Thoughts on medieval horsetraining after handling two feral ponies (November 2020 )
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| The two ponies shortly after their arrival |
On the 8th of November, I was given two feral ponies from Dartmoor, Topaze (female) and Diamant (male), both one and a half years old. They had been born on the moor and had never been rounded up or handled until a few days before coming to me. They were not completely weaned and still followed their mothers. They are “Dartmoor Hill ponies,” so a mixture of different breeds of horses, especially since they were part of a herd that had been left to reproduce indiscriminately for several years. They are small and sturdy in size, and at least half-Shetland: it is likely that they descend from pit ponies used in the mines. They are probably similar in type to the sumpters used as pack-animals.
Handling those untouched, feral ponies has given me some first-hand experience in horse-taming and led me to ask myself several questions about the way things were done at the time the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus wrote his veterinary treatise, the De Medicina Equorum (c. 1250), and to interrogate some of the advice he gives in his treaty. The fact that those ponies are feral, just like the horse Rufus describes and which, he states, must live in a wild environment until he is two years old, makes their taming all the more relevant to my research. I am hoping that some of this experience can help me better understand the modalities of medieval horse-training as well as the way the theory elaborated by Rufus was put in practice.
The first aspect of horse-taming that struck me as I started handling the ponies was the danger that goes with it. Because of their feral upbringing, both the ponies were afraid of humans. This fear had been exacerbated by the trauma of the round up and the separation from their mother and was expressed in different ways by each animal. Diamant hid behind Topaze and moved away when approached: his instinct was to flee. Topaze was different: she was more assertive and immediately showed a threatening behaviour, fighting and kicking.
This behaviour led to an incident when Topaze kicked the gates and got her leg stuck between the bars. She managed to free herself – her thrashing made it dangerous to approach her – but there could have been severe consequences. The incident made me reflect on the advice given by Rufus that the foal that has just been captured and led to the stables must be hobbled to “preserve the health of the legs.” This advice had puzzled me as I could not see how he had come to this conclusion, especially since hobbling in the way he describes – with the two front legs and one of the back legs tied – puts the horse at risk of falling down – and injuring himself – in the process should he try to go forward. However, the horse falling down presents less risks of serious injuries than the horse putting his foot through the doors or partitions of the stables. That could explain the observations that led to Rufus promoting the use of hobbles, as well as the justifications he gives. Moreover, the hobbles stop the horse from kicking out, which could also be a way of protecting the handler: a kick from a wild young horse is not to be underestimated and can even be fatal.
They would thus make it easier for the handler to touch the horse, a stage on which Rufus insists: he writes that the horse must be touched every day, gently and lightly, all over his body, especially on the back and legs. What I realised while trying to touch the ponies was that it was maybe the most difficult stage of the taming. Being wild, those ponies perceived humans as predators. They refused to be touched. They were afraid of it. All their instincts went against it. If a predator were to attack a horse, it would jump on his back. For a horse to allow a human to touch his back is to make himself vulnerable. The same goes for the legs, which are his means of flight or defence. The ponies’ reactions to be touched ranged from fear (Diamant) to attack (Topaze).
Because the ponies needed to be handled in order to receive veterinary treatment, they had been penned in a small area from which they could not escape and which allowed me to reach them without risking being kicked. While they were there, I tried to touch them in areas where horses groom each other when they are bonding, such as the withers. It was still unnatural for them. At first they tried to avoid it, then accepted it because they had no choice and they realised it did not hurt. However, touching a wild horse is always a form of violation and very difficult for the animal to accept. Only one form of contact came naturally: when the ponies reached out and used their nose to touch my hand. However, this is what horses do when they are curious and want to ascertain what a foreign object is: it was not an acceptation of me, though by doing this they shifted from a defensive mode to an inquisitive one.
The ponies being, if not fully grown, at least nearing adult size, also makes them harder to handle. A young foal is not only small but impressionable, while an older animal already has a mind of his own and a character built from his past experiences. The ease with which they can be handled also depends on the horse’s individual temperament. Topaze was difficult from the start, while Diamant, who was more timid, also accepted to eat hay from my hand on the first day and later let me touch him without lashing out. However, Topaze being very assertive, Diamant’s behaviour was influenced by hers. This is where Rufus’s advice to keep the young wild horse with an older, tame horse appeared to be a sensible one. It was not possible to do so in my case, the ponies having to be quarantined on arrival from the moor. Had Diamant been put with a domestic horse, he would have probably become tame in a matter of days. But because he was influenced by Topaze’s wilder behaviour, the whole process became more difficult.
Rufus’s description of the taming is not clear on one point: how many people were involved? There are two handlers when the horse is first ridden, one being the rider, the other leading the horse on foot. But what about the first stages of the taming? There were probably several people to capture the horse. Then, it would probably depend on the wildness of the horse, his size, the experience of the handler and the way the horse is kept. The hobbles and the fact that the horse is “tied to the manger with two reins” make it possible for one person to tame him alone.
In my case, I was dealing with two small (slightly under 10hh and approximately 100 kg) ponies. Yet, despite their youth and diminutive stature, they were stronger than me and manhandling them was not an option. When they were penned down to be handled, I was able to work on them and halter them. It took two days (two sessions of one hour each) to halter Topaze and one (one session of one hour) to halter Diamant, but it was only possible because of the set up (the pen). Two people would probably have made the process quicker.
Due to their feral state and the need to handle them quickly for welfare reasons, the process had to be done in a mildly coercive way: the ponies were trapped and could not run away. In that sense, it was similar to what Rufus advocates, except that here the ponies were not hobbled. The difficulty with taming in that manner is that there is a risk of “flooding” the horse: he is forced to accept what is being done to him. What can happen then is his stress levels passing a threshold where the horse cannot cope anymore. Instead of fighting, he simply gives up. This is not desirable as the horse can become “shut down” and irresponsive. This could pose a problem in the case of a warhorse, as he would need to be both responsive and trusting of his rider. Was Rufus’s method akin to flooding? Or was he conscious of the risks, hence his insistence on the fact that the touching must be done “lightly” and “softly” and over several days?
The most important question remains that one: why did Rufus want the horse to be raised in feral conditions? Dealing with an almost fully grown wild animal makes the whole process more dangerous and more difficult, even if I was able to see that some horses would be much easier than others to handle, even with the same upbringing. Those difficulties can explain why, in his Opus Ruralium Commodorum (1304-1306), Pietro de Crescenzi, instead of exactly copying Rufus’s method, decided to change it with additions from Latin sources, such as Varro. One of those changes is that the horse must be handled from the moment he is born. This is a widely different take on horse-taming. Rufus could have wanted his (war)horse to keep some wildness of character in order to be more efficient on the battlefield, and have wanted the destrier to remain aggressive.
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