{7} Leaving, however, now, this introductory branch of our subject, we proceed to consider the White Horses in somewhat of detail.
Now it is a somewhat curious circumstance, that although all the White Horses, except one, are in Wiltshire, that one exception is the great sire and prototype of them all, which is at Uffington, just two and a half miles outside the Wiltshire boundary, and within that of Berkshire. See fig. 1, p. 8. This horse is to be seen from the Great Western Railway near Uffington, on the southern side of the line, but the distance being over two miles, as the crow flies, and the outline being a very narrow one, and still further diminished by foreshortening, it would not be easily found by anyone who did not know exactly where to look for it. Now it is a remarkable fact that none of the mediæval topographers of Berkshire (with the one exception which will presently be noted) mention this horse. But this does not in the least throw doubt upon its existence at the time they wrote; for not only they, but the Saxon and Roman chroniclers as well are equally silent with regard to the great mound known as Silbury Hill, the largest solid earthwork in Europe, which was in- {8}{Fig. 1}{9} dubitably in existence in their time, and close to which all travellers by the western high-road must necessarily have passed. The one mediæval document in which the White Horse is mentioned is a cartulary of the Abbey of Abingdon, which must have been written either in the reign of Henry II. or soon after, and which runs as follows: “It was then customary amongst the English, that any monks who wished might receive money or landed estates, and both use and devolve them according to their pleasure. Hence two monks of the monastery at Abingdon, named Leofric and Godric Cild, appear to have obtained by inheritance manors situated upon the banks of the Thames; one of them, Godric, becoming possessed of Spersholt, near the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill (locum qui vulgò mons albi equi nuncupatur), and the other that of Whitchurch, during the time that Aldhelm was Abbot of this place.”
This Aldhelm appears to have been Abbot from 1072 to 1084, and from the terms in which the White Horse Hill is mentioned, the name was evidently an old one at that time.
Now it was only two hundred years before this time, viz., in 871, that a very famous victory had been gained by King Alfred over the Danes close to this very spot. “Four days after the battle of Reading,” says Asser, “King Æthelred, and Alfred his brother, fought against the whole army of the pagans at Ashdown.....And the flower of the pagan youths were there slain, so that neither before nor since was ever such destruction known since the Saxons first gained Britain by their {10} arms.” And it was in memory of this victory that, we are informed by local tradition, Alfred caused his men, the day after the battle, to cut out the White Horse, the standard of Hengist, on the hill-side just under the castle. The name Hengist, or Hengst, itself means Stone Horse in the ancient language of the Saxons, and Bishop Nicholson, in his “English Atlas,” goes so far as to suppose the names of Hengist and Horsa to have been not proper at all, but simply emblematical; “even as,” says he, “the Emperour of the Germans was called the Eagle, and the King of France the Lilly.”
Is this tradition of the memorialization of Alfred’s victory by the Uffington Horse a trustworthy one? We do not see why it should not be so. The idea of inscribing human records upon the actual face of nature is one which had occurred to many persons before Alfred. Semiramis is said to have cut a large rock into a likeness of herself, and Hannibal to have made use of a similar material as a tablet for the engraving of an inscription. The question is, however, one which has at various times been debated with considerable vigour by Archaeologists. Aubrey, in a valuable transcript of his MSS., annotated by Sir R. Hoare, which is preserved in the Museum of the Wilts Archaeological Society at Devizes, says, “The White Horse was made by Hengist, who bore one on his arms or standard.” Mr. Hughes, however, gave it as his opinion, in a communication to the Newbury Field Club, reported in the Times of June 10th, 1871, that. “There are other sites within the old Ashdown district {11} which answer the descriptions of the chroniclers, and have evidently been the scene of battles, and I cannot, therefore, aver positively that the Danes occupied Uffington Castle and the Saxons Barwell and Alfred Camps on the night before this great struggle. Nor am I sure (and this is, perhaps, even greater heresy) that our White Horse was cut out on the hill after the battle. Indeed, I incline to believe that it was there long before, and that Ethelred and Alfred could not have spent an hour on such a work in the crisis of 871.” On the other hand, in 1738, Dr. Francis Wise, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, published a letter to Dr. Mead, in which he strongly upholds the affirmative side of the question. To this pamphlet there appeared an answer two years later, entitled, “The Impertinence and Imposture of Modern Antiquaries Displayed, by Philalethes Rusticus,”—whose name is added in apparently contemporary pen and ink in the British Museum copy as “Mr. Bumsted.” A copy, however, in the Devizes Museum gives the name of “Esplin” as being that of the author. This gentleman says, “Though he has Resemblance enough to be called a Horse as properly as any other quadruped, yet I cannot say He is a Perfect Picture of a Horse. As to his Head, it wants a little Repairing. The Rest of His forehead is not so much amiss, especially not at all too short, being from his ears to his withers about fifty of my Paces, i.e., 150 feet. But then he is quite a light-bodied one: I may say for a Horse that has lain so long at grass, carries no body at all; insomuch that should he take up hill, were I upon the Back of him, {12} I should be under terrible apprehensions he would slip through his Girth. If his tail is as it was from the Beginning, it is a plain case he never carried it well; but just as you have seen a Fox drag his brush when almost down..... This, perhaps, might be helped by Nicking, but that being a modern invention would derogate from his Antiquity, which is all in all.”
