Small wonder, therefore, that Mahomet was enthusiastic—unduly enthusiastic many even among his disciples maintained him to be—in striving to promote among his own people a fondness for horses. Undoubtedly it was owing to this that when at last Mahomet died some of the best-bred steeds in existence were to be found among the horses in the region of Nejd. In Mahomet's era it was that stirrups first came to be used regularly by both cavalry and what were termed “private horsemen”—the latter we should to-day call civilians. True stirrups most likely were invented and introduced by the Teutonic people of the Lower Rhine and the region adjoining, for we know there was no Latin or Greek term for a stirrup, and as the Teutonic tribes were large men of heavy build they naturally would be much more likely to feel the need of assistance when mounting than would men of small stature, light and agile, who must have been able to vault on to their horses without difficulty. The English term “stirrup” probably is a contraction of the early English “stige-rap,” a word that comes from “stigan,” to mount, and “rap,” rope—in short, a mounting-rope. In the eighth century A.D. the Angles were using saddle horses in large numbers, according to the Venerable Bede, some of whose writings, however, are said not to bear the impress of strict veracity. Yet it is probable that he speaks of what he knew when he tells us that about the year 631 A.D. “the English first began to saddle horses,” while many of the horsemen who opposed the incursion of the hordes of Romans are known beyond dispute to have been mounted on saddled horses. Mention of the mare, Alborak, called also Borak, must be made—though only a mythical animal—as she was said to have carried Mahomet from earth into the seventh heaven. “She was milk-white,” we are told, like Fadda, the mule, with “the wings of an eagle and a human face with a horse's cheeks,” while “every pace she took was equal to the farthest range of human sight.” In Arabic the word means literally “the lightning.” Procopius, who wrote in the sixth century A.D., is looked upon generally as a dependable authority, and probably upon most occasions he wrote the truth. Yet he would seem to have made one or two rather grave misstatements when speaking of the horse in its relation to the history of his time. In an interesting way he describes certain stirring scenes in the war between the Angli who had settled in Britain and the Varni—the Werini of the “Leges Barbarorum”—whose region lay chiefly east of the Rhine. The direct cause of this war was the positive refusal of the king of the Varni to marry an Anglian princess to whom he had been affianced for a considerable time.