THE WELSH PONY.
At the period when Wales was an independent kingdom live stock was protected by a singularly comprehensive series of laws. These were originally codified by Howel Dda (the Good), a prince who reigned fromA.D.942 to 948, and at a somewhat later period they were embodied in three distinct legal codes, the Venedotian, Dimetian and Gwentian, applicable respectively to North, South and South-eastern Wales, conforming to the local customs which prevailed in each area. Under these laws no Welsh serf was permitted to sell a stallion without the permission of his lord. The value of a horse (or, accurately speaking, pony, as the hill ponies were the only equine stock the country possessed in those days) was laid down without regard to individual merit till he reached his third year. A foal until a fortnight old was worth four pence; from the fifteenth day of his age till one year old, 24 pence; when a year and one day old he was worth 48 pence, and stood at that value till he began his third year when he was valued at 60 pence. When in his third year he was broken in, and his value depended on thework he was fitted for. A palfrey or sumpter horse was valued at 120 pence, and a working horse to draw cart or harrow 60 pence. It was not permissible to use horses, mares or cows for ploughing for fear of injury; oxen only might be employed for such labour. Any entire male animal was worth three females; thus a wild stallion was worth nine score pence to the mare’s value of three score pence.
If a horse were sold he was to be warranted against staggers for three nights, against “black strangles”[4]for three months, and against farcy for a year. He was to be warranted against restiveness until the purchaser should have ridden him three times “amid concourse of men and horses;” and if he proved restive the seller had to refund one third of the price he had received.
[4]The commentators believe the disease so termed to be glanders; but inasmuch as the warranty against farcy held good for twelve months, perhaps we should accept this reading with reserve.
[4]The commentators believe the disease so termed to be glanders; but inasmuch as the warranty against farcy held good for twelve months, perhaps we should accept this reading with reserve.
The value of each part of the horse was strictly specified by these laws; the worth of his foot was equal to his full value; each eye was esteemed worth one third of his full value. For every blemish in a horse one third of the total worth was to bereturned, his ears and tail included: a not obscure hint that cropping and docking were practised in Wales at this period, and that opinions varied concerning the desirability of the operations. That docking was in vogue is certain, for a special clause makes the “tail of a filly for common work” worth the total value of the animal. The peculiar value of the tail of a “filly for common work” lay in the fact that the harrow was often secured to the tail, as was the practice in parts of Ireland and Scotland until near the end of the last century. In Wales, as in other parts of Britain, the mare was preferably used for draught and pack work, horses being reserved for military service. The mane and bridle were worth the same amount, viz., four pence; the forelock and halter were also coupled as worth one penny each.
Howel Dda’s “Law of Borrowing” was equally comprehensive. The man who borrowed a horse and fretted the hair on his back was to pay four pence; if he broke the skin to the flesh eight pence; and if skin and flesh were broken to the bone sixteen pence. Borrowing without the owner’s leave was expensive: the borrower had to pay four pence for mounting, and four pence foreach rhandir (supposed to be a league) he rode the horse. He also had to pay a fine to the owner’s lord.
If a hired horse fell lame or was injured by accident the owner had to furnish the hirer with one equally good until the injured horse recovered.
The laws which regulated compensation for trespass show that it was customary to fetter or clog the horses when they were turned out to graze. Trespass in corn by a clogged horse was to be compensated by payment of one penny by day and two pence by night. Trespass by a horse free of restraint was recompensed by half those sums. In this connection it must be noted that stallions were “privileged;” and though a broken-in entire ran at large for three seasons (season from mid April to mid May and the month of October), he did not lose the privilege which relieved his owner from fine for any damage he might do in the standing crops.
The Welsh pony is more numerous than any other breed. He wanders over the hills and waste lands in all the twelve counties of the Principality, and also on the borders of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Monmouth; whereas his congeners are limited toareas insignificant by comparison. The distribution is of course very unequal, the strength and number of droves varying with the character of the country; there are no statistics in existence nor has there been made any estimate of their number.
Many of the common lands which were once open to the Welsh pony have been enclosed of recent years; but in spite of his exclusion from the better pastures and the warfare waged against him by shepherds and their dogs in the interests of grazing for sheep, he thrives marvellously. There are thousands of acres of wet and boggy lands whose grasses “rot” sheep, but which afford the hardy pony nourishing diet. In some districts he is kept on the move almost as unceasingly as are the deer in Scotland or on Exmoor; and the life he leads has done much to develope his instincts of self-preservation. Accustomed from earliest foalhood to the roughest ground, he is sure-footed as the goat, and neither punishment nor persuasion will induce him to venture upon unsafe bog. He has good shoulders, strong back, neat head and most enduring legs and feet; he is, in short, a strong, sound and useful animal. Some of the stoutest and best hunters bred on the borders of Walestrace their descent from the Welsh pony mare crossed with the thoroughbred sire; and the same may be said of some of the best modern steeplechasers.
