Black horse

“ Out over the prairies, fleeting like the shadow of a hurrying cloud, passed the race, the black horse 96 leading, the Cayuse riders close behind, their long hair outstreaming, their moccasins pressed against their horses’ sides, their whips falling without mercy. Down a canyon they swept in pursuit and passed from the ken of the watchers at the camp, the black horse still in the van. ”

“ And the great Black Horse, with his inky mane and tail and his green-lighted eyes, ranged through all that region and added to his following from many bands till not less than a score of mares were in his 'bunch.' Most were merely humble cow-ponies turned out to range, but the nine great mares were there, a striking group by themselves. ”

“ When you ride to battle again the banners shall bear the old device. The Black Horse is not vanquished—he is but worsted for a time—he will rise again victorious. The Black Horse, Cormac of Fail, the Black Horse against the White!”
The boy shook his head.
“I will never fight again,” he said, mournfully. “The world is lost to me—you are my world now, Ethne, and when you cease to love me I shall die.” ”

“ Before them is the wide sluice; if they are mortal, they will turn or plunge into it. No; the great black horse gathers himself, and springs into the air.
By Heaven, he has cleared it! No horse ever took that leap before, or will again. On at whirlwind speed towards the shuddering quicksand two hundred yards away!
Splash! Horse and man are in it, making the moist mass shake and tremble for twenty yards round. The bright moonlight shows it all. The horse shrieks in fear and agony, as only a horse can; the man on its back waves the spear. ”

“ The black horse swam with amazing strength, and breaking the force of the current for the men, they soon passed from the full grip of the torrent and forged into the smoother shallows at the side of the stream. In a moment firm land was beneath the feet of Mac Strann, and he turned his dull eyes of amazement upon Dan Barry. The latter stood beside the panting black horse. ”

“ Low upon her horse's neck, ready to clamp a hand upon its nose if, approaching the other animal, it sought to whinny, she urged forward upon the trail she hoped would lead her to the lair of the Black Death.
When she reached the spot where she had seen the mounted man, there was no trace of him except the hoofprints of his mount in the soft mold. Calling Apollo softly, she dismounted and indicated the trail. Then she stripped a silk neckerchief, tied it to make a long leash and, fastening it to the dog's collar, remounted and urged him on the hunt. ”

“ And o'er the Ægean waves beheld, far off,
The cave, the lonely sands and lessening capes
Of dreary Patmos sink to rise no more.
APOCALYPTIC HORSES. WHITE HORSE, RED HORSE, BLACK HORSE, PALE HORSE.
Black Horse.—The period of the "black horse and rider with the balance" is generally referred to the reign of Severus. But here the commentators are at a loss. "The balance" sometimes betokens justice; sometimes is considered as indicative of a season of scarcity. The "black horse" is always associated with calamity. I humbly differ from all commentators. ”

“ A grave man, with something of dark melancholy in his face, and with a black curly beard and dressed in sumptuous clothing, was riding a black horse, which was led by the bridle by a marvellous youth: his rich abundance of hair and his gay and graceful costume gave him almost a feminine appearance. ”

“ But at length there is a sound, a startled neigh from the black horse, who, tossing his crest in air, rears upward with a curving sweep, and then darts straight away, as if in flight from an advancing enemy—the enemy seen instantly afterwards as several mounted men disclose themselves from the western framework of rock, all in a tail-on-end gallop. ”

“ From the corral had come a shrill nicker, the voice of the aged mare. But that was not it! With the outcry, seemingly an answer to the black’s maddened outcry, the black dropped to all-fours again, turning quick ears and eyes in the direction of the sound! What manner of horse was this, anyway? Never before had he seen such a horse! He felt himself go limp.
There is a call in nature that sounds for life against death. ”

“ The whole procession seemed to consist of a gay crowd of horses, men, purple, gold, silver, and jewels. More than two hundred riders, all on snow-white Nisæan steeds, whose bridles and caparisons glittered with gold bells and buckles, feathers, tassels, and embroidery, were followed by a man who was often carried away by the powerful coal-black horse on which he rode, but who generally proved to the unmanageable, foaming animal that he was strong enough to tame its wildness. ”