Again, “It was one of the wise sayings of our ancestors, even our Saxon ancestors, that ‘a Good Horse was never of a bad Colour,’ and might I be worthy to interpose my private opinion, the horse we are now upon happens to be a White one only because his native soil abounds with Chalk or a sort of Limestone. Just as that other Nag of Renown, from whom the Vale of Red Horse is denominated, happens to be red only because he is cut in a ruddy soil.” This last remark is a hit at a passage in Mr. Wise’s letter, in which he quotes a statement from Kranzius, that “Witichind, upon his conversion from the darkness of Paganism, was the first who took the white colt for his device, in allusion to the brightness of Christianity, having till that time used a black one.” (This black horse would probably be the “Pybyr Llai Llwynim” of Druidical tradition, i.e., ‘the horse of the gloom of the grove.’) “Which things put me in mind of a certain learned Academick, who much admiring that his Horse being turned out in the snow should roll in it, was very gravely told it was ‘because he had nowhere else to roll.’ In a word, whoever will have such sort of Horse must be content with such sort of Colour as the country affords, however he may blazon his own {13} arms..... I may venture to hold him (i.e., Dr. Wise) a small Wager, that should the Horse scape a scouring but two seven years more his Dapple would become a Green one, which would be a still greater Rarity for all true Lovers of Antiquity.”
To this pamphlet an anonymous answer of no great interest was published in London the following year; and then the matter appears to have been allowed to rest until revived by a letter by Mr. W. J. Thoms to the Society of Antiquaries, in which he expresses his belief that this horse was simply a memorial of the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity, taking the form of one of the White Horses which used formerly to be preserved in their sacred ash-groves (see Archæologia xxxi., p. 289).
We have already referred to a cartulary of the Abbey of Abingdon, dating to the reign of Henry II., in which the White Horse is named. In another cartulary of the same Abbey which appears to have been written about the year 1190, or shortly afterwards, the following notice occurs: “Near the hill, where is the ascent to the White Horse, this Church has from ancient days possessed the Lordship of the Manor called Uffington (manerium Offentun appellatum), near the village of Sparsholt,” &c., &c.
Again in the Wilts Institutions, a.d. 1307, there is a reference to “Compton Sub Album Equum.” This would at first sight appear to refer to the Cherhill Horse, which is not far from Compton Basset, and if so would indicate the existence of a far earlier horse in that spot than the one which at present appears. But {14} Canon Jackson says, in a note upon this entry, that there was “a place (also in Sarum Diocese, in 1307) called Compton Beauchamp, or Compton Juxta White Horse, near Wantage, which makes it uncertain which Compton is alluded to, Compton Basset or Compton Beauchamp. The patron of Compton Sub Album Equum, in 1307, was Guy Beauchamp. Now Guy Beauchamp certainly had Cherhill Manor in 1307; but he also had Compton Beauchamp, near Wantage! So that proves nothing. The Bishops of Sarum were, in 1311 and downwards, the patrons of Compton Basset; and unless it can be shown to the contrary, I should conceive that they were patrons before 1311. So that I rather think that Compton Sub Album Equum, of 1307, was Compton near Wantage.” To this, however, we shall have occasion to refer again presently.
In 1323 we again meet with “Compton Juxta White Horse Manor” (in the Inquis. post m., p. 306), and in 1348 with “Bishopstone Super Album Equum, Præbendalis” (in the Inst., Wilton). In 1367 appears “Kingston in le Vale de White Horse” (Inquis. post m.). And in 1368 or 1369, in the Close Rolls of Edward III., a notice that “Gerard del’Isle tient en la Vale de White Horse, 1 fee,” &c.
The above are all the references to the Uffington Horse that we have been able to discover. Leland does not speak of it at all, and all that Camden tells us is to mention the valley, “which,” he says, “I wotte not from what shape of a White Horse, imagined to appeare in a whitish chalky hill, they terme ‘The Vale of White Horse.”’
