IRELAND—THE CONNEMARA PONY.

Richard Berenger, Gentleman of the Horse to King GeorgeIII. in his work,The History and Art of Horsemanship, 1771—says that—

“Ireland has for many centuries boasted a race of horses called Hobbies, valued for their easy paces and other pleasing and agreeable qualities, of a middling size, strong, nimble, well moulded and hardy.... The nobility have stallions of great reputation belonging to them, but choose to breed for theTurfin preference to other purposes; for which, perhaps, their country is not so well qualified, from the moisture of the atmosphere, and other causes, which hinder it from improving that elastic force and clearness of wind; and which are solely the gifts of a dry soil, and an air more pure and refined. This country, nevertheless, is capable of producing fine and noble horses.”

The great stud maintained in England by EdwardIII. (1327-1377) included a number of Hobbies which were procured from Ireland. A French chronicler named Creton, who wrote aMetrical History of the Deposition of RichardII.,[6]refers with great admiration to the Irish horses of the period. He evidently accompanied King Richard during his expedition to Ireland in thesummer of 1399, for he says the horses of that country “scour the hills and vallies fleeter than deer;” and he states that the horse ridden by Macmore, an Irish chieftain, “without housing or saddle was worth 400 cows.”

[6]See vol. xx. ofArcheologiafor prose translation.

At a much later date the character of this breed was changed by the introduction of Spanish blood. Tradition asserts that the ponies which inhabited the rough and mountainous tracts of Connemara, in the county Galway, were descended from several animals that were saved from the wreck of some ship of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It is, however, quite needless to invoke the aid of a somewhat too frequently employed tradition to explain the character which at one period distinguished these ponies. Spanish stallions were freely imported into England from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries; and it is probable that the character of the Connemara pony was derived not from shipwrecked stock but in more prosaic fashion by importation of sires from England.

The testimony of many old writers goes to prove the high esteem in which Spanish horses were held. The Duke of Newcastle, in his famous work on Horses and Horsemanship,written in 1658, says: “I have had Spanish horses in my own possession which were proper to be painted after, or fit for a king to mount on a public occasion. Genets have a fine lofty air, trot and gallop well. The best breed is in Andalusia, especially that of the King of Spain at Cordova.” The Spanish horse of those times owed much to the Barbs, which were originally introduced into the country by the Moors; and if the Connemara pony was permitted to revert to the original type, something was done to re-establish the Spanish—or, perhaps, it were more accurate to go a step further back and say the “Barb”—character in the early thirties.

Mr. Samuel Ussher Roberts, C.B., in course of evidence given before the Royal Commission on Horse Breeding in Ireland (1897), stated that he lived for five-and-twenty years in the west of Galway, and when in that part of the country, “there was,” he said, “an extremely hardy, wiry class of pony in the district showing a great deal of the Barb or Arab blood. Without exception they were the best animals I ever knew—good shoulders, good hard legs, good action, and great stamina ... they were seldom over 14·2. Inever knew one of them to have a spavin or splint, or to be in any respect unsound in his wind.... There was a strong trace of Arab blood which I always understood arose from the introduction into Connemara of the Barb or Arab by the Martin family many years ago—you could very easily trace it to the Connemara ponies at the time I speak of.” In answer to a subsequent question Mr. Ussher Roberts fixed the date of the introduction of the Barb or Arab blood by Colonel Martin at about 1833.

The old stamp of Connemara pony was described by another witness, Mr. R. B. Begley, as “long and low with good rein, good back, and well coupled”; but the majority of witnesses from Galway, and those who had personal knowledge of the breed, shared Mr. Ussher Roberts’ opinion that it had greatly deteriorated since the middle of the century when the influence of the Barb or Arab sires had died out. The young animals, it was stated, were collected in droves when about six months old, and hawked about the country for sale, bringing prices ranging from thirty shillings to £3. Many of these were purchased for use in the English coal pits. Evidencewas forthcoming to show that there are still some good specimens of the breed. Mr. John Purdon described a drove he had recently seen in Connemara: “They were beautiful mares, I never saw lovelier mares; about twenty in the drove, and foals with them. They were the perfect type of a small thoroughbred mare.” These animals were the property of Mr. William Lyons, who kept a special breed for generations.

The falling off in quality was generally attributed to promiscuous breeding and to in-breeding. “In some parts of Connemara,” said Mr. H. A. Robinson, “they just turn a stallion out loose on the mountains, mongrels of the very worst description.” There is, however, another factor in the loss of quality, namely, the terrible straits to which the peasantry were reduced in the time of the famine. A correspondent informs me that in south-west Cork, in the fifties, nearly all the people had mare ponies; in west Galway in the sixties there was scarcely an ass in Connemara west of Spiddal and Oughterard; and the case in west Mayo was the same. When my informant visited the same districts fifteen or twenty years later, he observed a remarkable change. “Hard times” had comeupon the people in the interim, and all the small holders had donkeys instead of ponies; poverty had obliged them to sell their mares; and when times improved they were too impoverished to buy new ponies, and replaced them with asses.

Under such circumstances, of course, the better the mare owned by the peasant the more likely it was to find a purchaser; and little but the “rag, tag and bobtail” was left to perpetuate the species. However considerably the remainder depreciated in quality, they still retained their characteristic hardiness of constitution and the germs of those qualities which under better auspices gained the breed its reputation. Some of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Royal Commission mentioned experiments in cross breeding which prove how well and rapidly the Connemara pony responds to endeavour to improve it by the introduction of suitable fresh blood. Mr. Samuel Johnston stated that he had bred one of the best hunters he ever possessed out of a Connemara mare; and Mr. R. B. Begley described a mare got by the pure-bred Hackney sire Star of the West from a “mountainy pony.” This Hackney-Connemara cross could cover an English milein three minutes; Mr. Begley had driven her fifty-six Irish (over seventy-one statute) miles in a day, and had repeatedly driven her twelve Irish (over fifteen statute) miles in an hour and ten minutes; he had won two prizes with her for action in harness at the Hollymount Show; and had hunted her with ten stone on her back. With hounds as in the shafts this really remarkable pony proved herself able to go and stay, performing well across country.

These Connemara ponies stand from 12 hands to 14 hands or more. Like other breeds which run practically wild in mountainous country, they are above all things hardy, active and sure-footed: in response to the climatic conditions of their habitat—the climate of West Galway is the most humid of any spot in Europe—they grow a thick and shaggy coat which is very usually chestnut in colour betraying their descent. Although they have lost in size owing to the conditions of their existence and are rounder in the croup, they retain the peculiar ambling gait which distinguished their Spanish ancestors. Those with whose breeding care has been taken, such as the drove belonging to Mr. William Lyons, of Oughterard, show the characteristics implantedby the infusion of Barb blood in their blood-like heads and clean limbs. Even those which have suffered through promiscuous breeding conform in their ugliness and shortcomings to the original type.

For some years past systematic endeavours to improve the breed have been in progress. The Congested Districts Board, under the Land Commission of Ireland, introduced small Hackney stallions whose substance, action and robust constitution render them particularly well adapted to correct the defects of weedy and ill-shaped mares without impairing their natural hardiness.

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