One cure that was strongly linked with the old horsemen in Suffolk was the hoss-iles or embrocation. A bottle of horse-oils was accounted a good cure for rheumatism or for a tight chest. ‘If you had a cold in the chest, you rubbed it with hoss-iles—they’d soon loosen it up for you.’ The usual ingredients of the oil were: yolk of egg, spirits of hartshorn and white vinegar. Bryony root as a tonic and a herb to make the coat shine has already been mentioned. ‘It has a big root—as big as a coconut. It was ground up and mixed with the bait. But you had to be some careful with it, not to give too much.’ Another similar plant found in the hedges and used for the same purpose was mandrake. According to one recipe the roots were dried, and in the meantime a number of earthworms were procured, placed in a bottle and buried in a muck-heap. After a while the worms turned to ‘oil’. This was then mixed with the grated roots of the mandrake: a little of this mixture rubbed on a horse’s coat was guaranteed to make it shine as splendidly as the coat of the finest groomed show-horse.
Cummins, or cummin seed, was used as one of the ingredients of a physic ball, with ginger, caraway seeds and ‘anise seed’ mixed with treacle to give the ball the required consistency. An old farming book6 states that the horsemen were once very fond of giving the horses sanfoin seed in order to make them fat and make their coats sleek and fine. The seed was much too dear to make a practice of feeding it to the horses; and where it was used, it was probably without the farmer’s knowledge. The same source gives a number of herbs and seeds, some with exotic names, as constituents of physic balls: coriander seeds, sweet fennel seeds, grains of Paradice, mithridate, oil of juniper, London philonium and liquorice powder.
Clifford Race, who worked for some years on a stud-farm where Shire horses were bred, contributed two or three old remedies: ‘If a horse tended to have a coarse feather (the hair on the legs) we wiped the legs down with a paraffin rag. It would make the feather silky for a day or two so someone examining him wouldn’t notice the coarseness. The paraffin took the grease away—but only for a spell. It’s not got rid of as easy as that. It’s probably due to the horse’s particular breed. If a stallion has a coarse feather it’s not a recommendation, as his family is likely to have the same fault. Suffolks don’t give trouble with grease, but with Shires we had to be careful. We washed their legs every fortnight; and two days after washing them we dressed the the legs with a special mixture of linseed oil, sulphur and paraffin. We grew our own linseed on this farm, and used it a lot as a cure for colds. The head-groom was very particular about the legs—with Shires you’ve got to be. The only way to keep them free from grease is to see they’re absolutely clean. We had to rub down their legs, getting between the hairs with the tips of the fingers. Every now and then we had to show our hands to the head-groom: if the finger-nails weren’t worn right down to the skin, he knew we weren’t a-doing our job properly.’
‘We went to this farm at Henley one Michaelmas; and by January all the horses had got strangles (a glandular complaint). We didn’t try to give them medicines. We turned them all out on the meadows. As they nibbled the bit of grass that was there, their heads right down, all the filth came away from their nostrils. They were in the meadows for a week without nothing to eat except the bit o’ grass they could crop for themselves. We saved every one on ’em.’
1 Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, Gypsies of Britain, Chapman & Hall, p. 150.
2 Probably sassafras officinale (laurus sassafras) which has medicinal properties.
3 The Journal of George Fox, Dent Edition, p. 238.
4 Reginald Hancock, Memoirs of A Veterinary Surgeon, MacGibbon & Kee. See whole of Chapter xiii.
5 Ibid., p. 191.
6 Thomas Potts, The British Farmer’s Cyclopaedia, 1809. See under ‘Artificial Grasses’.
20
Management: The Whisperers
The management of his horses was a skill in which most of the old horsemen took a great pride. In this as in the grooming of their horses and turning them out for a special occasion there was a great deal of rivalry among farm horsemen: the man who could control his horses in such a way as to compel them to do exactly what he wanted without the least show of effort on his part was held high in honour among his kind. Occasionally the horsemen had a chance to try their skill one against the other in informal contest such as the following:
‘Arthur Chaplin’s father was with a number of other horsemen in The Crown at Stowupland—this was well before the First War, more like the end of the last century—and they were arguing about who had the best control of their horses. To settle it they took the horses out of the shafts of the wagons and tumbrils and so on, and decided to have a kind of trial outside on the road. Frederick Chaplin happened to have a horse in a tumbril: he took him out of the shafts, and sent him away up the road as though he were a-sending him hoom without his cart. Then he stopped him with a whistle, and with another whistle got him to come right back. Then he did lots of other manoeuvres with him outside the pub, just whistling him to come this way and to go that. After the others had had their turn they got the horses into the pub yard, and put them through their paces there. But that’s where the trial finished: one of the horsemen was a-showing how he could back his horse to the inch. Well, he backed him to the inch all right—but it was an inch too far. The horse put his rump through the pub window. It cost them more than the price of a few pints to pay for that!’
