The Majesty of the Horse: An Illustrated History. Tamsin Pickeral
energetic, able to accelerate quickly to a high speed and maintain it for some time. The horses are agile, tough, athletic, and highly intelligent. Such is the popularity of the Icelandic horse that it is bred widely across the world, particularly in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States. Most Icelandic horses are registered in a central databank called the World-Fengur, and breeding and competition rules are the same in all countries where the Icelandic is kept.
There are approximately 190,000 Icelandic horses in the world today, all of which are the descendants of just 6,000 horses that survived the Móðuharðindin (Mist Hardships) that occurred from 1783 to 1785. This was a natural disaster that happened on the island after the volcanic eruption of Mount Laki and resulted in the death of one-fifth of the human population and three-quarters of the horse population. The horse population was reestablished relatively quickly (within a century), and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries more than 100,000 Icelandic horses were exported, primarily to the British Isles for use in the coal mines and for trotting races, and also to Denmark.
CONNEMARA
ANCIENT – IRELAND – COMMON
HEIGHT
Up to 14.2 h.h.
APPEARANCE
Very attractive, well-defined head with small ears and a large, kind eye. Neck is long, well set to the body, and a good shape, with a flowing mane and tail. Clean, sound limbs, a deep, wide chest, and a muscular, slightly sloping croup.
COLOR
Typically gray, dun, black, bay, or brown with very occasional instances of roan or chestnut.
APTITUDE
Riding, light draft, showing, jumping, competitive horse sports
TYPICAL OF NATIVE PONY BREEDS, Ireland’s Connemara is a true product of its environment, having developed and evolved through the centuries to be perfectly adapted to its tough habitat. Despite Ireland’s international reputation for being a producer of top horses, the Connemara is the only indigenous horse or pony breed to have originated there. The breed takes its name from the area of Connemara, which stretches along the western coastline of southern Ireland across the western part of County Galway and County Mayo. It is a place of striking rugged landscape, where ancient, mysterious Irish bog land meets rocky, barren mountain peaks bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, south, and north, and the Invermore River and Loch Oorid to the east. The coastline is stark and beautiful and without shelter, and inland the landscape is peppered with crumbling stone walls and rocky outcrops. It is here, where the wind blows and the rain strikes down, that the Connemara evolved—a pony of great endurance and hardiness.
The precise beginnings of the breed have been blurred through history, but fossil findings of domestic horse bones suggest that ponies with some similarities to the Icelandic and Shetland have existed in this area since around 2,000 B.C.E. In the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E., marauding Celtic tribes arrived from the Alps, bringing horses of eastern influence with them. The Celts were renowned for their horsemanship, and horses were central to their daily lives, particularly for transportation and warmongering. They were also great traders and set up active trade links with Celtic tribes across Europe, particularly of Spanish and Gaulish origin, which would have seen further exchange of horses of Spanish and eastern influence. By the sixteenth century, the superlative Iberian horse, along with horses of Moroccan origin and from Arabia, and the North African Barb, would have been introduced to native stock in Connemara and contributed to the great quality and beauty that is still very much in evidence in the pony.
By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the quality and conformational integrity of the Connemara had started to deteriorate, possibly as a result of widespread poverty among the farming community at that time, and through unsupervised crossbreeding. Official attempts to improve the Connemara by introducing foreign blood, mostly in the form of Welsh stallions, initially met with little success, though eventually a more organized breeding regimen that considered the quality of the native mares as well as the import of new stallions was implemented. Three foundation stallions stand out for their quality and for perpetuating the basic, prized characteristics of the breed: Rebel, foaled in 1922; Golden Gleam, foaled in 1923; and the most charismatic and influential of the three, Cannon Ball, foaled in 1904. Cannon Ball was so highly regarded by the local population that on his death it is said there was a traditional Irish wake that lasted through the night. Later infusions of Arabian, Welsh, Irish Draft, and Thoroughbred were also introduced, and today the Connemara counts as one of the highest quality and most attractive of the native pony breeds.
These ponies are exceptional small athletes and excel at dressage and jumping as well as all ridden and driven activities. They are often used by small adults as well as children and have an alert though trainable temperament. Of particular note is the smoothness of the Connemara’s gait, which is long, low, and level, and could reflect an earlier influence of the now extinct Irish Hobby, a gaited horse that was very popular throughout Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
WELSH PONY
ANCIENT – WALES – COMMON
HEIGHT
Up to 12 h.h. in the U.K., 12.2 h.h. in the U.S. (Section A)
APPEARANCE
A beautiful, small head with large eyes and small ears. Neck is well formed and arched. Short back, sloping croup, and high-set tail. Legs are short, clean, and very sound and the hooves incredibly tough.
COLOR
Often gray but can be any color.
APTITUDE
Riding, light draft, showing, dressage, jumping, competitive horse sports
THE BRITISH ISLES ARE HOME TO NINE surviving native and ancient breeds of pony, often referred to as the Mountain and Moorland breeds, that developed primarily in the rugged moorlands and highlands of the country. Each exhibits its own distinctive characteristics, but they also share many common traits as a result of the similar, harsh habitat in which they developed; in many cases, they also share similar prehistoric roots.
One of the most influential of Britain’s native breeds is the Welsh pony, which has frequently been used with great success to improve and even create other modern horse breeds, such as the American Welara, based on crosses between Welsh ponies and Arabians. Welsh ponies have roamed the moorlands of Wales since prehistoric times and are thought to have descended from the now-extinct Celtic pony. In 1901, the Welsh Pony and Cob Society was established in the United Kingdom by local landowners who recognized the great importance of their ponies, and in 1902 the first studbook was opened. It was divided into four sections to acknowledge the four different types of Welsh pony that had developed: the Welsh Mountain Pony (Section A), the Welsh Pony (Section B), the Welsh Pony of Cob Type (Section C), and the Welsh Cob (Section D).
The Welsh Mountain Pony is the oldest of the four types with fossil evidence suggesting that small ponies existed in the remote hills of Wales before 1600 B.C.E. These animals were small and fine-boned, but they developed great endurance, toughness, and sure-footedness; survival of the fittest and natural selection in wild herds contributed toward the passing on of these innate traits, and the Welsh Mountain pony today has retained its durability.
At some point fairly early in the pony’s history there was a significant infusion of Arabian blood, possibly encouraged by Julius Caesar. The ponies