He believed, too, that the heavier the chargers were the more
formidable the regiment must be, and so wholly did this belief obsess
him that upon occasions he betrayed a tendency to overlook the fact
that the heaviest horses in the world, the most finely trained—in
short, the best—must necessarily prove comparatively useless unless
their riders, in addition to being brave and well armed, were
thoroughly trained horsemen and well disciplined.
Referring again to Chaucer, we find in the “Squire's Tale,” which he
did not finish, the well-known story of Cambuscan's wooden horse, and
we find this also in “The Arabian Nights”—that series of delightful
narratives said to have been first made known by Antoine Gallard, the
French Oriental scholar. The famous brazen horse of romance is the
same, for it was Cambuscan's, and Cambuscan was King of Sarra, in
Tartary. Cambuscan possessed, so it was said, all the virtues that are
popularly attributed to a king, yet withal none of a king's vices;
also he was said to be passionately devoted to his queen, Elfeta, who
bore him two sons, Algarsife and Cambalo, and one daughter, Canace.
We are further told that the King of Arabia and India presented
Cambuscan with “a steed of brass, which between sunrise and sunset
would carry its rider to any spot on earth.” To make the horse do this
all that was necessary was that its rider should whisper into its ear
the name of the place to which he wished to travel, and that he should
then mount the horse and turn a pin set in its ear.
This done, the “animal” would go direct and at great speed to the
place required, whereupon the rider turned another pin and descended.
By turning a third pin it was possible to make the horse vanish and
not reappear until its presence was again needed.
Aligero Clavileno was the full name of the winged horse with the
wooden pin, the horse which Don Quixote rode upon the memorable
occasion of his rescue of Dolorida and her companions.
But enough of fairy tales and nonsense. Coming to the subject of horse
races in early times we find it gravely stated that “the earliest
description of a horse race _per se_ occurs in 1377,” though we know
that race meetings of a sort were held long before that date. The
whereabouts of the track where the races in 1377 took place has not
been ascertained, but it is known that some of the horses which ran
belonged to Lord Arundel, and some to the Prince of Wales, so soon to
become Richard II.
At this meeting it was that a match was arranged to take place between
the Prince and Lord Arundel, each to ride his own animal. The match
was run, and as the name of the winner has not, so far as I have been
able to ascertain, been handed down to us, we may conclude that the
Prince's horse was beaten. Had the winner been ridden by a Prince of
Wales some record of the victory would assuredly be extant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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