J. C. Loudon, in his work,An Encyclopedia of Agriculture, published in 1825, writes:—
“The Welsh horse bears a near resemblance in point of size to the best native breed of the Highlands of Scotland. It is too small for the two-horse ploughs; one that I rode for many years, which, to the last, would have gone upon a pavement by choice, in preference to a softer road.”
“The Welsh horse bears a near resemblance in point of size to the best native breed of the Highlands of Scotland. It is too small for the two-horse ploughs; one that I rode for many years, which, to the last, would have gone upon a pavement by choice, in preference to a softer road.”
Again, the celebrated sporting writer, “Nimrod” (C. J. Appleby), in his bookThe Horse and the Hound, published in 1842, writes of this breed as follows:—
“They are never lame in the feet, or become roarers; they are also very little susceptible of disease in comparison with other horses, and as a proof also of their powers of crossing a country, the fact may be stated of the late Sir Charles Turner riding a pony ten miles in forty-seven minutes, and taking thirty leaps in his course, for a wager of 1,000 guineas, with the late Duke of Queensberry.... The Earl of Oxford had a mare pony, got by the Clive Arabian, her dam by the same horse, out of a Welsh mare pony, which could beat any of his racers four miles at a feather-weight; and during the drawing of the Irish lottery the news was conveyed express from Holyhead to London chiefly by ponies, at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour.”
“They are never lame in the feet, or become roarers; they are also very little susceptible of disease in comparison with other horses, and as a proof also of their powers of crossing a country, the fact may be stated of the late Sir Charles Turner riding a pony ten miles in forty-seven minutes, and taking thirty leaps in his course, for a wager of 1,000 guineas, with the late Duke of Queensberry.... The Earl of Oxford had a mare pony, got by the Clive Arabian, her dam by the same horse, out of a Welsh mare pony, which could beat any of his racers four miles at a feather-weight; and during the drawing of the Irish lottery the news was conveyed express from Holyhead to London chiefly by ponies, at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour.”
Endeavours have been made from time to time to improve the breed, but these efforts have been made by individuals, and the benefits, when any followed, were local and temporary. The first recorded introduction of superior alien blood occurred in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when that famous little horse, Merlin, was turned out to summer on the Welsh hills after his retirement from the Turf. The small horses which GeorgeII.’s Act (p. 8) sought to banish from the race-course were not all worthless; “vile and paltry” they may have been as a class, but there were some good ones among them, and Merlin was the best. This little horse, who owed his name to the smallest of British hawks, beat every animal that started against him, and enjoyed a career of uninterrupted success until he broke down; he was then purchased by a Welsh gentleman, said to have been an ancestor of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and turned out to run with the droves on the hills. So remarkable was the improvement wrought upon the breed by this one stallion that in course of a few years the value of the ponies in that locality greatly increased. The name of the sire was applied to his stockand their descendants, which became famous as “Merlins”; and the certificate that proved an animal one of the true Merlin breed made all the difference in the market.
That usually accurate authority, Richard Berenger, in hisHistory and Art of Horsemanship, says, the Welsh breed, “once so abundant, is now [1771] nearly extinct;” but in this he must have been mistaken, as there is evidence from the district to show that twenty-six years later it was very far from extinct. “A Farmer” writes to theGentleman’s Magazineof July, 1797, complaining of the “injurious increase of the smallest breed of ponies, which are no kind of use,” and which, he says, do an immense amount of mischief to the growing corn. He ventured to assert that for one cow found trespassing ten ponies would be seen, and strongly urged that an Act of Parliament should be passed forbidding right of common to horses under 14 hands high.
In the middle of the present century, when fast-trotting animals for harness and saddle were in great demand, it was thought desirable to see what could be done with the Welsh pony, and accordingly Comet, Fire-away, Alonzo the Brave, and other fast-stepping small-sized Hackney sires werebrought from Norfolk into Cardiganshire and Breconshire to cross with the native ponies. Such a cross could have hardly failed to result in a strong, fast-trotting and useful pony.