The ability to control a horse undoubtedly ran in families, and involved—as well as the handing down of secrets—the careful schooling of the son by the father, both by means of precept and direct example. For example, Arthur Chaplin’s grandfather, born during the early part of the nineteenth century, also had a great reputation for his power of control over his horses. When he was a young man he saw an advertisement requesting a leader for a Shire stallion in Essex. Now it had got around the farms that this particular horse was a vicious one, and had in fact killed his previous leader. No one was anxious to apply for the job; but when Chaplin heard about it he looked upon this horse as a challenge. He, therefore, went into Essex and offered his services to the breeder. The breeder agreed to let him try the horse but warned him that as soon as he opened the door of his box the horse would come out at him. Chaplin thought about this, and before he approached the stable he put on a long, white shepherd’s smock. He waited till dusk then went to the stable and opened the door suddenly. As soon as the horse saw the unexpected white figure before the doorway he backed away, momentarily puzzled and suspicious. Chaplin immediately followed up his advantage by dropping on to all fours and boldly crawling towards the stallion that was now retreating towards the other corner of the box. And his initial shock tactics were successful: he gained control of the horse, and retained it by ringing the changes on all the tricks he had learned at home. He travelled successfully with the horse for a season and then returned into Suffolk.
Some time afterwards a farmer in his home district near Stowupland ‘sent his son to Barnum and Bailey’s circus or menagerie to learn all about horses’. He paid £50 for the privilege. But after he had been back at the farm for some time he admitted quite freely that ‘owd Fred Chaplin was still some bit in front on him’.
In the Barking district of Suffolk, one horseman whose name was Moore is remembered for his outstanding ability to control his horses by means of the whistle; and they used to respond to his whistling like sheep-dogs. He had only to whistle in a certain manner as he went down the lane to the field where the horses were grazing for them to be at the gate waiting for him. Two instances have also been recorded in this area of a horse that had been trained to enter a public house at a whistle from his master, to drink a proffered glass of beer, and then to back out at the word of command to the position outside the door where he had first been halted. But this latter trick was a pub-parlour exhibition once practised in various country districts. The nearest approach to the trick the writer has seen was a donkey drinking stout. But the donkey was too fastidious, or mer
ely unwilling, to enter the bar; and the drink had to be brought to him outside on the pavement.
The control of a farm-horse by the horseman’s cracking of a whip above his own head in the manner of the circus ring was also exhibited by an occasional horseman to satisfy his vanity and to enhance his reputation for control; and the various tricks in the field—leaving his two horses plough without touching the cords, or even releasing the handles of the plough—were all part of that emulation between the leading horsemen in a district. All these skills were the result of ‘use’ and long training and, like the schooling of horses which perform in the ring, are remarkable only for the endless patience, the compact understanding between the horse and his master, that lies behind the performance.
Yet in the folklore of the countryside it is not the straight-forward methods of training that are most noteworthy but the semi-magical control over horses said to have been possessed by a class of men known in many areas—but not, as far as it known, in Suffolk—as the ‘whisperers’. They are so called from their alleged practice of whispering a few ritual and magic words to the horse they wish to control. The exploits of some of the more famous whisperers have been written down. As long ago as 1648 it was recorded that a Sussex horseman, John Young, had the art of controlling horses by means of the whisper; but the most famous whisperer is probably James Sullivan, an Irishman who was born towards the end of the eighteenth century;1 ‘James Sullivan of Cork, a horse-breaker was an ignorant, awkward rustic of the lowest class. He gained the singular epithet of Whisperer by an extraordinary art of controlling in a secret manner and taming into the most submissive and tractable disposition, any horse or mare that was notoriously vicious and obstinate. He practised his skill in private and without any apparent forcible means. In the short space of half an hour, his magical influence would bring into perfect submission and good temper even a colt that had never been handled; and the effect, though instantaneously produced, was generally durable. When employed to tame an outrageous animal, he directed the stable, in which the object of his experiment was placed, to be shut, with the orders not to open the door until a signal was given. After a tête-à-tête between him and the horse during which little or no bustle was heard, the signal was made; and on opening the door the horse was found lying down, and the man by his side playing familiarly with him, like a child with a puppy dog. From that time he was found perfectly willing to submit to any discipline, however repugnant to his nature before…. I observed that the animal seemed afraid whenever Sullivan either spoke or looked at him…. He seemed to possess an instinctive power of inspiring awe, the result perhaps of a natural intrepidity, in which I believe the greater part of the art consisted.
‘A faculty like this would have, in other hands, made a fortune; but Sullivan preferred to remain in Ireland.’
