quarters, and strong legs. Their shape is generally poor although the occasional one has a through back to Thoroughbred ancestry and will have some quality, especially in the head region. They can be any color and their height varies but they tend to be small.
The same website is equally censorious about brumby temperament, noting that brumbies, “are, like any feral animal, extremely difficult to capture and tame, and have rebellious and willful natures.”
Brumbies might have poor shapes and willful natures, but they have proven excellent at surviving in the wild. During the 19th century, horses were in such demand that round-ups occurred and wild brumbies were “broken” back into domestication, but as mechanization increased during the 20th century, huge herds of brumbies ran roughshod over the Australian ecosystem. Environmentalists, farmers, and politicians implemented the same solution to this problem which they had first used for the rabbit infestation—the gun. Huge numbers of brumbies were shot for meat and hide (apparently there is still a thriving horsemeat market in Europe). Others were simply left for dead, whether cleanly killed or not. Animal lovers reacted with outrage to the slaughter and have demanded more humane solutions to the brumby problem (such as round-ups or mass sterilization). Implementing these solutions has, however, proven costly (and not entirely efficacious) so the fate of great herds of brumbies has become a political wrestling match between environmentalists on one side and animal lovers on the other. Whether herds are larger or smaller, there is no way to eradicate them entirely. Horses have joined kangaroos, echidnas, koalas, platypuses, numbats, and crocodiles as one of the characteristic natives of Australia.
Brumbies in a eucalyptus forest
Spring passes by so quickly. Only a little while ago I was looking out at the March ice and wistfully writing about the redbud tree, fervently wishing it would finally awaken in crimson blooms. Now most of the glorious trees of spring have bloomed and their flowers have already fallen. The cherry blossoms have come and gone. Summer is on its way with its roses, lilies, and foxgloves, but the trees have largely finished their majestic yearly display. However “largely” does not mean entirely. Walking around my neighborhood this week I have noticed many beautiful shade trees covered with fountaining red blossoms. Since New York City has been busily planting new specimens of every sort of tree, quite a few of these pretty mystery trees are still wearing plastic labels from the nursery (sometimes it is easy to practice dendrology in the city!). It turns out this lovely tree goes by the unlovely common name “red horse chestnut.”
A Red Horse Chestnut Tree (Aseculus x carnea) in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
The red horse chestnut tree is not a chestnut tree at all: its name is due to the fact that the horse chestnuts and buckeyes (which comprise the Aesculus family) were once erroneously believed to be related to true chestnuts. The name Aesculus means “edible nuts”, but this name too is a misnomer: the nuts are slightly poisonous, containing alkaloid saponins and glucosides. In fact the red horse chestnut tree I noticed on my way to work this morning isn’t even a naturally occurring species of tree. It is a cultivar between Aesculus hippocastanum, the common horse chestnut tree of Europe, and Aesculus pavia, the red buckeye or firecracker plant—a showy native shrub of the American south.
A Horse Chestnut Tree (Aesculus hippocastanum)
The Germans have long been fans of Aesculus pavia, the common horse chestnut tree, a large beautiful tree with spreading boughs and big white blossoms which appear in late spring. In Bavaria the horse chestnut tree was planted above the underground storage caves and cellars where lagers were stored. Brewers and beer enthusiasts once cut ice from ponds and rivers and kept it in these insulated shaded cells to cool the beer during summer (in fact lager means storage in German). It is believed that Germans first hybridized their mighty horse chestnuts with the ornamental American buckeye shrubs to obtain a cultivar with the best aspects of both–presumably so the beer gardens would be even more pleasant in May thus making lager drinking even more delightful. The first red horse chestnut trees seem to have appeared in Germany around 1820.
The Bavarian Beergarden (Otto Piltz, 1875)
Whatever the case, the red horse chestnut trees in my new neighborhood are certainly very beautiful right now. I hope you have noticed that this miniature essay about horse chestnuts is really an elegy to this year’s fading spring. It was a very lovely season and you only get to enjoy four score or so springs in your life (give or take a few dozen). It is the merry month of May and summer is coming. Now it is time to go outside and sit beneath the horse chestnut trees of your garden and enjoy life with your friends and family.
Genieße das Leben ständig!
Du bist länger tot als lebendig!
(Constantly enjoy life!
You’re longer dead than alive!)
Flowers of the Red Horsechestnut Tree
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