“ With a sharp dig of the spur his horse sprang half-way across the road, a black, prancing shadow against the glare of light. She saw the rider fling up one arm, and bring down the stinging quirt on the animal's flank; the next instant, with a bound, they were swallowed up in the darkness. A moment she leaned against the shack, nerveless, half fainting from reaction, her face deathly white. Then she inhaled a long, deep breath, gathered her skirts closely within one hand, and plunged boldly into the black alley. ”

“ No doubt a horse fair is a very amusing place to those who have nothing to lose; at any rate, there is plenty to see.
Long strings of young horses out of the country, fresh from the marshes; and droves of shaggy little Welsh ponies, no higher than Merrylegs; and hundreds of cart horses of all sorts, some of them with their long tails braided up and tied with scarlet cord; and a good many like myself, handsome and high-bred, but fallen into the middle class, through some accident or blemish, unsoundness of wind, or some other complaint. ”

“ Never before did a horse play such a dangerous game, and surely none ever showed such finesse. Deliberately trailing behind him an enemy bent on taking either his life or freedom, not for a moment did Black Eagle show more than202 imperative caution. At the close of each day when, by a few miles of judicious galloping, he had fully winded the cowboy's mount, the sagacious black would circle to the rear of his pursuer and often, in the gloom of early night, walk recklessly near to the camp of his enemy just for the sake of sniffing curiously. ”

“ The black horse reared and fell over with its rider, while another horse fell dead by its side, whose rider ran with the speed of an arrow after his comrades, who were now flying in the utmost confusion. The rider of the black horse, however, had scarce fallen with it ere he crept from under it, and at the same instant we saw Tiger leap out of the willow bushes on the river bank, and, swinging his tomahawk, catch up the Blackfoot warrior with a few leaps. The latter fell back a pace, and threw his iron axe at Tiger with such force that, missing its mark, it flew far out into the river. ”

“ BLACK AND WHITE; OR, THE PHANTOM STEED! (A Typical Ghost Story for Christmas, by a Witness of the Truth.)
I was walking in one of the slums in the neighbourhood of Oxford Street, some years ago, and always fond of horse-flesh (I had driven—as a boy—a bathing-machine for my pleasure along the wild coast line of the great Congo Continent) was greatly attracted by a hack standing within the shafts of a cart belonging to a funeral furnisher. Like many of its class, the horse was jet black, with a long flowing tail and a mane to match. ”

“ And every horse that has once got among such a troop, bids an eternal farewell to captivity. Hence we find among these animals the pure Arab blood, we recognise the clumsy English cart horse, the pony, the thorough-bred, and the racer. In short, there is such a display of every breed as no horse-fair in the world is able to show. I especially noticed an enormous number of greys, piebalds, and black horses among the troops; and that the differences of colour are far more frequent among them than with trained horses. ”

“ There was a crash of breaking boughs beyond the cañon, a glint of color, a swift black body hurtling madly [Pg 30] through the shrubbery. The girl shrank back. There was no time for thought, hardly for alarm. On the farther verge the bushes parted; an apparition hurled arching through the sunshine, down the sheer hill—a glorious and acrobatic horse, his black head low between his flashing feet; red nostrils wide with rage and fear; foam flecks white on the black shoulders; a tossing mane; a rider, straight and tall, superb—to all seeming an integral part of the horse, pitch he never so wildly. ”

“ Ivan of the bitch, after having delivered the three princesses from the deep cistern, is himself thrown into it. The black horse comes to deliver him, and cannot; the grey horse comes, and cannot either; the red horse comes, and succeeds in dragging the hero out. The black horse represents the dark night, the grey horse the night beginning to clear, and the red horse the roseate morning, which delivers the sun or solar hero. ”

“ As for me, I flatly declined to listen to Buckie's worries because Black Prince had been grabbed by a mere officer. Black Prince was quite the most famous horse who ever served in the outfit. In those far distant times of 1886 he was a rookie, claiming—quite untruthfully—to be a four-year-old, a bouncing infant made of whalebone and rubber, shying at clouds rather than shy at nothing, full of loving-kindness, light-hearted innocence and baby fun. Range horses are never black, but his spring coat was brown, deepening to brown-black, until in autumn one almost caught a blue glint on his flank. ”