The Report issued by the recent Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire contains some remarks on the subject which must be reproduced here:—
“With regard to cobs and ponies, breeding in this direction is a much larger factor in the farming of Wales. There is plenty of material to make use of, and the breeding of ponies might be made much more profitable than it is at present. In the counties of Radnor and Brecon there has been some systematic attempts to encourage the breeding of cobs, with satisfactory results. On the mountains of North Wales, which were formerly famous for wild herds of ‘Merlins,’ little has, however, been done. Lord Penrhyn purchased an excellent stallion, Caradoc, who might have done much good had he been more patronised. The fault seems to lie in the careless treatment of the herds of ponies, which are allowed to ramble at will, winter and summer, to live or starve as nature may please. No attention whatever is paid to the breeding, the herds being wild to all intents and purposes. It seems a pity that such waste should be allowed. The stoutness and endurance of the Welsh pony is proverbial, and if attention were paid to selection in breeding, separation of the sexes, and feeding and shelter in the winter, an exceedingly valuable addition to the mountain farmer’s profits might be found at a small cost.“Turning to the evidence upon this subject: Mr.J. E. Jones, who appeared before us at Tregaron, gave it as his opinion that the breed of cobs was deteriorating; while Mr. Bowen Woosnam, of Tynygraig, near Builth, himself a successful breeder, stated that not nearly as much attention was paid to breeding cobs as formerly. Mr. Woosnam also said: If Welsh farmers were to have a portion of their money invested in ponies and cobs which are suitable to the farms that they are occupying, they would derive proportionately a larger income from them than they would from the cattle or sheep that they are rearing.... I do not mean to say that their stock should exclusively consist of ponies and cobs, but that they should have a few on every suitable farm. There is the greatest difficulty at the present time in getting good ponies and cobs.”
“With regard to cobs and ponies, breeding in this direction is a much larger factor in the farming of Wales. There is plenty of material to make use of, and the breeding of ponies might be made much more profitable than it is at present. In the counties of Radnor and Brecon there has been some systematic attempts to encourage the breeding of cobs, with satisfactory results. On the mountains of North Wales, which were formerly famous for wild herds of ‘Merlins,’ little has, however, been done. Lord Penrhyn purchased an excellent stallion, Caradoc, who might have done much good had he been more patronised. The fault seems to lie in the careless treatment of the herds of ponies, which are allowed to ramble at will, winter and summer, to live or starve as nature may please. No attention whatever is paid to the breeding, the herds being wild to all intents and purposes. It seems a pity that such waste should be allowed. The stoutness and endurance of the Welsh pony is proverbial, and if attention were paid to selection in breeding, separation of the sexes, and feeding and shelter in the winter, an exceedingly valuable addition to the mountain farmer’s profits might be found at a small cost.
“Turning to the evidence upon this subject: Mr.J. E. Jones, who appeared before us at Tregaron, gave it as his opinion that the breed of cobs was deteriorating; while Mr. Bowen Woosnam, of Tynygraig, near Builth, himself a successful breeder, stated that not nearly as much attention was paid to breeding cobs as formerly. Mr. Woosnam also said: If Welsh farmers were to have a portion of their money invested in ponies and cobs which are suitable to the farms that they are occupying, they would derive proportionately a larger income from them than they would from the cattle or sheep that they are rearing.... I do not mean to say that their stock should exclusively consist of ponies and cobs, but that they should have a few on every suitable farm. There is the greatest difficulty at the present time in getting good ponies and cobs.”
The Commissioners were evidently unaware of the work which has been done by the Church Stretton Hill Pony Improvement Society. This society was formed to encourage and assist the farmers in the work of improving the ponies which they only too generally neglect. The plan followed was to take up the best of the native stallions for service: those of the truest type only were used, and the improvement in the young stock got by these selected sires was marked: they showed more compactness of build, better bone and greater spirit than their promiscuously bred brethren of the wilds. There can be no doubt but that continuance of work on theselines would do much towards converting the scarcely saleable raw material of the Hills into profitable stock.
Mr. John Hill, of Marshbrook House, Church Stretton, in his endeavours to breed polo ponies has shown that a valuable riding and harness animal can be obtained by judicious crossings on the Welsh pony. Running more or less wild on the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of Church Stretton are ponies closely allied to and very similar to the Welsh mountain breed. These usually range from 10 hands to 11 hands 2 inches in height, 12 hands 2 inches being considered the outside limit. About the year 1891 Mr. Hill purchased several of the best and most typical mares, wild and unbroken, from the hills: these mares, which averaged only 10 hands, were put to an Arab. His stock were handsome, compact and hardy, and grew to an average height of 13 hands. The fillies of this cross when two years old were put to the best Welsh pony procurable, a 14-hand 1-inch stallion with riding shoulders and showing bone and quality. These mares were subsequently put to a small thoroughbred, and to him threw foals full of quality and in every way promising. Mr. Hill’s breeding experimentshave all been made with the 14-hand 2-inch polo pony in view: and he has shown that Welsh ponies judiciously crossed with suitable alien blood produce stock for which a ready market should be found.
Mr. W. J. Roberts, the Hon. Secretary of the Church Stretton Hill Pony Society, states that he has tried the Arab cross, but “the offspring is useless on the hills.” A half-bred Arab is not the animal to successfully withstand the hardships and exposure of half-wild existence on the Welsh hills. The object sought in improving the Welsh or any other of these breeds is not to fit it for a life of semi-wildness but to make it more serviceable to man.