{15} The representation of this horse, given p. 8, on was drawn from a careful survey in May, 1885. A comparison of this figure with one published by Mr. Christopher Edmonds, in 1735, shows that the outlines have undergone very little modification since that time, the almost only difference being that he represents the irregularly shaped head as if the eye and the two lines surrounding it were exactly concentric circles,—a matter in which we strongly suspect the artist to have been in fault. If, therefore, the figure has been so accurately preserved during the last century and a half, we think that we may assume that, so far at any rate as the main outline goes, we have still the same figure as was traced by the original makers eight centuries and a half earlier. Now in this outline there is one very remarkable feature, and that is the beaked shape of the head. And here the question arises whether this wonderful head is simply the result of rude iconographic power, or whether there is a meaning in it. A reference to some contemporary British coins will, we think, solve the question. Figs. 3 and 4, p. 16, represent coins of Boduo, the wife of Prassitagus, king of the Iceni (otherwise called Boadicea), and in them will be noticed the same feature, which seems exactly to fulfil the description of the horses of Ceridwen, the Druidical Ceres. These, in several poems of Taliesin, preserved in the Myvyrian Archæology, are spoken of as “Hen-headed Steeds.” For that the horse’s head is intended to be that of a bird will be clear by comparing it with that figured on a very remarkable (and we believe unique) coin, shown on the same page, fig. 5, {16} {Figs. 2–5} {17} and which must have been of approximately the same date. Ceridwen is herself said by some of the bards to have assumed the form of a White Mare, while in other poems she is spoken of as the “High-crested Hen” (see Hanes’Hanes Taliesin, Welsh for “The History of Taliesin” Taliesin, ch. 3). It may be added that Mr. Davies, in his Druidical Mythology, refers to a coin of Boduo, in which he considers that the horse thereon depicted was intended to represent Ceridwen herself.
The Uffington horse measures 355 feet from the nose to the tail, and 120 feet from the ear to the hoof. It faces to sinister, as do also those depicted upon all British coins. The slope of the portion of the hill upon which it is cut is thirty-nine degrees, but the declivity is very considerably greater beneath the figure. The exposure is south-west.
The following impromptu poem is given by Philalethes Rusticus, as having been presented to him by “an Oxford scholar” whom the same curiosity led to the spot:—
“See here the Pad of Good King Alfry,
Sure never was so rare a Palfrey!
Tho’ Earth his Dam, his Sire a Spade,
No Painter e’er a finer made.
Not Wotton on his hunting pieces
Can shew one such a Tit as this is.”
The horse used in former days to be periodically scoured or cleaned, on which occasions the whole population used to turn out and celebrate the event with all sorts of festivities, as is recorded by Mr. Hughes in his “Scouring of the White Horse.” A {18} letter published by Dr. Wise, in 1738, speaks of the custom as an old one; and another pamphlet, which appeared two years later, incidentally refers to the scourings as taking place “every seven years.” Subsequently to this period, however, the intervals do not seem to have been accurately observed, the years on which scourings took place having been 1755, 1765,* 1766, 1780, 1785, 1790,* 1796,* 1803, 1808, 1813,* 1825, 1838, 1843, and 1857. Since this time little or nothing had been done to it until the year 1884, when it was thoroughly cleaned and re-chalked; without, however, the festivities by which the operation used to be accompanied. The following local ballad is reported to have been composed at one of the annual scourings. We fear that internal evidence prevents our guaranteeing that it was one of very ancient date:—
* Some little uncertainty exists as to the exact accuracy of these dates.
“The old White Horse wants setting to rights,
And the Squire has promised good cheer;
So we’ll give him a scrape to keep him in shape,
And he’ll last for many a year.
“He was made a long, long time ago,
With a great deal of labour and pains,
By King Alfred the Great, when he spoiled their conceit,
And caddled† those worsbirds‡ the Danes.
† Harassed.
‡ A term of abuse—probably whore’s-bird.
{19}
“The Blowing-stone,* in days gone by,
Was King Alfred’s bugle horn,
And the Thorning-tree† you may plainly see,
Which is called King Alfred’s thorn.
“There’ll be back-sword play, and climbing the pole,
And a race for a pig and a cheese;
And we think as he’s a dumble‡ soul
Who do n’t care for such sports as these.”
* A large stone at Kingston Lisle, near the foot of the Castle hill,
pierced by a channel the shape of a Y turned upside-down. By blowing
into the orifice at the top a sound something resembling that of a
fog-whistle is produced, which may, on a still day, be heard four or
five miles off.
† A thorn tree which stood in the midst of the field of battle at
Ashdown in 871. The remembrance of it is still preserved in
“Roughthorn Farm.”
‡ Dull.