“ She came to us snappish and suspicious, but when she found what sort of place ours was, it all went off by degrees; for three years I have never seen the smallest sign of temper, and if she is well treated there is not a better, more willing animal than she is; but she is naturally a more irritable constitution than the black horse; flies tease her more; anything wrong in the harness frets her more; and if she were illused or unfairly treated she would not be unlikely to give tit for tat; you know that many high mettled horses will do so. ”

“ The clumsy-barrelled, cloddy-shouldered, round-legged, black family horse, neither a coach nor a dray-horse, but something between both, as fat as an ox, and, with all his pride and prancing at first starting, not equal to more than six miles an hour, and knocking-up with one hard day’s work, is no more seen; and we have, instead of him, an animal as tall, deep-chested, rising in the withers, slanting in the shoulders, flat in the legs, with even more strength, and with treble the speed. ”

“ Who has not wronged his fellow, is not far from right.
So set a firm shoulder
And push on the wheel!
The mill that we're grinding
Shall work out our weal.
THE BLACK HORSE AND HIS RIDER. BY CHARLES SHEPPARD.
It was the seventh of October, 1777. Horatio Gates stood before his tent, gazing steadfastly upon the two armies now arrayed in order of battle. It was a clear, bracing day, mellow with the richness of autumn. The sky was cloudless; the foliage of the wood scarce tinged with purple and gold; the buckwheat in yonder fields frostened into snowy ripeness. ”

“ Many a devil walked into that shop wearing the hoof and hide of a horse and came out with iron nailed on his feet; for example, horses like the Black Abbot that fought and screamed when we put a saddle on him first and rolled on the earth until he crushed the saddle-tree and the stirrups into splinters; and horses like El Mahdi that tried to kill the blacksmith as though he were an annoying fly. ”

“ After the lapse of countless ages there are grey horses and black, bay and chestnut, presumably because greyness and blackness and the rest are incidental characteristics of a horse. No one of them gives him a greater advantage than the others in his struggle for life, or helps him particularly to perform the functions of horsiness. ”

“ The black begged and prayed of me not to ride after the brute; and Mr Neal, who was some distance off, shouted to me, as loud as he could, for Heaven’s sake, to stop; that I did not know what [Pg 21] it was to chase a wild horse in a Texan prairie, and that I must not fancy myself in the meadows of Louisiana or Florida. I paid no attention to all this—I was in too great a rage at the trick the beast had played me; and, jumping on the negro’s horse, I galloped away like mad. ”

“ A horseman dressed in black, and riding a white horse, was trotting along a portion of the road, which through a sudden break in the clouds was brilliantly illuminated by the rays of the sun. The black figure of the man was projected against a white cloud, and the horse appeared doubly brilliant from being seen against the dark-coloured road. ”

“ Where a black, a white or a bay horse would stand out and make a mark for hostile sharpshooters, a mottled gray might well elude their view. And the horse, apart from this, was just what he wanted. He paced fast, he galloped fast, and he walked fast, which is a rare and precious accomplishment in a horse. ”

“ Having therefore decided to make my journey in the saddle, I at once set about to secure such a horse as was likely to meet the requirements of my undertaking. As soon as my purpose was known, horses of every grade, weight and shade were thrust upon my attention and after some three weeks spent in advertising, talks with horse fanciers and in the livery and sale stables of Boston, my choice fell upon a Kentucky Black Hawk, one of the finest animals I had ever seen and, as was subsequently established, just the horse I wanted for my long ride from sea to sea. ”

“ The transformation of witches into hares is a frequent motif in folk-lore.
XXXI. THE BLACK HORSE.
Sources.—From J. F. Campbell's manuscript collection now deposited at the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh (MS. 53, vol. xi.) . Collected [225] in Gaelic, February 14, 1862, by Hector MacLean, from Roderick MacNeill, in the island of Menglay: MacNeill learnt the story about 1840 from a Barra man. I have omitted one visit of the Black Horse to Greece, but otherwise left the tale untouched. Mr. Nutt gave a short abstract of the story in his report on the Campbell MSS. in Folk-lore, i. ”

“ Under human care and selection, the horse varies so rapidly, that we meet with all extremes, from the dray-horse to the Shetland, and all colours from black to white. But the ass in the last five thousand years has varied little. It will not thrive except in hot climates, and centuries of careful breeding have not caused it to change colour further than from grey to white, [4] and have done little to make it a pleasant animal to ride, or big enough for heavy draught. ”