All who grew up on a farm, or within hearing distance of one, are familiar with the saying: "There is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse." And now that the Dublin Horse Show is here again, I recall that my love of horses began with my uncle, my namesake. When I was in early primary school, he wanted to buy me a pony - the animal was picked out and all. But my parents argued that I was too young to manage a pony. "There will be plenty of time," they said.
Then, one afternoon, my uncle felt unwell and went to his room. He sat on the edge of his bed; took out his wallet; handed it to my father; and fell back on the bed - dead.
In the end, I never did get the pony, though I dreamt for years that I owned him, foddered him, watered him, groomed him, rode him, jumped him, treasured him.
There were horses all around; but my close association with them began when my father bought an Irish Draught filly at the Fair of Dunmore - quite a distance away, but the area had a reputation for Irish Draughts. It fell to Paddy Glynn, who worked for us, to break the filly, though "break" is a harshly inappropriate word for the loving skill of a man so instinctive and so gentle as to qualify him for the name of horse whisperer.
Bridle and bit
The filly was used to a head-collar when we got her. The first thing to be done then was to make her mouth: to introduce her to a bridle and bit; to school her in a cantering circle, clockwise and anti-clockwise, until she responded to the lunging-rein and the bit; and then to thread long reins through the rings of a surcingle and walk behind her, over fields and roads, until she read signals transmitted through the reins and into her mouth. The result was that, all her life, she had a lovely mouth - the best of all horses I have known - and she got it from Paddy's merciful hands.
When the filly became used to wearing tackling and harness (her weekday and Sunday clothes, as it were, because she was a working horse), she was taught to accept a man on her back.
One day, I rode her, bareback, to water her at a river a mile away. Coming home, because I was still very young, I grew scared when she built into a canter and I could not rein her back. Another uncle of mine, at our yard gate, spotting that something was wrong, stood in the middle of the road; raised his hands; and stopped her. Then, he looked up at me - this boy astride this 16-hand horse - and said, "You look like the tongs on a pit of mangels." His simile is one of the aptest I have ever heard, and I bless his wit for it.
A few years later, with a saddle on her back, I rode her through a field of autumn stubble. I urged her on until she broke into a full gallop. Then for the first time, I knew the exhilaration of riding a horse at speed. The even rhythm of the gallop, unlike the bouncing trot or the bounding canter, is so natural, so mythical; and you are so much at one with the horse that you scream into the wind, "Yes, yes: I am a centaur!"
Working horse
Time passed. The filly became a working horse and we began to call her the mare, though she never had a foal. Neighbours urged my father to send her to a stallion. She was so well-formed, so graceful in her action, so strong and so workable, they said, that she ought to be copied into the future. But my father always said that she was so busy and so willing that he would not burden her with a pregnancy as well.
Whenever I go to the RDS and walk by the Pembroke Boxes where the stallions are, I feel proud to find a man called Niland and a man called Keville from Balla, as well as Paddy Joe Foy from Westport, who has won prizes with his Irish Draught and thoroughbred stallions over several years. They remind me of the Fair Day in Claremorris, when I was growing up.
At 11 o'clock in the morning, when farmers had sold their stock, a sight came up the middle of the town that stopped the traffic. It was Beisty's stallion. Full-bred Clydesdale. Hair on his legs down over his hooves. A short, arched, powerful neck. A surcingle around his withers, with straps attached to keep his head low. Two brass chains in the rings of the bit, and two small barrel-shaped men hanging on, lest the stallion jumped over the Moon.
Admiration
Women made their way home from morning Mass, as close to the shops as possible. Convent girls wheeled their bicycles on to the footpath, out of harm's way. On the footpath, men who had sold their stock to jobbers smoked contemplative pipes in admiration of the horse.
And up the middle of the street came this awesome beast, whinnying and snorting and prancing - eyes wild, nostrils flared, body quivering - asserting his magnificent maleness over the whole quavering Catholic town.
Today, the king of Irish horses is Galileo, the Pegasus of our time, whose winged victories have earned him a future of infinite luxury. When he retires to stud, telescopically able, he will recall the words of his 17th-century namesake, acquitted by the Inquisition, muttering defiance under his breath: E pur si muove. "Yes," the horse will echo: "the Earth does move."