Sullivan’s best known exploit was his taming of King Pippin, a notoriously vicious horse, at the Curragh in 1804. A man who had offered to put on his bridle had been seized by the horse and shaken like a terrier shaking a rat. He was saved only by the amount of clothes he had on his back. It appears that it was the custom of the Irish peasant to show off his wardrobe on occasions such as this, and if he had three coats he put them all on. After this incident they sent for Sullivan to subdue the horse. He shut himself up with him all night, and in the morning the horse was following him about the course like a well-trained dog. He won a race at the same meeting, and remained docile for three years. At the end of this period his bad habits returned; he killed a man and was destroyed. Sullivan claimed that his secret came from a soldier he had once befriended. He was bound by oath never to reveal the secret told to him by the soldier. Whatever the secret was it was thought to have died with him, for although his son pretended to some knowledge of it, he did not in fact possess the charm. Sullivan, it is reported,2 died about 1810, having considerably shortened his life by whisky drinking.
Jumper, a Yorkshireman, also became well known for his ability to control a horse by merely whispering into his ear; and Herman Biddell mentions a man of similar reputation who had taken to giving exhibitions in London:3 ‘Barthropp’s Hero 88 never was a pretty horse…. In temper he was a brute, killed one man, kicked the end out a horse box or two, and was sent up to London on foot to make an exhibition before one of Mr Rarey’s4 audiences, when that clever horse-breaker was performing his wonderful feats in the metropolis.’
The power of the ‘whisper’, whatever it was, appears to have been real and numerous attempts have been made to explain it rationally. Among the latest to demonstrate a remarkable control over animals, a power analogous to that said to have been possessed by the old whisperers, is Mrs Barbara Woodhouse: it is worth noting that she obtained her secret—probably as Sullivan’s soldier had done—from a primitive source. This is her account of it:5
‘I used to live in the Argentine, on a lonely cattle estancia 100 miles from my nearest English neighbour. I spent my time breaking the wild horses from the herd of 6,000 on that estancia. Whilst doing this one day I met a very old “Guaranee” Indian, of which tribe there are very few left now. I stopped to talk to him about the beautiful little mare he was riding, and he told me that his tribe do not have to break in their horses the way we do; they just catch them with a lasso, and then stand near them, with their hands behind their backs, and blow gently down their nostrils. The horse understands this as “How do you do?” in its own language, and returns the greeting by approaching the human being and sniffing up his nose. From that moment the horse has no further fear, and the breaking in is simply a matter of showing the horse what you want.
‘I tried this simple trick on a horse that was a killer; three men had lost their lives trying to master her, and I bought her for 15s. It worked. She stopped trembling and came slowly up to me as I blew down my nostrils, whilst standing quite still in the corral where she had been penned for me. She raised her head until her nose touched mine. I blew gently up her nose and then put my hand out to caress her. She never moved. I fondled her ears and her neck and then stroked her all over. I went to the house for my saddle and bridle and saddled her up. She stood quite still; I mounted her and away we went. I never want a more glorious creature. Years later I brought her home to England and she was put down in the war, after having been the most faithful mount of myself and my children.
‘This trick I employed on all the future horses I broke out there, and I used to reckon to get a horse going nicely, having never previously been handled, in two hours.’6
Mrs Woodhouse’s experiences may well have a bearing on the ‘power of the whisper’, and the method may have been used in this country in earlier times. Charles Dickens appears to be describing it in one of his novels: ‘We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him.’7
Part of the background of this novel, David Copperfield, is said to be East Anglia; and at first glance Mrs Woodhouse’s method would seem to have some importance for any inquiry into the methods of the ‘Whisperers’ who have operated in Suffolk within fairly recent times. (It must be emphasised again that the writer has not heard the term ‘whisperers’ in relation to these experts, but the term is kept merely for convenience of reference). But it is likely that neither the real methods or true antecedents of the Suffolk ‘whisperers’ lie in the direction indicated above. To discover these it will be necessary to go very much further back into history.
1 Miles’s Modern Practical Farriery, quoting ‘The Horse’, Youatt, 1843.
2 Notes and Queries, Vol. 185, p. 54.
3 S.H.S.B., Vol. 1, p. 653.
4 J. S. Rarey, an American who visited this country in 1859. See Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, Ward Lock, 1904, p. 614.
5 ‘Talking to Animals,’ Observer, 3rd January, 1954; see also a book
by the same author: Talking to Animals, Faber and Faber, 1954.
6 See also William Youatt, The Horse, 1853 edition, note on pp. 443–4.
7 David Copperfield, Chap. XV.
21
The Society of Horsemen or Ploughmen
Undoubtedly the whisperers were connected with, or had access to the secrets of, a very ancient order or society of horsemen that was in existence up to the late nineteenth century here in East Anglia. Oral evidence in the Stowmarket area of Suffolk is sufficient to suggest that such a society existed here and that they held regular meetings in Ipswich. But owing to the secrecy surrounding the whole organisation, details are very hard to come by; yet correlation of oral evidence and an examination of some of the practices of the old horsemen in this district show that it must have once existed in a fairly complete form. All this will be discussed later; but to clear the ground it would be as well to outline the form of the old horsemen’s society as far as it is known; to define its purpose and to determine, as far as possible, its origins.
The Horse in the Furrow Page 23
