Sweet nothings

I often stop to interact with this horse whose field I pass on one of my walks. Unlike her companions she comes to the fence to receive my proferred bunch of fresh grass. She has a most unusual coat of creamy white (grey in equine parlance) dotted with ginger spots and freckles. I think she's an Appaloosa: you can see her rump here.

Her ears are too high up for me to whisper into them but that doesn't matter because in reality it's the nostrils that are the main line of communication with horses. Exchanging breaths is the way that horses meet and greet, find out about each other and signal their emotions: the breath is a horse's signature if you like. Accordingly, the nasal area of a horse is incredibly soft and sensitive, rich in nerve endings and delicate sensory whiskers.

I've never read The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans, nor seen the film, but years ago I read The Horse in the Furrow by George Ewart Evans. Evans was a Welsh school teacher who spent his life in Suffolk on the east coast of England. He wrote a number of books about the old country ways of his adopted county, and as a pioneer of oral history, documented the memories of the farm workers and rural craftsmen who were then (post-war) a dying breed. His book about the horses that were once crucial to the agricultural work includes a chapter on horse whispering. The whisperers were individuals who, over the ages, appeared to have a special power over horses and in particular to be able to bring difficult or dangerous horses to their senses. They could both influence horses to freeze into immobility and unlock them when they appeared paralyzed into inaction. The whisperers often achieved fame far beyond their own communities and would be sought out to help in difficult cases. Their secrets were never revealed - often the source of their magical power was reputed to derive from an encounter with an exotic stranger, an indigenous medicine man or the like, but it appears to be linked with the exchange of breaths and perhaps the use of soothing herbs and odours.

One such whisperer was James Sullivan of Cork who in the early part of the 19th century acquired an unassailable reputation. To quote a contemporary source:
The wonder of his skill consisted in the short time requisite to accomplish his design, which was performed in private, and without any apparent means of coercion. Every description of horse, or even mule, whether previously broke, or unhandled, whatever their peculiar vices or ill habits might have been, submitted, without show of resistance, to the magical influence of his art, and, in the short space of half an hour, became gentle and tractable. The effect, though instantaneously produced, was generally durable. Though more submissive to him than to others, yet they seemed to have acquired a docility, unknown before. When sent for to tame a vicious horse, he directed the stable in which he and the object of his experiment were placed, to be shut, with orders not to open the door until a signal given. After a tete-a-tete between him and the horse for about half an hour, during which little or no bustle was heard, the signal was made; and upon opening the door, the horse was seen, lying down, and the man by his side, playing familiarly with him, like a child with a puppy dog.

I'm already looking forward to my next tête-à-tête with this spotted beauty.