For the information of those interested in this breed, the following descriptions, furnished to the Polo Pony Society for their Stud Book (vol. v.) by the Local Committees, may be quoted:
(NORTH WALES DIVISION.)Height.Not to exceed 12·2 hands.Colour.Bay or brown preferred; grey or black allowable; but dun, chestnut, or broken colour considered objectionable.Action.Best described as that of the hunter; low “daisy-cutting” action to be avoided. The pony should move quickly and actively, stepping out well from the shoulder, at the same time flexing the hocks and bringing the hind legs well underthe body when going.General Character.The pony should show good “pony” character and evidence of robust constitution, with the unmistakable appearance of hardiness peculiar to mountain ponies, and at the same time have a lively appearance.Head.Should be small, well chiselled in its outline and well set on; forehead broad, tapering towards nose.Nostrils.Large and expanding.Eyes.Bright, mild, intelligent and prominent.Ears.Neatly set, well-formed and small.Throat and Jaws.Fine, showing no signs of coarseness or throatiness.Neck.Of proportionate length; strong, but not too heavy, with a moderate crest in the case of the stallion.Shoulders.Good shoulders most important: should be well laid back and sloping, but not too fine at the withers nor loaded at the points. The pony should have a good long shoulder-blade.Back and Loins.Strong and well covered with muscle.Hind Quarters.Long, and tail well carried, as much like the Arab as possible, springing well from the top of the back.Hocks.Well let down, clean cut, with plenty of bone below the joint. They should not be “sickled” or “cow-hocked.”Forelegs.Well placed; not tied in any way at the elbows; good muscular arm, short from the knee to the fetlock joints; flat bone; pasterns sloping but not too long; feet well developed and open at the heel; hoof sound and hard.(SOUTH WALES DIVISION.)The South Wales hill pony seldom exceeds 13 hands, and in a pure state is about 12 hands. His attributes are a quick, straight action and sure-footedness; he is low in the withers, short in his forehand, and with faulty hind quarters as far as appearance goes, his tail being set on low and his hocks sickled, but his forelegs and feet are good. His head and eye show breed, courage and sense, and his constitution is strong or he could not live where he does. Of late years he has been crossed with the Cardiganshire cob to some extent; and half-bred two-year-old shire colts have been allowed access to the hills in summer in some places, much to the detriment of the breed. In colour, bays and brown prevail.
(NORTH WALES DIVISION.)
Height.Not to exceed 12·2 hands.Colour.Bay or brown preferred; grey or black allowable; but dun, chestnut, or broken colour considered objectionable.Action.Best described as that of the hunter; low “daisy-cutting” action to be avoided. The pony should move quickly and actively, stepping out well from the shoulder, at the same time flexing the hocks and bringing the hind legs well underthe body when going.General Character.The pony should show good “pony” character and evidence of robust constitution, with the unmistakable appearance of hardiness peculiar to mountain ponies, and at the same time have a lively appearance.Head.Should be small, well chiselled in its outline and well set on; forehead broad, tapering towards nose.Nostrils.Large and expanding.Eyes.Bright, mild, intelligent and prominent.Ears.Neatly set, well-formed and small.Throat and Jaws.Fine, showing no signs of coarseness or throatiness.Neck.Of proportionate length; strong, but not too heavy, with a moderate crest in the case of the stallion.Shoulders.Good shoulders most important: should be well laid back and sloping, but not too fine at the withers nor loaded at the points. The pony should have a good long shoulder-blade.Back and Loins.Strong and well covered with muscle.Hind Quarters.Long, and tail well carried, as much like the Arab as possible, springing well from the top of the back.Hocks.Well let down, clean cut, with plenty of bone below the joint. They should not be “sickled” or “cow-hocked.”Forelegs.Well placed; not tied in any way at the elbows; good muscular arm, short from the knee to the fetlock joints; flat bone; pasterns sloping but not too long; feet well developed and open at the heel; hoof sound and hard.
(SOUTH WALES DIVISION.)
The South Wales hill pony seldom exceeds 13 hands, and in a pure state is about 12 hands. His attributes are a quick, straight action and sure-footedness; he is low in the withers, short in his forehand, and with faulty hind quarters as far as appearance goes, his tail being set on low and his hocks sickled, but his forelegs and feet are good. His head and eye show breed, courage and sense, and his constitution is strong or he could not live where he does. Of late years he has been crossed with the Cardiganshire cob to some extent; and half-bred two-year-old shire colts have been allowed access to the hills in summer in some places, much to the detriment of the breed. In colour, bays and brown prevail.