The horse : with a treatise on draught / by William Youatt.

  • Youatt, William, 1776-1847.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The horse : with a treatise on draught / by William Youatt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    would be the character and fate of their descendants. Of Dan he says, “ Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that bitetli the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.” We have nothing hero to do with the fulfilment of this prediction. That which principally con- cerns the reader is the office which is, for the first time, assigned to the horse. He is ridden. We hear no more of the horse until the time of Job, who lived about twenty years before the Israelites were brought out of Egypt by Moses. He was well acquainted with the horse, and admired him on account of his unrivalled beauty and the purposes to which he was devoted. Job’s description of the horse is quoted in almost every work on the subject, and Dr. Blair cites it as an instance of the sublimity of the inspired writers. “Hast thou”—the Divine Being is supposed to inquire of Job — “given the horse his strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with his beautiful mane ? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength. He hurries on to meet the armed men — he mocketh at fear — he turneth not his back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him — the glittering spear and the shield — he swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet (ordering a retreat). He saith among the trumpets, Ha ! ha! — and he smelleth the battle afar off, and heareth the thunder of the captains and the shouting.” The Hebrew word, which is translated “ thunder ” in the 19th verse, also signifies the mane of a horse. Whoever has observed how much the mane of a thorough-bred perfect horse, and under some momentary excitement, contributes to the noble- ness of his appearance, will enter into the sublimity of the question, “Hast thou clothed his neck with his beautiful mane?” To “clothing the neck with thunder ” no meaning can be attached. It appears from this that the horse, nearly 1500 years before the birth of Christ, was used for the purposes of war. The noble animal which Job described belonged to the cavalry service of that time. The same author assigns to him another task. Job had been previously speaking of the ostrich and of the hunting of that bird, and he says, “ What time she lifteth herself on high,” — springs from the ground as she runs,— “ she scorneth the horse and his rider.” In less than twenty years after this, we are told that Pharaoh “ took 600 chosen chariots and all the horses and chariots of Egypt, and all the horse- men, and pursued the Israelites to the Red Sea.” Here we seem to have three distinct classes of horses, the chosen chariot horse, the more ordinary chariots, and the cavalry. In fact, the power and value of the horse were now fully appreciated. Buxtorff says that the word “ parash,” or “ horse- man,” is derived from the Hebrew root to prick or spur, and that the rider derived his name from the use of the spur. It would seem from Berenger that riding was at this period not only a familiar exercise, but had attained a degree of perfection not generally imagined. In what country the horse was first domesticated there are no records certainly to determine. The most ancient of all histories is silent as to his existence in the time of Abraham; although it can hardly be imagined that this noble animal was not used when Nimrod founded the Babylonish monarchy, full 200 years before the birth of Abraham—or Semiramis, 150 years afterwards, reigned over the same country—or the Shepherd Kings, a little while before that period, conquered Egypt. It is natural to imagine that the domestication of the horse was coeval with the establish- ment of civilisation. The author was disposed, in a former edition of this work, to trace the first domestication of the horse to Egypt; but farther consideration has